Library Websites and Homepages

I too feel that a library homepage is essential for our school libraries regardless of the size of the school or our demographics. If we are to believe Valenza's statement that the homepage is "a second front door" we need to make that front door inviting. I watch my 3-year old daughter navigate our iPad with confidence every day. She can open apps, find videos on YouTube (we have created lists of safe videos for her to watch), listen to her audio books, and play a myriad of games without our help. By the time she is in kindergarten she will have the ability to access her school's library web site, but will there be one for her to access? I hope so.

We also have to remember that our homepages and web sites are not just for our students. They are a PR tool for our communities, prospective students/families, and tools for parents of our current students. At the elementary level our web sites/homepages can offer resources for parents to help their child with study skills or be a source of fun learning games. Things like contests or trivia can introduce the concept of homepages for libraries so that these students and families will have some prior knowledge as they move up through our systems into intermediate/middle and high school.

One of the things I think we can all see through our posts on this discussion topic is that we all have different ideas about what makes a great web site. A lot of that has to do with our personal tastes and styles. I did not like the Prince of Wales site at all. I think it is too text heavy and the list of resources on their Reference Desk page is overwhelming. I would like to have seen some groupings that perhaps led to another page or some visuals to address the needs of visual learners.

I do agree that access to the library's OPAC is key - and one of the areas that my library's web site is lacking. I do also think that the homepage needs to be fun. I like the sites that have photos on their homepage, bookshelves with new acquisitions, and the sites that have surveys and links to things like movie tie-ins is also a huge plus - and something I think will appeal to students. These things are all on my library homepage.

One of the things I learned while doing research for developing my library's web site is the "three click rule." Visitors to your site should be able to find what they are looking for in three clicks of the mouse or fewer. This is actually harder to do than we think, and can sometimes result in those busy pages that many of us say we don't like.

This is my first year as the TL at my school (an 8-12 high school of 390 students) and we did not have a library web site or homepage when I first became the TL. Fortunately, one of the courses I took this fall included an assignment of designing a web site so I got mine done. I chose to use Weebly and pay for a domain name. www.hopesecondarylibrary.com  I am very pleased with the platform. Although I see this as a work in progress, I am pleased with the results so far.

The main thing my site is missing is access to our catalogue. As part of my assignment 3 I looked into the possibility of adding this and am fairly confident I will be upgrading our system for the fall of 2012. The other thing my site is missing is visitors, LOL. The reason for this is awareness. The site was created after I had done the library orientations with our students, so hopefully I can improve our site usage in the fall. We also have a Facebook page that is starting to gain some popularity with our students so I hope this will also attract attention back to the web site.

The Library Catalogue

I think I actually get to be original as my school uses Alexandria for our cataloguing system and the version or system we pay for is not an actual OPAC system - meaning we do not have online access to the catalogue. The three elementary schools and my high school in Hope all use this system, however we are independent of each other. The system itself is excellent and based on my observations and research into Follett's Destiny, the two systems are very similar.

Students have access to our catalogue on one computer in the library - and honestly NO ONE uses it. One of the main obstacles is that the students have to log in to the computer and then access the catalogue, which just takes too long. I have considered making the catalogue computer accessible without a log in, but that means one fewer computer for student use and they are all used regularly.

As part of my assignment 3 I began investigating an upgrade to our system to allow for online access. I would need an initial outlay af about $1200 plus a yearly maintenance fee of $599. (Only 390 students in our school) This would give us the ability to have up to 10 concurrent users of the catalogue, which at this time, seems like more than enough. I have not compared this to what it would cost to change to Destiny - that is next on my "To Do" list for our catalogue.

In a previous course I did an extensive study of our system when analyzing one section of our non-fiction collection. I realized at that time that the catalogue is only as good as the information it is provided and that has only been confirmed in this course. In the student search feature they have several options - like some other students in the class, I find the visual of the search screen a bit dated, and in my case a bit "young" for my high school students. It is very easy to navigate and try different search parameters. The problem is, many of our resources have not been entered correctly. For example, a search for titles with the word "Canada" nets 6 results - really? We only have 6 books with the word "Canada" in the title? And a search of the subject "Canada" only gives 4 results - and 2 of them are not the same as the title search. Yikes!

