In order to get the reader's attention, the media center's website must be unique and valuable to the user.
As stated by David Warlick(2005), we “must challenge ourselves to step back and examine the overreaching goals of our job—assisting students to become successful learners as well as supporting teachers in their efforts to create and craft meaningful learning experiences for their students—and to do this within the context of a contemporary information environment.” I think this statement sums up the way we should be thinking when we are planning our media center website. The website should meet the needs of the students, teachers and the community.
Unfortunately, when I have been scanning some school’s media center websites I have found that many websites have not been updated in a couple of years. To me, these websites are useless. If the media specialist does not care enough to update their own site then why would someone even bother to look at the website. Other websites disasters are: 1) websites that are wordy 2) websites that hard to read because of fonts and/or colors 3) some websites contained pictures that have not been compressed or files that were too large and the sites would not open 4) many contain links that do not work.
The perfect website on the high school level would contain 1) information about the media center including policies and procedures 2) equipment available (to students, teachers, & community members) 3) OPAC 4) databases 5) pathfinders 6)media center events 7)Wikis 8) Book talks 9) video clips –students love images 10) widgets (Apple has tons of free downloads)
Another point made by Warlick is that people do not come to the internet to read. A website must be snippets of information or links to additional information. People are typically just scanning for information. In order for a website to be useful it must catch the readers attention.
Warwick, D. (2005). Library media programs in a web-wise world. Knowledge Quest. January /February 2006 retrieved from http://staging.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/aaslpubsandjournals/kqweb/kqarchives/v33/warlick.pdf
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
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I too have been visiting school media center websites over the course of my time in this program. Most of the time I am looking for contact information, but I am generally unimpressed with the sites, and often times contact information is not included. Like you said, some are hard to navigate, some have too much information but not what you are looking for, and many have links that do not work. One I visited had music that started over with every link which got to be very annoying. One site I visited about a year ago and was very impressed with at the time, so as part of this assignment I looked at it again tonight. It hasn't changed since last year and it felt like an overbearing ad for one of the media specialists! I think information about the media specialists is ok, but short and sweet is enough, and contact information should be included. I would also like to see a suggestion box included, as well as hours of operation and possibly some sort of schedule of events. I also liked your idea to include book talks. I think adding new books to the site is a good promotion for the media center, but even better would be for students to hear abotu these books. I observed a 9th grade orientation where the media specialist included brief book talks. Her point in this was to encourage students to read by helping them find something they loved.
ReplyDeleteI agree! Nothing irritates me more than running across websites that are not frequently updated or constantly “under construction”. I feel that not frequently updating your website or having it constantly under construction comes across as blatant disregard for your patrons on the behalf of the media specialist. That said, I have to add a statement of defense for some of these media specialists. Many media center website are hosted and managed through the schools website. In these situations, updating or changing the media center website is a cumbersome and time consuming process that usually requires the assistance of an outside technology company and often costs money. In my opinion, this another good reason that media specialist may want to consider utilizing a wiki or blog that gives them proprietary control of content and updating.
ReplyDeleteAnother good point that you made is the fact that the media center website should meet the needs of the students, teachers and the community. The patrons that the media center website caters to are many and diverse. Each of them has a different reason or motive for accessing the website. The media specialist must take each patrons motive into consideration and try to accommodate their needs. I feel that my high school’s media center website does a great job of accomplishing that task. Check it out:
http://www.wheelerlibrary.com/index.html
My favorite feature of our website is the patron specific tabs at the top of the website’s home page. If you click on the Research & Citation tab, you will realize that this page is designed specifically for the students and parents that may be assisting them. The Adavanced Sources page is designed for magnet and honor students as well as teachers that may be providing them instruction. The Teachers Edition tab is specifically designed to put all of the resources that a teacher may have to access on a daily basis in one place.
When I was looking for samples of Web sites to model our project after, I could not tell you how many pages I found from the 2008-2009 school year. I had to laugh to myself because I'm thinking that by the time the site is updated, it may quite possibly be 2010-11. What's the point in having a Web page if the information is no longer current or even valid.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the ideal site should not have tons of stuff to read. Even though I know I am quite wordy, I am trying to make a conscious effort to keep things short and sweet (except when it's my week to blog since they are different) so that the interest level might remain peaked. Visual appeal is a must.
Unfortunately it is true that many media center webpages go without updates for months and even years. Other websites are too wordy, hard to read, or contain so much information it is difficult to find what you are looking for. I like that you gave tips on what a media center web page should include such as media center policies and procedures, equipment available, OPAC, databases, etc. I will be updating my media center webpage soon and will use your information as a guide.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, not all school systems have OPAC available on a website for the community. OPAC is only available in school or media center computers. In my county, only half of the schools have this online, and the other schools will get phased into the online Destiny due to budget issues.
I was amazed when I took over our media center and found that our webpage had not been updated in at least a year. While I try to keep a check on it weekly making sure links are working appropriately, it tends to get pushed to once a month. But at least that is more than what it had been.
ReplyDeleteI too have found many media center web pages with links that did not work and out-of-date information. The media center web page at my school has also suffered from this in the past. I came into the media center about a year ago and have tried getting it back into shape over the past few months, but it is still a long way from where it needs to be. The biggest problem that I have encountered is that at my school, the media specialist is also the web master and is expected to keep all of the school’s web site up-to-date. This can be a daunting task. I feel that sometimes I am just keeping my head above the water when it comes to keeping the entire web site up and because of the lack of time; the media center web page has suffered. I have gotten a lot of good ideas from our readings and also from reading the different blogs. Hopefully, I can pull it all together soon.
ReplyDeleteI agree, there's nothing more frustrating than a school or any other web-site that is out of date or contains links which don't work. That tells me that the administrator doesn't care or is no longer employed there. The bottom line is, if the info. is out of date, no one must care and it makes the school or institution look bad to the outside world. If you can't keep your web-page up to date, it's best to just not have one at all in my opinion.
ReplyDelete