Untangling the Web of Media Center Web Pages by Liz Manguno

This is a particularly apt topic for me to discuss because my colleague and I are in the process of seriously updating our media center web page. The good news is you can no longer see what it used to look like; the not so bad news is that we still have a long way to go before we have a product that really shines. We spent a considerable amount of time looking at other media center web pages and hashing out ideas before we began actual construction. We chose to construct a Google site for this project for a variety of reasons: price, functionality, flexibility, familiarity and ease of use, just to name a few. Right now we are building the basics: home page, resource pages for teachers and students, sign-up calendar, a few tutorials and our first pathfinder. The home page is still fairly bare bones. It has a few of the basics (brief slide show, staff names/contact info, and hours of operation), but we need to develop it further and include our mission statement, policies, etc. And it’s not very eye-catching, so we’re toying with the idea of a different, distinct opening page. We plan to keep our teacher resource page fairly simple because we believe teachers prefer fast and functional to fancy. But our student resource page is a Glogster; we want it to be inviting and engaging. The sign-up calendar is one of the features I like best. Now, instead of a single pencil/paper sign-up binder in the media, teachers can view the calendar on-line and email requests for dates and times. The collaborative planning form can also be filled in on line and attached to that email. The learning curve here is educating our staff. We’ve sent out emails to all informing them of this new feature, but changing behavior patterns takes time, and only one teacher has used the new system. Everyone else is still stopping by the media center. But even this is not a negative; we see it as a good opportunity for us to personally introduce the new procedure to them – and showcase our newly evolving web presence at the same time. We’ve uploaded a few tutorials and, as I said earlier, our first pathfinder. Right now that pathfinder fills the entire page, but as we develop and add more, we’ll devise a system of categories and links. We also have a books page. This is a work in progress. Right now it only includes a form for making recommendations and a very limited virtual shelf. Our plan is to expand this to include book trailers, QR codes, perhaps a Shelfari, and maybe even an on-line book club blog of sorts. Some of the challenges we’re facing are how to minimize clicks and maximize screen space. We don’t want students or teachers to have to do a lot of scrolling and/or clicking to find what they want, but we do want to be as all-inclusive and comprehensive as possible. Bottom line – I’m not offering up our web page as a model by any means, but I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made and excited about the plans we have for the future.

Side Note: I’d like to go back to the issue of learning curves that I mentioned earlier. When I was an undergrad, all freshmen were required to take a course in using the library. The complexity of navigating the stacks was appreciated, as was the value and importance of providing students with direct instruction in doing so. As educators working with students on information access, we understand the continued need for such instruction. But I think that somewhere along the way, some of the powers to be have come to believe that technology has made research and information gathering easier, when it has, in fact, made it much more complex. This was brought home to me as I prepared to present the pathfinder to the students – seniors, no less. There was so much I felt I needed to address – print/on-line, database interfaces, search options (basic, advanced, narrowing fields), supplemental resources (citation, annotation, saving, storing, printing) –  the list goes on. Sure, the students have been down this road before – once or twice a semester, at most. And all the while the resources, interfaces, and features have been in constant flux. In a perfect world – one with a much larger budget and a somewhat altered mind set – we would still be offering freshmen (high school and college) a full semester course in information access. I know I could easily fill eighteen weeks with meaningful instruction.

But enough about me and my little world. If you’re thinking of designing a media center web page (and aren’t we all), I highly recommend School Library Websites (at http://schoollibrarywebsites.wikispaces.com/). It includes links to over one hundred top-notch media center web sites categorized by grade level: elementary, middle and high school (Creekview’s Unquiet Library is listed, of course). The site also includes links to a wealth of support information (tools for building websites; guidelines for constructing them; information on fair use, copyright, standards, promoting media services) as well as lots of content information and examples (pathfinders, digital storytelling, etc.). It’s virtually a one-stop shop for media center web pages. The site could benefit from a bit of annotation to accompany the links, but the categories are clearly defined, so finding what you want is relatively easy.

References

Ablet, E., Bellizzi, D., Byers, J., Cove, S., Frey, A., Guskin, D., . . . Snitzer, C. (Eds.). (2011). School library websites: Examples of effective practice. San Francisco, CA: Tangient LLC. Retrieved from http://schoollibrarywebsites.wikispaces.com/Home

Jasek, A. (2007). How to design library websites to maximize usability. San Diego, CA: Elsevier Library Connect. Retrieved from http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/lcp/0502/lcp0502.pdf

Jurkowski, O. (2010). Technology and the school library. (pp. 69-81), Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.