web-saavy – Activity #4
I spent this weekend working on Activity #4. It involved checking out a few different school library websites and evaluating them. I wanted to include my reflections on these sites here. I am hoping to create a website for my favourite school library as part of my final project for this course. I will have to think about this some more and email John and Sandra to see if that is workable.
Anyway, I have a renewed enthusiasm for building a library site so having a look at these was very worthwhile.
Scotch College Library Website
http://library.scotch.vic.edu.au/index.html
I was immediately drawn to this dynamic page. The blog is an excellent addition. It contains reviews of various books by teachers and students including cover artwork that really adds visual appeal. From the library’s blog page users can find links to other blogs about books that are equally appealing.
The inclusion of the Automatic Harvard Referencing Journal as a link from the main page is an excellent resource for students and teachers. The act of providing a tool to help with appropriate referencing of sources is a more pro-active approach than simply providing information on how to do this yourself.
What I like most about this site is that it makes for an excellent hub for resources for teachers, students and parents. It emphasizes the inter-connectedness of all of those parties to the teacher-librarian and creates a sense of excitement about literature. An excellent site.
North Elementary School Library Media Centre
http://www.nobl.k12.in.us/media/NorthMedia/index.htm
This site is not nearly as appealing as the Scotch College site above. The method of just listing all of the links on a splash page is not appealing and the absence of graphics makes for an overly textual environment. The site itself contains many broken links and this is always off-putting to the user. Once inside the catalogue itself the visual appeal improves and lists of top ten books and new arrivals help to generate interest. There are also a great number of resources for teachers available on the page but failing to have these separated from resources geared towards the students may serve to turn students off of the site. A better organization structure on the splash page would help this tremendously. Overall, a great resource but organization and visual appeal could be improved.
Lord Byng Secondary School Website
http://byng.vsb.bc.ca/library.html
The library page of this school’s website is very plain and lacks the visual appeal of the Scotch College site. Most likely the school does not have someone paid to design pages for them. I would suggest getting some of the students to work on this. The Webcat search function has to be accessed by leaving the library page and this may discourage users from going back to the library’s main page. The inclusion of a library blog is a positive one and encourages interactivity. Many broken links however detract from functionality and appeal.