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Have a modern web browser? Check out this beautiful site: The Dangers of Fracking.

Great design, typography, and simple writing!

Gimme is a interesting discovery tool from Scottsdale Public Library. It has a fantastic visual design and it easy to use. Yes!

I can understand why they turned this into a web app but I’d also like to see something like this integrated into a main library site. Speaking of taking library users to perhaps disparate places, clicking “more…” on the staff reviews whisks users to the library’s reviews on Goodreads. I’d rather see an accordion function expand the rest of the review, keeping people on Gimme.

If you click through, be sure to resize your browser (or visit it on a mobile device and a desktop). This is the first responsive library related website I’ve come across. Really nice.

Perhaps they intended this to be used mainly on mobile devices. Clicking the “Reserve” button takes users to the mobile version of their catalog. Or maybe they just think the mobile version is better than their normal catalog and want to send users there.

With a little iteration this could go from great to really really great.

Top job, Scottsdale Public Library!

There’s been a ton of great stuff about library website user experience recently.

Usability Testing
Stephen Francoeur reports about usability testing his library’s site, complete with some lessons learned. Don’t miss note taking form and testing protocol.

Stephen linked to Matthew Reidsrow’s report of a Krug-esque testing routine at Grand Valley State University Libraries. He shares all sorts of useful documents at the end of his post. Bonus: don’t miss his post on using jQuery for making their link resolver usable. Aces! GVSU’s monthly testing has paid off. Check out their site:

Personas & User Research
HathiTrust gives some information about how they used past research to create persona documents. They’ve also posted the documents.

The Vancouver Public Library is documenting a large co-cocreation process called Free-For-All. They’re soliciting community input about the following topics:

Public places and learning spaces

Future directions of library collections including digital formats

The role of the library supporting children and families

The role and purpose of public programming and training

New Library User Experience Email List
Sign up for the Library UX list here.

standardmarket.com

Though I like this site, the homepage is a bit generic. It seems like it could be any random recipe blog. I don’t get a clear idea of what I can do or learn on the site because the horizontal navigation is a bit hidden. Also, they should clean up their URLs.

Overall: attractive design, good content, nice supporting photos, concise writing. It runs on the WordPress theme Twenty Eleven.

Standard Market.

spmedicine.com

The left hand navigation perhaps isn’t ideal, and the low contrast white on grey certainly isn’t ideal.

But the writing on this site is web appropriate, and the site does a great job of explaining what this place does. Again, compelling photos to support.

Seattle Performance Medicine.

5 Former Design Trends That Aren’t Cool Anymore (So Stop Using Them)

I was thinking about how there are no great event calendar solutions for library websites and it occurred to me that libraries, with their mega-lists of all events happening at all locations, are barking up the wrong tree.

Who on earth besides librarians needs an overview like that? Yeah, some calendaring systems let people deselect the types of stuff they’re not interested in but that can be a laborious and confusing process. I can imagine someone asking themselves “Am I interested in an early literacy program or a kids’ program? I don’t know the difference.”

I wonder how separate online calendars for each major section of a website would work. But wondering can only take us so far. We need data.

The important question is: has anyone studied how people end up at library events?

Because knowing about the process of attending a library event – from being made aware of an event through walking out of the library door after an event – would surely inform how a library website should support the behavior.

What are you doing on the 25th of January? Maybe you should hang out and talk about websites with Amanda Etches-Johnson and me. We’re going to give it our all! Get ready.

Here’s the blurb from ALA Techsource:

A clean, well-designed website can mean the difference between an informed library user and a confused one. With a focus on the needs and wants of the library user, Amanda Etches-Johnson and Aaron Schmidt will help you develop the skills to make your library website easier to use and more interesting.

Topics include:

Determining the purpose of your website
Identifying your users’ critical tasks
Wrangling content
Writing for the web
How and when to conduct usability tests

You can register for 10 Steps to a User-Friendly Library Website here.

