More on scope: beware of my mutant powers of verbosity
Thanks for all the discussion on scope…don’t let my comments below derail that—I just wanted to weigh in on some of the questions, comments, and suggestions. (Be forewarned, this is a crazy long post, if I was an x-man, my mutation would be that I could smash/and/or bore people to death with an overwhelming amount of words):
Age ranges for kids & teens:
Excellent! Thanks for the info on the age ranges...we've changed the scope to reflect the programming and collections ranges.
On the younger audience (birth to 5):
I agree: this is a huge service population: both for the parents in terms of information and programming about and for their children, and for the children themselves in terms of the collection and programming geared toward the little ones. And I completely agree that the Web World should reflect this emphasis in the library’s priorities. So, the question stands:where should this information go in terms of the site architecture, and how should it be framed?
I really like pulling out the kids and teens library sites and having their own look and feel. These are specific audiences who have age-specific needs, so it makes sense to have targeted information with a design and interactive options appealing to the age groups targeted. However, for birth to 5, it’s not that simple. Here are some of the questions:
First hurdle: Who is the audience? The little kids? Their parents? The design and content is completely dependent on this choice. And while yeah, I went to grad school in the 90s so I can’t completely divorce my brain from it’s semi-postmodern roots, both isn’t really an option here in terms of design. The best “both” option is to pick one audience as primary (who will use the info the most, who is the site really for), and then have a sub-site (tier-two) devoted to the secondary audience.
Second hurdle: Where does this content go? Yes, we could pull it all out and create a separate page—BUT ask Chris K said, this is one of our highest priorities as a library, and the subject matter—books and programs for little kids—is one of the biggest reasons people use the library. So, do we want to pull all that out of the “regular” library site structure and make it its own domain? I think that would feel like we’re pulling the kids out of the library, and I love kids in the library (including the library’s Web site). Also, one of the reasons for a topic to have its own domain is that it needs its own look and feel separate from the “regular” library site. Another reason is that the content isn’t just library related, it’s community-based, so we need another site to aggregate all this yummy community content under a non-library name so that other community organizations will join us in providing a no-ego, it’s all about the community’s needs Web site. (The goal of jocohealth, jocohistory, etc…) Now, as Scott S. mentioned, JoCoFamily is an obvious choice for the parenting side of the 0-5 contnet, but again, people come to the library for books for their kids. They come to the library for storytime. I don’t think people will think, oh, I want some recommended books for my preschooler…I think I’ll go to www.jocofamily.net.)
So, I’m inclined to make a tier 2/sub-site off jocolibrary for this age group, and the audience will be parents with maybe some online games and i-love-the-library online indoctrination geared to 3-5 year olds, but it would be primarily content for parents (recommended books for kids, recommended books for parents, programs, etc..) who might mediate their child’s online experience to steer them toward the specific online experiences provided on the library’s site. (And graphic links to the kids-only and teens-only sites would be available from the ad space.) What to call this sub-site of resources for birth-5? I don’t know yet--we’ll pull together some labels and test them out on patrons. If you have ideas for what this sub-section should be called: Birth to 5, Little Ones, Those who should be seen and not heard (kidding), let us know, and we’ll test it out with patrons.
On the ask a librarian feature:
The idea of contacting a librarian might not be new, but I think it’s completely under-used..particularly as we add IM reference, and you know, who knows what we’ll add in the next two years. The Web World must reflect the library, and why people use the library: so what is the library? It’s books and people (gosh darn it). So we want the Web site to help connect our patrons to both.
One more note on the ask a librarian feature: I want to I’m not sure what we’ll call this, but we’ll do some patron testing to see what labels make the most sense to our community. Of course, if Whitney and Dave rename the service, we’ll definitely use their name.
On General community:
I agree with what Chris has to say, (scope ala Carleton), and honestly, I don’t have a firm answer yet…I’m kind of inclined to place basic guidelines on it, and let it grow organically, but the other side of me says that it could get hairy and unwieldy fast…I need to think about it a little more. I don’t see any reason for the library Web site to become the community directory of service contacts because, well, I think the phone book and google do a pretty good job of this…but I’m open to arguments. I’m more inclined to think about this question: what specific community information is really, really hard to find/aggregate and how could we make that easier and more accessible to our patrons?
On the tiers:
Chris is right…Tier one is always the home page, regardless of the domain
Tier two is usually a sub-site page (like Readers’ corner and Search & Research for JoCoLibrary…the pages off the top level of navigation)
Tier three is usually the content pages—these are where the articles are, the photographs, the majority of the actually written, developed, photographed, recorded content lives here.
However, we hope that overall, because our site will be too big too rely on click/hierarchy navigation, that our Web search will be slick, and it will be like google: you don’t drill down, you just type it in, and find what you want within the top 10 hits.
