Scanners and Libraries

Perhaps because I have worked in office environments for my entire working history, I never really considered the importance of scanners in libraries. 

Actually, I suppose I should rephrase that - I never considered the importance of images for libraries.

When I thought about it though, I did notice that more and more sources I see library websites contain images.  Furthermore, some libraries have started including digital galleries of their collections, similar to archives and museums.  In fact, the Archives at Odum Library have a beautiful collection of historical photos posted to their Flickr account, and when I volunteered with the Lowndes County Historical Society and Museum Mrs. Brown spent an entire day showing me how she imaged the textile library, edited the photos for optimal viewing, and loaded them into galleries on the museum website.  So images - and scanners - are a huge part of modern libraries.

With any luck, I will continue this research for my technology proposal this month.  If not, I will undoubtedly look into it on my own time.  I find the subject to be oddly compelling!

Cheers for your own tech proposals!

An image, for posterity's sake.

Library Website Usability

This week in class we were looking at usability of websites.  At first I was just focusing on library websites that I was familiar with, but having just moved to a new area I got curious.  What is the Burlington library website like?

Here are my notes regarding the website:

• Navigation is a little iffy; links are not located on a horizontal or vertical bar.  On the home page, they are located in the middle in 2 different columns.
• Design elements included: logo, contact information, link to search page (no search bar on home page).
• Color scheme: White background, yellow, green and red accents used.  Headers in green, text in red.  Could use more contrast between background and text.
• Links: Links all worked.  Relevant links such as computer workshops, teen space, about, search, databases, audiobooks, and reference desk are all posted on the front page.
• Social media: Links to FaceBook and Twitter handles were included.

Overall, the website was usable.  It had some great information linked on the home page.  There was also plenty of information regarding donations.  I think it could stand to be updated in order to increase user-friendliness and usability, but I other than the navigation bar (or lack thereof), it was relatively easy to use.

I think if I were to redesign it, I would include a basic search bar for the catalog at the top right of the page.  On the left, I would add a vertical navigation bar with the logo above it.  The links for donations could be included at the bottom of the navigation bar, as well as the social media links.  Instead of having two columns of links in the center, I would put the news box (which is currently on the bottom left) in the body of the page.  I would change the text to black, although I think the accent colors were absolutely fine.  I actually enjoyed the shades they chose, and they worked well with the logo (yellow and green).

ProQuest for OER?

Has anyone else seen this?

I have to say, I personally am pretty excited about this.  ProQuest is teaming with OpenStax and OpenSony in order to make textbooks more accessible. 

If you are unfamiliar with open educational resources ("OER"), like I was before starting in the MLIS program, OERs are defined as below:

"...freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes.  It is the leading trend in distance education/open and distance learning domain as a consequence of the openness movement."

(Yes, usually wiki is a no-no, but they really defined it in an easily understood manner).

OERs are so relevant and important in today's day and age.  With the amount of students participating in distance learning programs, I think this will make a huge difference.