Managing the system from the main library computer is not difficult. The system has a very clean visual look and now that I know most of the keyboard shortcuts, moving between different functions is even easier. Since starting this course we have significantly improved the cataloguing of our new resources, and once I have finished the weeding of the non-fiction, we will begin recataloguing other resources. (I feel your pain Beth!)

I think some of the discrepancies in the catalogue have been the result of going from a full time TL with a full time aide 20 years ago, to just a TL who had to teach 1 or sometimes 2 classes as well. There just wasn't time to maintain the collection or the catalogue the way it should be. This being my first year as the TL, I have tried to be the observer. How is the library being used? How is the catalogue being used? Which features do I like? Do I need to change? or just upgrade what I have.

Like some others, I have played with reports on my system as well. I like being able to print off my monthly circulation to show the increases since last year, and I also like that I can see things like the average age of the collection.

One of the problems I have with our system is finding students for overdue items. When we originally started using the system, our school had a daily homeroom so this was where the TL could hand out overdue notices or give the homeroom teacher a list of overdues. We no longer have homerooms and the students' schedules have not been entered into the system as part of their profile. To send overdue notices I have to pick one of our 8 blocks and then manually search for the location of each student. One of the features I will be looking for when considering an upgrade to our system is an easy way to import student data when creating "patrons" so that my overdue notices can indicate the student's location.

Sources for Cataloguing, Processing, and Preparing

Because my district (#78 Fraser-Cascade - serving Agassiz, Hope & Boston Bar) is very small we do not have centralized library services.  I am provided my own budget each year and I do all of my own purchasing and cataloguing.  As this was my first year as the TL there was a steep learning curve for this process, especially considering we were desperately "behind the times" in the age of our collection. 

As a result of this course, I quickly realized some of the errors I had been making in the cataloguing of materials.  Luckily, my acquisitions had focused on Fiction, and the main area where my cataloguing was lacking was in subject and search terms/tagging.  I have slowly been working on adding to these records so that the search features of our system can be more effective.

I have several sources for acquisitions, and am not ashamed to admit that the best price has been the most important criteria for me in trying to bring our fiction collection into the 21st century.  I buy books at Costco, Walmart and scour used book stores for good quality used books - I found some great Manga and graphic fiction this way, especially since they can be so expensive to purchase new.  I know that I do not get library bindings but honestly, do I need the book to last forever?  I weeded over 500 titles in September - sure they were in great condition, but no one was reading them.

Now that I am feeling more comfortable in my library surroundings I am exploring the services of companies like Follett and ULS.  The librarian before me had been at our school for 20 years and never used jobbers.  A librarian at another school in the district told the Follett rep that I was new and he came right over to our school.  He was so excited as he said he was told not to bother coming by before.  Although I know he was doing his job, I was very impressed that he took the time to come meet me and then set up another time to come by and demonstrate Follett's services.  Before his return, I took the time to register with Follett and become familiar with their site.  In the 2 hours the rep spent with me on his second visit I was able to use their collection management tool and begin setting up possible purchasing lists.  I also loved that all this was FREE!  I do not use their cataloguing system and I did not feel pressure to purchase from them - but I did. 

There are lots of elements to their site that I like.  Of course free shipping is always good, they offer several binding options, I can create different lists and save them to add to or delete, and title searches also tell me if I already have the title or a similar title in my collection.  It is also very easy to order with a P.O.  I can have them do cataloguing services for me, but I have elected to do these myself.  So far this has not been too overwhelming.

As I said in a reply to Michelle's post, we often judge services and web sites as compared to our first positive experience, so Follett's site and services became my standards.

I have not used ULS...yet, but I hope to actually visit their warehouse in June.  I am not a fan of their web site.  I, like Michelle, find it "dull" and a bit confusing.  I believe this is mostly due to my visual likes and dislikes, not really because of the content of the site.  For both Follett and ULS I logged in so I was able to see prices and options.  ULS does not have as many visuals to accompany each resources and sometimes they only offer one type of binding, whereas Follett seems to always have at least 2 options.  I do like that ULS is Canadian but I do not find Follett "overly American" and my site, once logged in, has a Canadian flag at the top to indicate that I am in the Canadian part of their site.