On tags:
Definitely something to consider for the future. I love tags. I just don’t know what functionality we’ll have in the first version. This goes on the to-do pile for right now.
On blogs we have:
I probably haven’t explained this very well (my apologies), but in the new world the Web site and blog are all together—they are the same. It’s just like Scott Sime says, the front page will be a blog—with comments (I hope…at least for version 2…we’ll see what we can do for version 1). Because every page within our new world will have the option to have RSS feeds (a super cool thing, but we have to be careful what we wish for…RSS feeds off every page might be kinda crazy). But I’m thinking that we will fold the blogs we have into the site, and then figure it out from there.
More on the integrated features:
I agree with everything Scott Sime says (at least in his discussion of integrated features…I won’t comment regarding his positions on d&d, chowder, and scotch ;).
On part II (mostly referring to ephemeral content):
SS asks, “Will this be searchable by keyword?” answer: yes
SS asks, “Will we incorporate some sort of topic keyword for posts?” answer: like tags? Yes, but I don’t know if we can do that in phase 1…we have to get our hands on the content management system to figure that out.
SS asks, “How long are we going to be archiving?” answer: hmmm…good question: we’ll have to see…at least a year, maybe more…we’ll have to think through the implications after we get it up. If there aren’t good reasons to clear out the archive after a year, it will be more like 2-3 years…an infinity in Web time.
BTW…The stats on the current blog are pretty good. Over the summer (June to August), we had 4,349 total page loads; 3,122 unique visitors; 2,171 first time visitors; and 951 returning visitors. If at all possible, we'll pull over the content of the current blog into our new archive...but we'll see what in fact is possible and reasonable in the new content management system.
On Reference Librarians:
Whitney and Dave are working on this. We are still trying to determine what is best for everyone: patrons, staff that use it, and staff that maintain it all... Will we have a staff-specific set of resources (like the online answer file, which right now is intranet only), that staff can edit/add to on their own, and should that be available to patrons, too? Plus, Chris C. is totally right: if we’re writing for patrons, we have to constantly try to strip our online vocabulary of library lingo: a hard thing for those of us indoctrinated to do. Absolutely we want to encourage staff involvement on the Web, and we have to figure out how to balance involvement with consistency (we use AP style—does everyone want to learn AP style?), and encouraging authentic voices with creating an organized, coordinated site. Probably this means some sort of identifying who is talking/writing on the site (getting away from jocoweb world anon. staff posts..it’s not confusing to read different voices when they have identified themselves as different writers…ala a set of blog comments or posts).
Have my powers of verbosity left you on the floor, exhausted?
What other questions/comments do you all have about scope?
Age ranges for kids & teens:
Excellent! Thanks for the info on the age ranges...we've changed the scope to reflect the programming and collections ranges.
On the younger audience (birth to 5):
I agree: this is a huge service population: both for the parents in terms of information and programming about and for their children, and for the children themselves in terms of the collection and programming geared toward the little ones. And I completely agree that the Web World should reflect this emphasis in the library’s priorities. So, the question stands:where should this information go in terms of the site architecture, and how should it be framed?
I really like pulling out the kids and teens library sites and having their own look and feel. These are specific audiences who have age-specific needs, so it makes sense to have targeted information with a design and interactive options appealing to the age groups targeted. However, for birth to 5, it’s not that simple. Here are some of the questions:
First hurdle: Who is the audience? The little kids? Their parents? The design and content is completely dependent on this choice. And while yeah, I went to grad school in the 90s so I can’t completely divorce my brain from it’s semi-postmodern roots, both isn’t really an option here in terms of design. The best “both” option is to pick one audience as primary (who will use the info the most, who is the site really for), and then have a sub-site (tier-two) devoted to the secondary audience.
Second hurdle: Where does this content go? Yes, we could pull it all out and create a separate page—BUT ask Chris K said, this is one of our highest priorities as a library, and the subject matter—books and programs for little kids—is one of the biggest reasons people use the library. So, do we want to pull all that out of the “regular” library site structure and make it its own domain? I think that would feel like we’re pulling the kids out of the library, and I love kids in the library (including the library’s Web site). Also, one of the reasons for a topic to have its own domain is that it needs its own look and feel separate from the “regular” library site. Another reason is that the content isn’t just library related, it’s community-based, so we need another site to aggregate all this yummy community content under a non-library name so that other community organizations will join us in providing a no-ego, it’s all about the community’s needs Web site. (The goal of jocohealth, jocohistory, etc…) Now, as Scott S. mentioned, JoCoFamily is an obvious choice for the parenting side of the 0-5 contnet, but again, people come to the library for books for their kids. They come to the library for storytime. I don’t think people will think, oh, I want some recommended books for my preschooler…I think I’ll go to www.jocofamily.net.)
