Well, this is interesting.
It’s been a while.
There’s a simple reason for it, which will appear later today or tomorrow when you head to our Web site, library.gallaudet.edu.
We’ve pretty well overhauled it.
A lot of the content remains more or less the same, but it’s been updated and transferred to LibGuides. More on that in a little while.
First, the look of the site is -- we hope, at least -- simpler and cleaner. Not as many long and ambiguous links, and there are fewer Web pages that function as simple lists leading to more Web pages without any more identifying information that explains exactly what you can find there.
The new drop-down menu on top is intended to help people navigate their way to their specific needs more quickly and efficiently. Down below, electronic content is now front and center; this should make life a little easier for people who aren’t in the Library to find what they need.
We also got rid of the announcements and blog areas. The vast majority of our work takes place on a day-to-day basis, so big new databases and other resources come along only a few times a year. The announcements were getting old! Some of the stuff that used to be there, like our mobile site and Facebook page, have been moved to the new electronic resources area.
And no, blog headlines won’t be updated on the new Web site; it’s down to a simple link you can check quickly for any updates. We’re still figuring out how we might be able to make it easier to see when it’s been updated, so stay tuned!
Now, the content. We’ve moved a lot of it to LibGuides. The main reason for pulling this move is to make it easier for us to keep it up to date. Only a few people on staff have access to the content management system that gallaudet.edu runs on, to say nothing of the technical skills needed to present information clearly on a Web page. This is inconvenient, because we all contribute stuff to the Web site, but only one or two people can actually make the changes, so that’s a big bottleneck.
This way, we all have access to our information pages and can update it as needed. Those pages are also a lot easier to read; under the old system, we had to essentially write very long pages and use some clumsy workarounds to make them more navigable.
LibGuides also make it easier to tag similar types of pages -- Deaf-related FAQs, for example -- so you can see the relationships between our services, policies, and general public information more clearly.
I won’t say we’re excited -- it’s just a Web site, after all, and bound to present its own quirks in the fullness of time -- but it’s a fairly nice change that will make things easier on everyone in the long run.
We’re still making changes and editing, as well as moving stuff over to LibGuides, so it’s a work in progress, to say the least!
This ongoing work also means that you need to provide feedback. We’ll post a survey in a couple of weeks that you can use once you’ve gotten used to the new layout, or just e-mail us at library.help@gallaudet.edu. Compliments, complaints, comments, concerns, we want it all! We’re also curious about what more we can add to the site, so please let us know what you’d like to see on there, too!
And no. This is far from the last big change of the summer. Keep an eye out for more details in the coming weeks. I’m out of the office for a week and a half starting tomorrow, so will be silent for at least that long, but never fear! I shall return.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Friday, July 6, 2012
Back from ALA
Well, I’m back from California. Have been for over a week, actually! Just jumped right into work and haven’t stopped since.
The good news is that I finally finished one of my major projects for the summer, which was basically cleaning out and evaluating most of the 700s in the General Stacks downstairs. That’s mostly performing and fine arts and design, including everything from the philosophy of art to city planning, with quick stops at Oprah and sculpture along the way.
One of the biggest advantages of doing this is that you get to know the collection much better -- what’s there, what needs to be, and what isn’t. So the rest of my purchases for this year and for next year as well are going to fill in some of the gaps that were either always there or opened up by my weeding older materials.
It’s really an ongoing job; this coming academic year will include weeding our literature areas, both English-language (which I did two years ago) and foreign (I did that last year); then next summer is linguistics, which I did three years ago. The schedule is wonky because I often buy more for one area than another in a given year on a rotating basis.
The deeper knowledge of your collection gained by pruning it down to size dovetails pretty well with one program I went to at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim last week, in fact. It was called, appropriately enough, “Transforming Collections,” and focused largely on how e-books are playing merry hob with tradition.
One speaker on this panel talked about a weeding project she’d started at her library, requiring librarians to clean out the collections for more space and to prepare for more e-book use, and the results. Funnily enough, it has been traditionally held that weeding is healthy for collections, both to keep them up to date and to keep librarians intimately acquainted with the information under their charge. And the librarians who worked on this project reported exactly that: a more traditional relationship with their collection while preparing it for the future!