In ULS I also have trouble narrowing my search to high school options.  In the "Best Books" selection list, I would like to be able to sort by grade.  Instead I have to scroll down to find the books for the grade levels at my school.  I do like their selection lists for First Nations books, Canadian authors, and award winners.

I agree with the School Media Specialist information on jobbers when it says that it is important to form a positive relationship with jobbers.  I know that ULS will be helpful so I want to get to know them better.  I think it is possible, and beneficial to use more than one jobber.  This may not be possible in some TLs' situations, but it can at least be a way to compare products, services, and prices. 

When copy cataloguing I use a variety of sources including Follett, ULS, Library of Congress and various public libraries.  Now that I am better at cataloguing I have my student TAs get the books ready for cataloguing by stamping, labeling and barcoding the acquisitions.  Sometimes I will have them start the cataloguing process and save the subject key word work for me.  This tends to be done within a week of resources arriving which I think is a pretty quick turn around.

As mentioned on the School Library Media Specialist site, purchasing locally is sometimes the best option.  Although I do not have a book store in my community, I do keep my eyes open for book bargains when out and about.  I also check the teen sections of Chapters and Kidsbooks and then look for their top choices at less expensive prices.

Because my library and school district are so small, doing my own cataloguing has not been overwhelming, however I do know that I have some re-cataloguing to do once the weeding of our non-fiction section is complete.  All of this however, is leading to a better organized and more efficient Learning Commons for our students.

Tagging, Folksonomy, Delicious

Here is the link to my Delicious stacks lenorapoulin.
 
I had signed up for Delicious some time last year and spent quite a bit of time setting up links, etc.  I found I preferred my bookmarks bar as it was inconvenient to go to the Delicous site for my lists.  Since their redesign I cannot find my "stuff" on Delicious so I had to re-sign up.  This wasn't really a problem as honestly, I don't even remember what I had bookmarked last year.

I like the new format of the site.  The stacks remind me of the pin boards on Pinterest - my favourite bookmarking site.  I was also able to add a Delicious gadget to my iGoogle home page which will hopefully make access easier, and me more likely to use this tool.

I created stacks for Library, Scrapbooking, My Blogs, Teacher "stuff", and Web 2.0 and then added the links that I currently have on my blogs and bookmarks toolbar.  One thing I was having difficulty with was the image associated with the site.  Even when I selected "no image" an image would appear, sometimes one that was really too big and not identifying of the site.

The tags exercise was interesting.  I could see many of the issues mentioned in the Folksonomy article.  When linking some libraries suggested tags included catalogue, catalogues, cataloging... etc.  How do I know which is the most popular search term?  Obviously I don't really "care" that much about searching through my bookmarks, but when considering cataloging resources for staff and students, this is important.  These tag "clouds" are becoming our online library catalogues and so we need to have some vocabulary standards.

I didn't spend much time searching for other links for my stacks but I can see how this could become quite addictive.  I am trying, through Google reader, to subscribe to the sites I visit most and then receive notification when there is a new post or update.  I find this to be much more efficient than visiting a site that hasn't been updated for some time.

UPDATE:  Since writing this post (February 19th), I have become a huge fan of tags and am working on tagging previous blog posts and other online content that I follow.  I have added the Tag Cloud to my learning blogs so that I can find content easier and in my Google Reader RSS feed I use tags to sort and search for web content to follow.

Through this learning process I have become a better cataloger of my library materials.  I find that I can think about who might be searching for that material, and what kind of search terms they might use.  I am also trying to encourage my students, when they are doing their blog posts in class, to tag their posts.  I tell them it is like creating a filing system for their Web 2.0 material.  It might not seem important now, but when they continue their education or have a career, they will be thankful for this skill.

Assignment #3

I am posting my assignment #3 here just in case.  I am a little nervous because it took close to 10 minutes to load onto Vista.