Wednesday, June 27, 2007

What we want...

Taking a look back through our posts and comments, emails, and conversations, I think we're moving toward a more solid idea of what we'd like to end up with.
  • A combination of different electronic resources on one page: databases, website links, eBooks, Ask-a-Librarian, Live Homework Help, etc.
  • Resources grouped by subject area would include databases and carefully selected websites.
  • In-depth information about a few select topics, e.g. Loudoun County/Virginia, ESL, Reading, and others to be determined. Could include static booklists or RSS feeds of new materials on the subject, and saved Infotrac searches as well as databases and websites.
  • Seasonal special topics, such as back-to-school, gardening, Black History Month, etc.
  • The ability to explore resources by subject area or type of resources, as at Worthington Library.
  • The page should be arranged to allow access without having to click through many pages. Flash, mouseovers, and/or dropdowns would help.
  • Links to public blogs and wikis
  • Screencast and video tutorials
Anything to add, subtract, modify, argue?

Julie

2 comments:

Marcie said...

In looking at the stats for which of our webpages gets used the most, the link for Recommended Sites came in at #19 in May, but the highest of the category pages came in at #36 (Government).

If you're interested: http://state.vipnet.org/webtrends/loudoun/lcpl/
Portal -> Statistics -> Web -> WebTrend Web Page stats (soon the link will go to June)

I think it's pretty safe to say that the list of links is not necessary anymore. However, I do think we could spotlight/highlight certain of those categories, like ESL, Loudoun, Virginia, Taxes (when appropriate), maybe Jobs, Health, and Reference Shelf. But for the most part, the sites listed or similar ones can be found through Google.

We do link to our databases from inside the Recommended Sites, but we need a way to combine them up front as well as mention the ebook resources (and links to Ask a Librarian and Live Homework Help, which would be easy enough to do and really should be on every page anyway).

So, Julie -- are we now at the point where you'd like ideas on how to make this all practical? If you still want selectors to be able to make changes, I think a wiki could be good. Or we could keep this as a webpage, but content will be added/changed in a similar fashion to now, that is, through you then John and/or me.

Zoedoodle said...

Yes! Let's get practical!