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.
USAPA town meeting in VT
I went to the town meeting that Trina Magi and Bernie Sanders hosted at Vermont Law School last week. It’s nice to know that a local news report about the meeting was entered into the Congressional Record.
One man asked how to best strike a balance between preserving civil liberties and vigilance against terrorist threats. Magi said it was something people would have to decide for themselves. “I think it’s really legitimate to be afraid of terrorists,” she said. “We can also be afraid of an overreaching government that stretches too far into our lives. There are plenty of examples of lives that were ruined by a government that was not restrained.” [thanks ej]
putting the RFID into aFRaID
Berkeley Public Library is going RFID in order to reduce theft and worker injuries. The outlay of cash comes at a time when the library can ill-afford it. From what I’ve been hearing, this will cost roughly 50 cents a book and has also been the impetus for a massive weeding campaign where books not deemed wirth a fifty cent RFID tag are being tossed.
The library has slashed its books and materials budget by 25 percent and has been scrambling to raise funds to recover about $300,000 for books by June. What’s more, 15 staff positions have been left vacant, and up to a dozen people could be laid off in the coming fiscal year, Griffin said. Additionally, library hours have been reduced by 16 hours weekly at the central library and 12 hours a week at the four branches.
tales of live-in librarians
In a strange little coincidence, LISNews has this little article about a library in Brooklyn that had living quarters for the librarian. Many of you know that this is my dream job, ultimately, and to see this in Brooklyn was just too crazy! Turns out, it wasn’t the Brooklyn that I was thinking of.
dumbnewtoy.google.com
It really seems to me that one of Google’s biggest strengths is taking things that others offer in a saturated-with-ads way and giving it to you with a clean and simple interface, and easy permalinks. In case you’re wondering what my commute to work is like [and I’m home today, snowstorm] that link goes there. Big bummer, doesn’t work with Safari.