Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection. —Kim Collins
Perhaps the most common question I get from webinar attendees is, “Can you recommend a website that we should try to emulate?” This makes sense: I’ve probably spent an hour going on about library website dos and don’ts, so that logically raises the question “Do you have an example of the perfect library website?” Not only is this the most common question I get, it’s also the hardest one for me to answer. Here’s why:
- I’ve never seen a site that is, in its entirety, “perfect.” And I bet you haven’t, either. Aside from the fact that some factors can be subjective, I tend to assess individual elements on their own merits. The navigation may be excellent, but the listings of upcoming events may have potential usability issues. The search function may be terrible, but the footer is well organized. When I talk to clients, I’ve noticed that they tend to evaluate sites in the same way. They’ll look at my portfolio and tell me they like one thing from Site A and another from Site B. Some will tell me they specifically despise that thing from Site C and can’t understand why anyone would have done what Site C did. Even though it’s unconscious, many of us parse sites apart into their component parts when forming our opinions.
- The needs of one library do not necessarily completely overlap the needs of another. Especially if you’re comparing, say, the needs of a large metro system with those serving a small rural community. While that cool feature you saw on the big city website might be nifty, it may not solve any problems for rural patrons. Even libraries of similar size may have needs for specific functions.
- Even if a library needs it, it may not be able to maintain it. When it comes to website features, library staff tend to have eyes bigger than their stomachs, so to speak. They load up their sites with extra functions and features, not calculating the cost in staff time those things might require. Countless newsletters, blogs, and photo albums, just as examples, have languished after installation: they seemed like a great idea during the build process, but staff didn’t have time to keep them up.
- Politics play a bigger part than most people suspect. There’s a significant amount of internal politics that can become part of the web design process. Perhaps it’s the involvement of the library’s board, preferences of the library administrators, or territorial behavior by various staff members. While many of these battles are fought behind the scenes, they do impact a designer’s work and the progress of a library’s site. It’s not unusual for libraries to tell me that they want things that are terrible ideas, simply because “the director said so.” Despite my best efforts to convince them otherwise, the director’s choice may still stand. To this day, there are some sites I’ve done that I don’t show to anyone because the internal politics of the library made them into hodgepodges of bad practice.
When we look at a library website, there are a multitude of decisions that likely went into its creation, and it’s not always easy to discern why or how those decisions were made. While many parts of web design are not subjective anymore, “perfect” can still be very impressionistic in the eyes of the library staff members who are emotionally invested in their website.
