An easy to use and visually appealing website is an important aspect of any service but it is especially important in a limited public space environment when people are avoiding crowds and public spaces. In order to fully and effectively serve our communities, libraries are utilizing their online resources and spaces more and more. This includes websites, social media pages, and sharing resources in these spaces.
An effective website combines visual appeal, appropriate and helpful resources, and easy to use library features, like an e-book library, ask-a-librarian, computer programs and tools that the library provides, and more. The site should also be geared toward the patrons the library serves. For example, an elementary school library site should be organized differently than a public library site, as their primary patrons are young students and their parents and teachers.
The Makalapa Elementary School Library website has a lot of great features that I really love, although I think that their homepage could be made to be a little more visually appealing to their patrons. As an elementary school library, I think a homepage with visually telling links would be helpful to young students, such as a books icon to click to get to e-book options. This site is set up so that you have to hover over We Love Reading and then click the online catalogue. On the same line of We Love Reading is E-Books, which I think is confusing because that was my first instinct for where to find actual e-books, but this only has e-book reviews by grade level. While I did have issues with some of this kind of navigating on the site, I did love a lot of their content, including these grade level e-book reviews. After a student, parent, or teacher clicks a grade level book review link, they are taken to a list of video book reviews recorded by students, usually 1-3 minutes long. I thought this was a really cool idea, not only as an assignment for the kids who completed them but a great way for other kids to get recommendations from kids their age. I also like that the site had a link to the local public library site, useful for students, teachers, and parents alike. I got a lot of content inspiration from this site and less formatting inspiration.
The Redwood City Public Library site is visually appealing, although a little busy, with a helpful banner across the top that changes to various current information graphics related to the library and community. The information on this banner was relevant, appropriately paced (content vs time before the image changed), and well formatted. While there is a lot of content and links to go through in order to use the site, it was all easy to navigate and clearly labeled. For instance, the events link takes you directly to a calendar that lists all of the events of the library with links that you can click to get to details about the event, including a description of the event, time of the event, and links to the currently virtual events. While some of the areas aren’t visually appealing, they are practically set up and easy to use. For example, under books, movies, and more, there is a clear search area for their catalog and then links beneath for staff picks, zip books, purchase recommendations, and next read book lists (City of Redwood City, 2020). There were no visual or graphic images for the links, or even in this area, just a list of what was available. Overall I found this website to be helpful and easy to navigate and visually appealing, if not terribly creative or original.
The Harris County Public Library site did a good job balancing great resources and information with visual appeal. I liked their options on the homepage for the general topics as visually telling links, exactly like what I would have loved to see on the elementary school site. The summer reading link is a sun, the question link is a question mark, the online resources link is a laptop, and the book bundle link is a graphic of books (Harris County Public Library, 2020). The book bundle option is a very cool and useful option for patrons. A patron would fill out basic information, such as name and library branch, and then choose an option for their bundle. The options are varied and plentiful, ensuring that the patron gets appropriate choices. The categories are general, such as picture books, young readers, adult non-fiction, etc, but then have sub-categories that get more specific (Harris County Public Library, 2020). I really like this option and would love to include something like this on my library site. The library site also includes a lot of other cool options, like partnerships with museums and other local groups for events and education. They also have a wide variety of options to borrow easily online, including books, videos and movies, audiobooks, comics, music, magazines, newsbanks, and more (Harris County Public Library, 2020). Their content and resources are plentiful and useful. I also think this library site provided the best formatting examples of the three that I reviewed.
Overall, I found a lot of good inspiration from the sites that I explored, with some helpful learning of things to avoid. It really bothered me that the e-book options for the Makalapa library were not under the e-books link and that reinforced to me the importance of making clear links and options. I also decided that while having a lot of resources and information is awesome, I prefer to offer these under category links to avoid such a busy homepage as the Redwood City Public Library. The Harris County Public Library was the best representation of what I want to create with my own site.
References
City of Redwood City. (2020). Redwood City Public Library. Retrieved July 10, 2020. https://www.redwoodcity.org/departments/library.
City of Redwood City. (2020). Redwood City Public Library. Books, movies, & more. Retrieved July 11, 2020. https://www.redwoodcity.org/departments/library/books-movies-more.
Harris County Public Library. (2020). Harris County Public Library. Retrieved July 10, 2020. https://www.hcpl.net/.
Harris County Public Library. (2020). Harris County Public Library. E-books and online resources. Retrieved July 10, 2020. https://www.hcpl.net/services/digital-media
Makalapa Elementary School Library. (July 2020). Makalapa Elementary School Library. Retrieved July 10, 2020. https://makalapalibrary.weebly.com/.
You bring up an interesting point about design and access. The places where we would link things, or do a separate page instead of a drop down and split pages, might seem intuitive and natural to us, but other people might not see it the same way. I can organize things in a way that makes sense to me, but other people might struggle to understand where to look if they come to the site with particular need in mind.
Yes, I think this is particularly important on a site for smaller kids, like an elementary school library. If it’s not intuitive or easy for those kids then they aren’t likely to utilize this resource and visual cues are great for beginning readers. This would also be useful for the children’s area on a public library site. Elementary school kids love to be independent when possible and I think making their spaces more navigable for them increases its appeal for them and their parents. I know I get frustrated when my six year old is playing a game with reading and he’s constantly asking me to read the prompts for him.
This is very true for elementary students, especially when the age of users ranges from 5- to 11-year-olds, plus teachers and families. Icons and logos really help the students to identify links on their own even if they aren’t strong readers.
I agree with you about the Harris County Library. I felt like their design was simple and everything was organized in a user friendly way while they still had lots of great resources and links.
Yes, they have a really great site and a lot of cool resources.
I’m glad you bring up how important it is to know your audience when it comes to these different library websites. It makes sense that the public sites were busier. Elementary library websites need to use visuals more than text to help younger students navigate. I was impressed to learn that the elementary library’s site also had video reviews. That’s something I haven’t seen before, and would be eager to include in my own someday.