LS589 – Week 6 blog post: Library webpages and Dropbox

This week our readings focused on library website design and usability, and as someone in the middle of a website redesign at the public library where I work, I was extremely interested in what the scholars had to say.

After reading about a hundred or so pages of academic research … yup, it was pretty much what I expected: libraries must use a high-quality and easy-to use website design to maintain a high profile in the public eye and promote their value in the community.

Easier said than done.

That got me thinking about all the good and not-so-good library websites I’ve encountered over the past few semesters here at Clarion and I found this interesting wiki with some great examples. Be prepared to click and click and click while being overwhelmed at how strikingly different each site is and what makes it a good library website.

It, of course, means that Jakob’s Law of the Internet User Experience IS accurate (users spend most of their time on other websites). BRB, there’s breaking news on Buzzfeed I need to check out and some stuff to one-click buy on Amazon …

OK, back to work now. So that got me thinking about trends in public library websites and ways to make my library’s website more attractive and user-friendly.

The other part of our readings focused on THE CLOUD. I still have no idea what the cloud is, but I know I use it and love it every day. I think I have about 4 Dropbox accounts because I’m cheap and refuse to upgrade to pay for something I could get for free. The only downside is remembering what I saved under which address – eh, it’s worth it to not pay for it.

Speaking of free, one of issues with the cloud is how little control users have when the program is bought out or no longer supported. For example, when my oldest daughter was born in 2009, I saved all my photos in Picasa. I loved Picasa – then, one day I got an email saying I had to use Google Photos now, which is ohhh-kaaaayyyy but not as easy to use as Picasa. I have friends who had the same issue with Kodak Easyshare cloud-based storage that eventually moved to Shutterfly. So being forced to use or pay for a program you don’t want is a big downfall for me. Of course, I have nearly 7 years of images in Picasa that moved over to Google Photos and what are the odds that I’ll take the time to move them somewhere else?

The other issue I have with cloud-based services is the issue of long-term storage. My work uses Google for everything and is trying to move everyone on staff over to Google Docs and Google Sheets (even though Sheets does not have the advanced capability of Excel, argggg!). My issue with this is that I am the “keeper of all digital files” from 2008 to present. These are files saved on a server hardwired to my computer. Do I copy and then reformat everything from 2008 to now to save into Google Drive, or do I save everything to the server and still use Word and Excel?

It reminds me of the digitization process many libraries are still going through – is it worth it to have the information in another format that may change over time?