They display better on mobile devices:
Think about mobile users who fill out forms. When a user selects a form field, the mobile web browser automatically zooms in on it to make it easier for users to see what they’re typing in the field. Zooming in on form fields with left aligned labels makes the label disappear off the user’s screen. Users have to horizontally scroll to see the label and scroll back again to fill out the field. And they have to do this for every form field. This is a painful experience that users shouldn’t have to go through.

Read some more about form design and then check your your online library card application.

More from Denmark this week.

Palles Gavebod is a Denmark-wide library website for kids. High visual appeal and seemingly relevant content.

A wide spanning effort like this makes so much more sense than every little (or big) library trying to make pages that are appealing to young patrons.

The site even connects kids to their local library.

“In contrast to projects that seek to build online communities through the kinds of proprietary and commercial social-networking platforms that routinely mine user content for advertising and other purposes, the Commons in a Box software will provide a framework for networks that are controlled by institutions and their members, and it will foreground the principles of open access, user privacy, and non-commercial sharing of intellectual work.”

Here’s the full announcement. This WordPress based tool could be really useful for some public library projects.

[via Josh Greenberg]

Anne Slaughter rephrases Ranganathan to inspire her work as the Virtual Services Librarian of the Oak Park Public Library.

I have been working freelance for more than 4 years now. Yet many of the same difficulties keep on appearing. So here’s my slightly tongue-in-cheek guide about how to work with me, to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Think. This will help everyone. Try to solve your own problems, rather than asking me. You, the client, will know more about your own circumstances than I will.
Talk to each other. It is not my job as the freelancer to solve issues that are essentially matters for the internal organisation in your office. So speak to your colleagues before asking me something.
Appoint a contact person. This relates to point 2 – it’s better for everyone if communications are managed by just one person on the client side.
More information is almost always better. One line e-mails just saying something doesn’t work are no good at all. What doesn’t work? Why? What browser are you using? What was the error message shown?
My e-mail is my to-do list. So e-mail requests for changes, clearly structured, are the best way to get things done. If you think you need to call me to explain a problem you probably have not thought adequately about the problem (see point 1 above).
Success of your website probably does not depend on me. Bit controversial this, but for most of my political clients the measure of success (or not) of a website is the quality of the content and not the quality of the design. So think about the next piece of content, not the precise shade of red of your sidebar. Also have a look at your web stats before making a request for technical changes, and divide the cost of the work by the number of visitors your site gets. Then think again if you need the technical changes, and go and write some more content instead.
Think of how a freelancer’s life works. I am a one person operation. I cannot provide 24/7 service, and in any project I want to do what I can to help, but I am not trying to maximise my hours or the amount I can invoice. That is the reason all then sites I design give clients as much control and flexibility as possible. If you want full service and 24/7 support then go elsewhere, but expect a price tag that’s much higher too.
Be prescriptive, but not too prescriptive. I cannot guess how you think, but equally you cannot know precisely how a website is coded. If you did you wouldn’t be employing someone to do it. So be willing to explain how a site should look, or how something should function, but conversely be ready to compromise at the margins as well.
Take care with the tech that you choose. Force me to use your server or hosting firm and development (and costs) may rocket. Or your site might not work well.
I’m connected all the time, but that doesn’t mean I’m working all the time. As a freelancer I have an unusual mix of personal and professional, and I’m online and on Facebook and Twitter all the time. That does not however mean it’s legitimate to make demands on my time at any hour, and posting messages on my Facebook wall is out of bounds.
It’s not about the money. I don’t do the job I do because I earn a tremendous wage. I earn enough to live, and I enjoy what I do. So try to inspire me with the intellectual value of what you want to do – you’ll get better results.

Every few years or so we like to revisit our growing lists of tools and recommendations to offer an updated perspective. It’s been two years since we updated our wireframing tools, but thanks to your comments and suggestions, we give you four more tools to help you with your wireframing, information architecture and interaction design needs.

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