Most of the talk about ALA’s new website redesign has died down, but I noticed something this week I want to comment on.
On the whole, I think the new site is a vast improvement over the old one. And with any new site, I understand they’re still shaking out the bugs, and dealing with lots of dead links.
But: for my previous post, I wanted to find information from the ALA about library activity rising in time of economic trouble. A search on Google linked to something sounding exactly like what I was looking for on the ALA site. However, the link was broken.
By searching the ALA site itself for the title displayed in the Google results, I ultimately found the article’s new location. Which is fine, but I have to say I am disappointed with the new website’s 404 page.
When the 404 “Page Not Found” page loads, the most dominate thing on the page is the search box right in the center. So of course I clicked on this to search for the page I wanted. But - surprise - it’s not a functioning search box. It’s just an image of what the search box at the top of the page looks like. Of course the text above this image tells you to use the one at the top, but who reads? I don’t - especially when a dominate image draws my attention away from the text.
So ALA, how about making the search box in the center a functioning search box, instead of just teasing us? It would add utility to the page, and make the 404 page incrementally just that much more user-friendly.
But otherwise, I think this is a pretty good 404 page, as far as they go. It customized and nice-looking, and gives some tips for finding what you’re looking for. It also includes an email address to contact a person for help, which is great. I think I only noticed this because I talked about library website 404 pages before, and gave my library a fancy-pants 404 page.
I don’t understand why it doesn’t show up all the time, but maybe that’s in the works, too.
I know I’m a couple months late to the party, but this past weekend I upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.5.1 (I upgraded the library’s blog, too, but more on that in a minute).
Upgrading SwissArmyLibrarian.net
The upgrade went fairly smoothly, and I think this website is operating normally. If you seen anything different or wrong, please let me know in the comments.
A few backend issues still need to be dealt with. For some reason, the comment admin screen is not displaying comments. If I search for them, they appear, but when I click the Show All Comments I get a “No results found” message. Odd. And, I’m having trouble with the ftp settings. Which should be fairly straight-forward, so I’ll keep trying.
Beyond these issues, I’m also still getting used to the new look and design of the admin interface. I’d heard it was very different (and not necessarily better), so I was prepared. Even with accounting for bias, I do think I like the old version better, but we’ll see.
The upgrade itself went smoothly. Wordpress makes is pretty easy, with their upgrade instructions. It really was as easy as the directions indicate, despite me making a few mistakes along the way (hurray for backups).
Upgrading ChelmsfordLibrary.org/blog
However, I must say that it was not as easy as upgrading my library’s blog. Our website is hosted at Bluehost.com, which offers many web services and programs pre-installed through Fantastico. I know Fantastico has some issue, but it sure does make upgrades like this easier. What took me a few hours to do on my own for swissarmylibrarian.net took perhaps ten minutes through Bluehost (and I didn’t see the problem with comments and ftp settings).
I don’t want make a sales pitch for them, but if a library is looking for a place to host their website, we’ve been very happy. It’s cheap (something like $7 a month), their tech support has been great, and so much software comes preinstalled that it’s easy to manage and try out new web tools without having to do all the installations yourself.
But if you are a library looking for web hosting, definitely check out LISHost.org. They specialize in hosting library websites, offer a lot of the extras, and will also help design a website.
What do you do with your weekends? I talk about Library 2.0 with other librarians. Fun, yes?
In the course of discussion this weekend, I found myself focusing on one of my favorite elements, shared content. There is much more to Library 2.0 (and Web 2.0) than this, but it’s a big part of it. By “shared content,” I mean being able to display on one website content that originated (and is hosted by) another website.
On a lot of popular websites (like YouTube), there will be links to “embed this video” or “get our widget” or whatnot, and that’s what I’m talking about. It’s an easy way to make your own website more useful and interesting, but it also opens up all kinds of possibilities. You don’t necessarily need to know anything about file formats, ftp’ing, or even HTML coding - all you need to know is how to copy/paste.
So, here’s a bit of roundup of common types of embedded content, and a few ideas for using them to supplement what you’re already offering on your website. The possibilities are really only limited by your creativity, so please share if you have ideas better than mine (and I’m sure you do).
Adding Movies and Video Clips
There’s lots of websites that can host videos, but YouTube is the most common. Whenever you view a video on YouTube, you’ll see a box titled “Embed” with some code in it. The code usually looks like this:
You don’t need to know what any of that means. You just need to copy/paste it into your own HTML page or blog post, and a happy little video will be displayed on your webpage (the video still “lives” on the YouTube server, and you’re just displaying it on your webpage), like this:
Library Tour, or a tour of historical sites around your community
A Teen Movie Making club
Staff introductions (I know, it’ll never happen…)
Training on using library resources
Fun With Photographs
Again, lots of websites do this, but flickr is one of the most popular photo hosting services (it does video now, too). Instead of storing photographs on your own server, you can upload them to your flickr account and take advantage of the other tools flickr offers.