The truth is -- and this probably won't surprise you -- "the future" is a topic of some interest for librarians in general. It was also the focus of two other panels I attended in Anaheim. The more interesting of the two invited librarians from "innovative" libraries to talk about what they'd done that was so neat.
I started taking notes while watching the interpreter (I'm one of those lucky few who can write without looking at the tablet), but after a while, I stopped following the discussion so closely. It turns out that a lot of those innovative institutions are actually doing things that we've been doing here at Gallaudet for a while! We've done "bookmobiles," cell-phone-based scavenger hunts, reference over text messaging and IM, you name it.
So we're at about the right place on the curve when it comes to trying new things. We’re throwing quite a bit of support behind e-books and other electronic resources, like video streaming and open-access journals (which are open to the public), and adjusting the collection to account for the change. Our Web site is undergoing a major adjustment to reflect all of this, which is coming up soon. We’re snapping up interesting ideas that are coming our way, and figuring out how to put them into practice. We’ve been taking on teaching roles and getting out there. Not too bad!
I also went to a bunch of programs about information literacy and library building design. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, information literacy is pretty important to librarians. So is space planning, especially when it requires some creative thinking. I’ll write more about both in future posts, but it’s too hot outside to write much more right now!
Next week, I’ll get one of my colleagues to contribute their own thoughts about ALA, and a vlog may be coming your way!
The good news is that I finally finished one of my major projects for the summer, which was basically cleaning out and evaluating most of the 700s in the General Stacks downstairs. That’s mostly performing and fine arts and design, including everything from the philosophy of art to city planning, with quick stops at Oprah and sculpture along the way.
One of the biggest advantages of doing this is that you get to know the collection much better -- what’s there, what needs to be, and what isn’t. So the rest of my purchases for this year and for next year as well are going to fill in some of the gaps that were either always there or opened up by my weeding older materials.
It’s really an ongoing job; this coming academic year will include weeding our literature areas, both English-language (which I did two years ago) and foreign (I did that last year); then next summer is linguistics, which I did three years ago. The schedule is wonky because I often buy more for one area than another in a given year on a rotating basis.
The deeper knowledge of your collection gained by pruning it down to size dovetails pretty well with one program I went to at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim last week, in fact. It was called, appropriately enough, “Transforming Collections,” and focused largely on how e-books are playing merry hob with tradition.
One speaker on this panel talked about a weeding project she’d started at her library, requiring librarians to clean out the collections for more space and to prepare for more e-book use, and the results. Funnily enough, it has been traditionally held that weeding is healthy for collections, both to keep them up to date and to keep librarians intimately acquainted with the information under their charge. And the librarians who worked on this project reported exactly that: a more traditional relationship with their collection while preparing it for the future!
The truth is -- and this probably won't surprise you -- "the future" is a topic of some interest for librarians in general. It was also the focus of two other panels I attended in Anaheim. The more interesting of the two invited librarians from "innovative" libraries to talk about what they'd done that was so neat.
I started taking notes while watching the interpreter (I'm one of those lucky few who can write without looking at the tablet), but after a while, I stopped following the discussion so closely. It turns out that a lot of those innovative institutions are actually doing things that we've been doing here at Gallaudet for a while! We've done "bookmobiles," cell-phone-based scavenger hunts, reference over text messaging and IM, you name it.
So we're at about the right place on the curve when it comes to trying new things. We’re throwing quite a bit of support behind e-books and other electronic resources, like video streaming and open-access journals (which are open to the public), and adjusting the collection to account for the change. Our Web site is undergoing a major adjustment to reflect all of this, which is coming up soon. We’re snapping up interesting ideas that are coming our way, and figuring out how to put them into practice. We’ve been taking on teaching roles and getting out there. Not too bad!
I also went to a bunch of programs about information literacy and library building design. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, information literacy is pretty important to librarians. So is space planning, especially when it requires some creative thinking. I’ll write more about both in future posts, but it’s too hot outside to write much more right now!
Next week, I’ll get one of my colleagues to contribute their own thoughts about ALA, and a vlog may be coming your way!
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