I'm with Lisa in that when checking out other institutions, I check to
see how many clicks it takes to get to the library, and if it is not
immediately on the landing page of the college OR at least a drop down
link from a parent portal, I start becoming Judgey McJudgepants on
that institution. Because If I'm a librarian, and I can't find it, I
cannot even begin to imagine how their students can get to their own
library.

Currently, my library (http://grcc.edu/library) is a drop down link
from the college's landing page under CURRENT STUDENTS and FUTURE
STUDENTS, as well as an embedded link within Blackboard's main
navigation bar. When I teach info lit classes, I always teach there
are a zillion ways to find out from within the college's site and
direct links so students don't get so hung up on a supposed one true
path.

WIthout airing too much of MPOWS dirty knickers, the college has had
some growing pains in regards to development of sites, both main
landing page for the college as a whole and departments. It also does
not help the college's CMS was a home brew before the migration over
to Drupal shortly before I started in 2011. The library, of course,
gets swept under this rug and a fight I've been working up to is to
wrestle control back over to me (the library) and not to the college
as a whole since we're one of the few, if not only, departments that
teach from the site on a daily basis rather than just being a page of
info and that content on our side changes on a regular basis.

The library is currently working on a rebranding project to tie in the
website at grcc.edu/library along with Subject Guides, ILS, and ILLiad
since those are off hosted elsewhere, into something more cohesive.
Project is to be completed sometime in summer/fall 2014. Hopefully
I'll have control of the library's college site by then.
#fingerscrossed

-lisa




Lisa M. Rabey | @pnkrcklibrarian
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Unreliable Narrator: http://exitpursuedbyabear.net
Cunning Tales from a Systems Librarian: http://lisa.rabey.net


On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Matthew Sherman
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Code4Libbers,
>
> Slightly odd question for you academic library folks.  Why does your
> library have its website where it is on the university site?  For context,
> the library I currently work at has our library site hidden within the
> campus intranet/portal, so that students have to log into a web portal to
> even see the search page.  This was a decision by the previous director who
> was here before my time and an assortment of us librarians think this is a
> terrible setup.  So I wanted to kick out to the greater community to give
> us good reasons for free to the website to more general access, or help us
> to understand why you would bury it behind a login like they did.  All
> thoughts, insights, and opinions are welcome, they all help us develop our
> thinking on this and our arguments for any changes we want to make.  Thanks
> everyone and have a good week.
>
> Matt Sherman