userslib.com

Some great web site coding advice from the Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper)

LOLcats is so 2007… Now it’s all about the LOL manuscripts!

[LOL Manuscripts | via NotCot]

The Future of Books

Here’s an interesting student project by Kyle Bean (illustrator, designer and maker of ‘things’)

[link | via notcot]

Asterick Bookends

By Blank Project

[link | via swissmiss]

Nicholas Jones

[via the Design Files | see also]

I was talking to some folks today about our library website redesign plans and various web design trends…

One of the topics of conversation was the big footer trend. Our web designer described it as kind of a “mullet” (you know, business in front, party in back) because it lets you devote all the main screen real estate to serious content and then put all the fun stuff (like news & events, flickr images, featured/spotlight content, etc.) hanging out at the bottom.

The University of Louisville has a nice example of a big footer:
http://louisville.edu/

The group had mixed feelings about this web trend. What do ya’ll think?

The Powerhouse Museum in Australia has just joined the Library of Congress to be the second member of the Commons on Flickr.

And BTW - Seb Chan’s Powerhouse blog Fresh + New(er) is one of my favorites and a fantastic source for interesting discussions about digital media, access systems, interface design, tagging and web2.0. I also love their opac/online collections site (really, it’s super cool, go play with it).

More info here:

• Flickr Commons
• Flickr blog post
• Fresh + New(er) blog post

If you could only have one single feature on your library web page… what would it be?

Search, right? Except library searches don’t usually work like Google (yet)… That doesn’t mean library websites should hide their search boxes, all tucked away in the corner.

Here are a few lovelies I thought I’d highlight. I tried to stick mostly to search boxes that let the user choose which “silo” to search (so, more than just a web page search or catalog search) but a few single searches were worth including.

University of Virginia Library
Now that’s a dedication to giving up some screen real estate! It won’t even fit in my blog template. I bet this one doesn’t get missed. It also has a fresh “2.0″ feeling (as does the rest of the site). Oh, and one of the tabs is for Google Scholar… interesting!

British Library
The search box is in a very prominent location, and it’s very clear about what is being searched. The little descriptions of what each search option includes is a fantastic idea and I bet does a lot to solve those pesky terminology problems.

Free Library of Philadelphia
I’m not actually sure I like how you have to select the box to do a site search only… (I’d prefer it not have the message above about what’s being searched and instead have select boxes below that say “catalog,” “databases,” and “site search” and all are selected by default). However, I find their overall design irresistible and I appreciate that the “FIND” area is a good 1/3 of the main body content!

University of North Carolina Libraries
When you select a different tab - the options under the text box change. Nicely designed and seems easy enough to use.

Vancouver Public Library
Catalog search only, but I really like how well it’s integrated into the overall site design. Very simple, yet still stands out.

Yale University Library
This is the most simple example but simple is sometimes hard to do. It has a good amount of white space around it that helps set it out from the rest of the site.

I found a few more nice onces - All are in my Search Box flickr set.

Any suggestions for other sites that have a nice, big search box?

Over at the del.icio.us blog, there’s a post about how they’ve noticed that librarians & educators are using delicious in interesting ways.

Over the past year or two, I’ve been delighted to notice educators and librarians embracing Delicious both as a way to share bookmarks with each other and a way to help their students and patrons learn. This makes perfect sense to me as a college student because I bookmark and tag references for all my projects and I’d love to see similar collections from my professors and classmates.

I don’t know who first realized the potential of Delicious for education, but I’ve seen a huge amount of community documentation created by teachers and librarians to help each other understand what this place is, why it’s valuable, and how to use it.

See full post for list of resources about librarians and delicious!

Harper Collins Publishers just released a free book viewer.

“Try before you buy”

[Link to HC portal | found via Mashable]

I just found this fantastic information graphic from Business Week that demonstrates what people are doing online and is broken down by age range. I particularly like the categories used: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators, Inactives.

Looking at the Youth (18-21) column, social networking is the top activity for this group with 70% participating. I think this definitely supports the argument for “being where our patrons are.” At the very least, that we should be aware of where they are and think about how it informs their use of the web.

As an obsessive RSS & Delicious user, I find it somewhat difficult to believe that there’s relatively little activity going on in the “Collectors” category. Maybe these technologies just fit a niche need (the need to share links, need to have a central bookmark collection, the need to read way too many blogs).

Link to source of graphic | found via Smashing Magazine

I posted recently about our library web survey but I thought it’d be interesting to talk a little about one particular question:

If you could contact a librarian via Facebook or MySpace for help with your research, would you? If not, why?

The main impetus for this question comes from a current trend for libraries to create Facebook apps that allow OPAC searching and other library related functionality from within Facebook. There has also been a lot of discussion and experimentation with using Facebook for reference and outreach.

There were a total of 330 responses. This was a free-text entry field so responses were organized and coded into basic categories.

The Data:

Breakdown of coded responses:

The data was cross-tabulated based on the respondent’s status to see if there were any trends in how they responded.

Responses by UM affiliation/status:

A total of 23% of respondents stated that ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ they would be interested in contacting a librarian via these two social networking sites. Undergrads had a slightly higher than average percentage of 34%.

Nearly half of the total respondents stated they would not be interested, but for various reasons - the biggest reason being that they feel the current methods (in-person, email, IM) are more than sufficient. 14% said no because they felt it was inappropriate or that Facebook/MySpace is a social tool, not a research tool. Though this latter category does not represent a majority, these responses were the most emphatic. Of those who stated their reason as having to do with seeing Facebook/MySpace as a social thing and not a research thing, undergraduates and graduate students comprised the largest group.

Some of the interesting responses:

“Sure because its something that I check often and is quick and easy to use.”

“I wouldn’t, because I feel as if I can do most of the research on my own.”

“…facebook and myspace are very public sites…it’d be weird to contact a librarian that way.”

“No, facebook does not seem like a site I would use for school purposes. I don’t want librarians looking at my profile. Facebook is not for school, it’s for fun.”

“No, because you can already chat with them online through the library website and I wouldn’t want to contact a faculty member using my personal networking site.”

“No. I would rather just send an email or go to the library and talk to them in person.”

So what can we learn from this? There is definitely some interest in using facebook as a tool for more than just social interactions even though some perceive it as pretty weird. The weird factor is likely to change as more apps (like lookabee and CourseFeed) are created and adopted, more students friend their professors, and they start to realize more and more that privacy on facebook isn’t a given.

And what’s the harm? We’re not talking about friending every student in your subject specialization and sending them vampire and zombie invites (or whatever those stupid things are)… we’re just talking about being where our users are, marketing our services, and trying not to be left in the dust.

[Link to the full survey report pdf] [Link to all usability reports]