So, I’m inclined to make a tier 2/sub-site off jocolibrary for this age group, and the audience will be parents with maybe some online games and i-love-the-library online indoctrination geared to 3-5 year olds, but it would be primarily content for parents (recommended books for kids, recommended books for parents, programs, etc..) who might mediate their child’s online experience to steer them toward the specific online experiences provided on the library’s site. (And graphic links to the kids-only and teens-only sites would be available from the ad space.) What to call this sub-site of resources for birth-5? I don’t know yet--we’ll pull together some labels and test them out on patrons. If you have ideas for what this sub-section should be called: Birth to 5, Little Ones, Those who should be seen and not heard (kidding), let us know, and we’ll test it out with patrons.
On the ask a librarian feature:
The idea of contacting a librarian might not be new, but I think it’s completely under-used..particularly as we add IM reference, and you know, who knows what we’ll add in the next two years. The Web World must reflect the library, and why people use the library: so what is the library? It’s books and people (gosh darn it). So we want the Web site to help connect our patrons to both.
One more note on the ask a librarian feature: I want to I’m not sure what we’ll call this, but we’ll do some patron testing to see what labels make the most sense to our community. Of course, if Whitney and Dave rename the service, we’ll definitely use their name.
On General community:
I agree with what Chris has to say, (scope ala Carleton), and honestly, I don’t have a firm answer yet…I’m kind of inclined to place basic guidelines on it, and let it grow organically, but the other side of me says that it could get hairy and unwieldy fast…I need to think about it a little more. I don’t see any reason for the library Web site to become the community directory of service contacts because, well, I think the phone book and google do a pretty good job of this…but I’m open to arguments. I’m more inclined to think about this question: what specific community information is really, really hard to find/aggregate and how could we make that easier and more accessible to our patrons?
On the tiers:
Chris is right…Tier one is always the home page, regardless of the domain
Tier two is usually a sub-site page (like Readers’ corner and Search & Research for JoCoLibrary…the pages off the top level of navigation)
Tier three is usually the content pages—these are where the articles are, the photographs, the majority of the actually written, developed, photographed, recorded content lives here.
However, we hope that overall, because our site will be too big too rely on click/hierarchy navigation, that our Web search will be slick, and it will be like google: you don’t drill down, you just type it in, and find what you want within the top 10 hits.
On tags:
Definitely something to consider for the future. I love tags. I just don’t know what functionality we’ll have in the first version. This goes on the to-do pile for right now.
On blogs we have:
I probably haven’t explained this very well (my apologies), but in the new world the Web site and blog are all together—they are the same. It’s just like Scott Sime says, the front page will be a blog—with comments (I hope…at least for version 2…we’ll see what we can do for version 1). Because every page within our new world will have the option to have RSS feeds (a super cool thing, but we have to be careful what we wish for…RSS feeds off every page might be kinda crazy). But I’m thinking that we will fold the blogs we have into the site, and then figure it out from there.
More on the integrated features:
I agree with everything Scott Sime says (at least in his discussion of integrated features…I won’t comment regarding his positions on d&d, chowder, and scotch ;).
On part II (mostly referring to ephemeral content):
SS asks, “Will this be searchable by keyword?” answer: yes
SS asks, “Will we incorporate some sort of topic keyword for posts?” answer: like tags? Yes, but I don’t know if we can do that in phase 1…we have to get our hands on the content management system to figure that out.
SS asks, “How long are we going to be archiving?” answer: hmmm…good question: we’ll have to see…at least a year, maybe more…we’ll have to think through the implications after we get it up. If there aren’t good reasons to clear out the archive after a year, it will be more like 2-3 years…an infinity in Web time.
BTW…The stats on the current blog are pretty good. Over the summer (June to August), we had 4,349 total page loads; 3,122 unique visitors; 2,171 first time visitors; and 951 returning visitors. If at all possible, we'll pull over the content of the current blog into our new archive...but we'll see what in fact is possible and reasonable in the new content management system.
On Reference Librarians:
Whitney and Dave are working on this. We are still trying to determine what is best for everyone: patrons, staff that use it, and staff that maintain it all... Will we have a staff-specific set of resources (like the online answer file, which right now is intranet only), that staff can edit/add to on their own, and should that be available to patrons, too? Plus, Chris C. is totally right: if we’re writing for patrons, we have to constantly try to strip our online vocabulary of library lingo: a hard thing for those of us indoctrinated to do. Absolutely we want to encourage staff involvement on the Web, and we have to figure out how to balance involvement with consistency (we use AP style—does everyone want to learn AP style?), and encouraging authentic voices with creating an organized, coordinated site. Probably this means some sort of identifying who is talking/writing on the site (getting away from jocoweb world anon. staff posts..it’s not confusing to read different voices when they have identified themselves as different writers…ala a set of blog comments or posts).
Have my powers of verbosity left you on the floor, exhausted?
What other questions/comments do you all have about scope?
posted by Erica at 6:09 AM
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