So many responses to address! ah!

The LITA support to this idea is lovely to see. Thank you very much.

I agree that code4lib is awesome and that we could potentially create a
document which would gain traction in the wider community BUT I really do
think official support/integration is the best case scenario.


Shaun, http://guidelines.usability.gov/ is a neat site and I'll have to
explore it more, even just for myself. How does this differ from my vision
of what we're discussing (to say nothing of Josh's vision or anyone else's):

1. I think that it makes best sense as far as official
validation/circulation (and for ease of use by all librarian's regardless
of experience) to have a much abbreviated document listing best practices.
And works cited. And maybe an appendix with more information. A sort of
list that the group could agree upon that "Well, if a library does these
things they are well along the way to great usability." It wouldn't address
a lot of the nitty gritty details that guidelines.usability.gov does, for
example "13:9 Use Radio Buttons for Mutually Exclusive Selections." That is
an excellent point but TMI for the document I'm describing.

1a. This document would be succinct enough that managing it would be easy.
We need to have something easy to update or it risks becoming old and
useless.

1b. I really like the point made by Christina about not re-inventing the
wheel. And this is exactly where I'm coming from. Yes, there's a ton of
great UX stuff out on the web but what would be a great service to
libraryland would be for a group of knowledgeable librarians to come
together and do all that research work and present everyone with a
simplified 'wheel' for general use.

2. But I'm picturing a lot beyond this. Some sort of website (wiki,
whatever) where library people are able to pool knowledge and resources.
Best practices with libguides. Libguides customizations. I recently did a
complete makeover on our Illiad site - I could share info/steps on how I
did that, for example. People could share useful scripts etc. etc.

The first document would primarily/exclusively be general web best
practices but the second thing - that would go beyond.

Just my thinking. I'm game to help whatever ends up taking shape :)


-- 
Brad Coffield, MLIS
Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian
Saint Francis University
814-472-3315
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