Your building is not your product
The building ISN'T the library, but it is part of the library's identity.
When it comes to your library’s website, are you a climate change denier?
Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion. W. Edwards Deming One of the least comfortable parts of my job as a web developer/designer is to convince library clients that certain things they may think they want are not…
Is Alexa killing off websites? Not quite.
I ran across this Medium post by tech futurist Michael Spencer the other day. In it, Spencer claims that websites are about to disappear because of AI-powered voice assistants, like Alexa. (It’s pretty short, I suggest you take a moment to…
Level up your library’s website with this one little thing
In 2016, my workplace did a study to determine the state of various issues on public library websites in Ohio. One of the numbers that was concerning was the widespread lack of a favicon. Over 45% of the 171 libraries…
Is your library’s website costing your patrons money?
For several years, I was a lucky customer of Verizon with a grandfathered, unlimited data plan. Last year, in an attempt to shove us freeloader-types overboard, Verizon jacked up the price of unlimited plans by an insane amount. Rather than…
What’s still missing from Ohio public library websites?
Recently, at my place of work, we decided to do a broad survey of Ohio’s public library websites for some basic functionality and features. We wanted to get an idea of just how many websites still had major problems (or…
3 things you can learn from other websites
Let’s start with defining “other” here: I mean sites that aren’t library websites. If you do nothing else, I want you to get out of the habit at looking at other library sites for inspiration. No, really, I mean it.…
Stop putting out the “welcome mat”
The temptation is overwhelming. After all, libraries are friendly places, right? We wouldn’t want our patrons to think they weren’t welcome. It’s so nice and friendly to put a big “Welcome to our library website!” heading at the top of…
Polar bears, Che Guevara and porn
(Eric Jordan did an update to his first “Webmaster” vignette, and I’m posting it here for collective enjoyment. Thanks, Eric!) Web Master 1.1 (I had enough fun with the first one, I decided to upgrade!) The Programmer approached the Web…
Who is living in your house?
I count among my good Internet friends a certain Eric Jordan, who can not only outpun anyone I know, but has a talent for taking a humorous approach to making his thoughts known. Although Eric is not a web developer…
Why web standards matter and why your library (really) has to care
It’s pretty easy to explain to people why their web sites need certain kinds of standards; take, for example, Section 508, which is essentially the ADA for web sites. Section 508 says that any organization receiving federal funds (hmm…bailout companies,…