You can embed individual images (flickr gives you a choice of sizes, and provides the code for embedding it), or you can embed a slideshow or flickr “badge.” These two are nice because after you put the code in, it can be set to automatically show your newest pictures. I use a flickr badge in navigation bar on the right, and my library also uses it to display historical photos and photos of our childrens room mural. Here’s a sample of photos I have taken and tagged “Maine:”
What’s the feed, Kenneth?
Lots of Library 2.0 tools offer on RSS feeds. These can be grabbed and displayed on your website, no matter where they come from. One simple tool that converts an RSS feed to code you can embed on your website is Feed2JS - you just give it the feed, and it gives you the code. It also gives you some control over the formatting, too, which is nice. My library uses this to embed our three most recent blog posts onto the library’s homepage - same content, different places.
Another fun set of feed tools let you mix multiple feeds into a single feed. So, if you wanted to get news from CNN, NPR and the BBC, or photos from different family members, you could combine them into a single feed and it makes keeping up easier. My favorite tools for this are FeedBlendr and FeedBurner - just enter the feeds you want to blend, and they produce a single feed for you. This can then be run through Feed2JS to embed on your website, and FeedBlendr also offers tips for using it. Ideas for using this:
Promote your library blog on other webpages
Display blog posts with certain tags on related webpages
Display community news (especially headlines from your local paper)
Promote community connections by displaying feeds from patrons’ blogs, photo streams, or other sources
Make subject guides dynamic Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website. It lets you “bookmark” websites into your account, which then can be used by you or other people. Del.icio.us lets you tag the websites as you bookmark them, which means that can be organized using your own structured vocabulary.
This is perfect for libraries that maintain online subject guides. It is much easier to add a website to del.icio.us and tag/describe it on the fly than it is to add it to a webpage by HTML. And when you do use a structured vocabulary for your tags, these new websites showing up on your library subject guides is automatic. It’s also nice that multiple computers can add bookmarks to your account, so other staff can be adding websites whenever they see them. Read more about how to use del.icio.us for library subject guides on a previous post. Ideas for using this:
Embedding fun features and communication tools
Once you start looking for them, you’ll find lots of websites offering to embed their content on your website. This is a great was to encourage interaction and involvement, but the utility of the content must be evaluated - don’t just embed things because you can. Ideas for using this:
Polls and Quizzes, to see how patrons feel about an issue or just solicit input (flexipoll.com is one option)
Online chat, to ask a librarian a question or have a discussion (MeeboMe is one option)
Games, perhaps for a game club, to illustrated an article or collection, or just for fun (everyflashgame.com is one option)
Book information, to show new additions or a special collection (LibraryThing.com is one option)
Like I said, the possibilities of this are endless. The goodwill and usefulness can be immeasurable, too, but there are a few drawbacks. First, since this content is coming from other servers, it can be unavailable at times (or worse, go away forever without warning). Also, if you’re displaying the content of other people, you can’t control what they will say or do. This is why it is important to grab feeds only from trusted sources, or embed specific videos or photos, so you’re sure of what you’re getting.
And certainly, don’t be afraid to just try something to see how it works. That’s usually the best way to learn, and the best way to show people what is possible.
For the first official Swiss Army Librarian post, I wanted to mention a few things about my new home.
I upgraded from Wordpress v2.0.1 (which is what herzogbr.net/blog ran) to v2.3.3, and a lot had changed - but happily, most of the changes were for the better. The major outward change is the new theme, but my real goal was to update my code. Now, it’s all css-based, and the only code that doesn’t validate properly is the flickr badge.
It took a lot of behind-the-scenes fiddling to make this transition happen (Chris, my thank you gift on the way). On my About page I list all the plugins I’m using, and a few other technical details. I also fully explain “why Swiss Army Librarian?,” in two parts, but I’ll just summarize here:
I’ve had a Swiss Army knife ever since college, and I use it all the time. Most people who know me couldn’t image me without it
If I had to summarize the job responsibilities of a librarian, “swiss army knife” comes pretty close. We’ve got to be ready to handle any request that comes along, and be prepared with whatever tool is needed for the job at hand
During the migration, I found I really enjoyed playing with Wordpress plugins and pages. It has gotten me excited to start seriously using Wordpress as a CMS for a full website, and not just a blog. My library is looking to update the way we manage our website, so I’m going to be pushing and pulling Wordpress to see what it can do.
Alright, that’s that. I’d appreciate hearing what people think of the new look, and if you have any tips or tricks on using Wordpress as a CMS. And now, back to the regularly scheduled postings…
The official transition day is Tuesday, Feb. 26th, 2008, so I won’t be posting anything until then. I’ll talk more about it soon, but before then, please update your feed readers to the new RSS feeds.
And stop by the new domain to take a look and let me know what you think.
Most of the talk about ALA’s new website redesign has died down, but I noticed something this week I want to comment on.
