Comments on: New San Jose Public Library Website

By: Brian Herzog

Brian Herzog — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 14:04:29 +0000

@Robert: I saw a mention of SJSU in Sarah’s post, but not knowing the history, it didn’t make much sense to me. I agree that making sure people know all the resources available to them is important.

In my library, we actually have the opposite dilemma: we’re part of a 36-library consortium, and our catalog is set to search all libraries’ holdings by default. So most of the time when a patron searches our catalog, they find books they want that we don’t have in our library. Which is fine for requesting items, but when people are in our library, their preference is definitely for things they can get right now. It’s not too much trouble to show them how to limit to our building, but it’s not intuitive.

So, just like the in the SJPL/SJSU example, there must be some happy medium between “local only” and “all available” – but I have been able to find an interface that obviously strikes that balance yet.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 06:47:09 +0000

The one thing I preferred about the old website was that it represented the merger of the SJPL and San Jose State University libraries. SJSU and SJPL share physical materials, and anyone inside the Martin Luther King, Jr. building can access SJSU-purchased databases. With the new setup, both systems have their own website and it might discourage public patrons from making use of the valuable resources the university is sharing.

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 05:10:36 +0000

Wow! That is really lovely. I loathe our website – WAAAAAAY too much going on. I can only imagine how easy it would be to show patrons how to find things with such a simple interface.

http://www.sno-isle.org/

I’m going to send this to our web people. We’re migrating to Polaris in March, and I believe there will be a major website overhaul (I hope).

Thanks for sharing!

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