Val's post made me think of this: http://xkcd.com/773/ "Campus Photo Slideshow" anyone? :D Nina On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Valerie Forrestal <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > I've never heard of an entire library site being buried behind an > authentication portal. That's just crazy to me. (If you use universal > authentication, I'm sure it's nice that once students have signed in, > they can access/use all the services, but sometimes people want to look > something up quickly, like hours or just check to see if you have a book.) > > At my old university, we were demoted from a top-level link to a > drop-down link (originally under "Student Services" and then moved to > "Research".) That school used two different CMS's for the administrative > sites (CommonSpot) and the academic sites (Typo3). Since I left, they've > united all the sites in Drupal. > > At my current institution, the library is listed in a "quick links" drop > down in the top right corner of the homepage, which is pretty visible, > and also on the "Academics and Research" page, which is a top-level link > on the homepage. > > Here, every department is responsible for their own website, so we > recently built our site in WordPress (the school uses Drupal.) > > While I was severely annoyed at my old job when we got dropped from a > top-level to secondary navigation link, I think it's appropriate to list > the library under either "Academics" or "Research". "Student Services" I > think is less intuitive, as students often think of the library as a > place or a list of resources, and not a service, but that's just my opinion. > > I also agree with those that said the library should have it's own > template or CMS. University sites are often driven by admissions, and > focus on visual and multimedia content (how many university sites > feature a giant carousel of campus shots? Ugh.) The library, on the > other hand, should be able to focus on resources, and while displaying > images from digital collections can be nice, using up that much prime > real estate for something with so little function is usually not the > best practice (often that prime spot is used for some sort of tabbed > search box.) > > I've been working with academic library websites for 8 years now, so I > figured I'd just weigh in with my 2 cents ;) > > Happy holidays! > > ~val > > Valerie Forrestal > Web Services Librarian/Asst. Professor > City University of New York > College of Staten Island Library > 2800 Victory Blvd., 1L-109I > Staten Island, N.Y. 10314 > Phone: 718.982.4023 > [log in to unmask] > > >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of >> Matthew Sherman >> Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 8:41 AM >> To: [log in to unmask] >> Subject: [CODE4LIB] Academic Library Website Question >> >> 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 > > > > > > ________________________________ > > The Campaign for CSI: For College and > Community<http://www.csi.cuny.edu/foundation/> -- Nina McHale @ninermac Developer, Aten Design Group atendesigngroup.com