Month: February 2005
rudy’s library, monowi nebraska
I’m a sucker for heartwarming stories like the town with a population of one and a library with 5,000 volumes. [thanks tj]
hi – 10feb
Hi. I’ve returned from the scenic wonderfulness of New York City only to hit an all-day snowstorm here. I was pleasantly suprised that at least two of the films I got to review for the Media That Matters film festival mentioned libraries! If you’re a librarian, you might be interested in the ways you can use Media Rights’ films and videos as a resource for your library.
digital divide up close and personal
Check me out! There’s an article this week in my alternative weekly about my email class and technology in general in Vermont’s libraries.
[P]roviding free Internet access and tech support to patrons in a rural state is a real challenge; what Vermont libraries offer varies wildly from town to town. The kind of training users receive depends entirely on who’s behind the desk when they ask for help. And poorer communities — which need this access and support the most — are still often least likely to have it, despite grant funding
good and bad web design, let’s be honest here
Erica Olsen astutely and succinctly puts her finger on it. A lot of library web sites suck. If they’re not flat out ugly, they’re deficient in other ways like usability, accessibility, poorly customized templates or just plain old lack of updates. They ignore conventional widsom about web design standards and fail to use clear page titles, citeable URLs, coherent navigational structures and, amazingly, meta tags. They have bad, or severely lacking, search capabilities. I’m not sure why this is true, and libraries certainly aren’t the only profession so afflicted but we are one that should know better. Erica’s not all snark though, she also includes a list of examples of good design in a subsequent post.