Technology Connections. School Library Websites during Shelter in Place

by Ida Mae Craddock and Heather Moorefield-Lang, September 2020

As we move into fall 2020, when libraries may be without the usual bustle and crowd; the school library website will be the way students can access services and interact with their librarians. The virtual library is quite suddenly more important than it has ever been.

As you consider your Web presence, take some time to look at your current site. Define goals. Do you hope for a more human connection through the site? More comprehensive offerings? Most importantly, what do your students need? A usability checklist can help align your website with your goals (Chow et al. 2014).

Accessibility

Please consider becoming Section 508 compliant (https://www.section508.gov/create/software-websites). Many school systems have an ADA compliance officer and this is an ideal person to help make the library website accessible to all children.

Image descriptions

Provide descriptive text for images, links, and buttons to allow screen readers to access your features. When posting videos, use a captioning service (https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/accessibility.html).

Keyboard accessibility

Consider keyboard navigation. This allows students who cannot use a mouse or touch screen to navigate using the arrows on the keyboard (Taylor 2020).

Fonts

No one likes to squint. While experts disagree on the best fonts for online media, Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, and Georgia were all developed for online formats ("Fonts" 2013). A 2013 Spanish study found that, "Sans serif, monospaced, and roman font styles significantly improved the reading performance over serif, proportional, and italic fonts" (Rello 2016).

Color Contrast

Consider the colors you are using. Color blindness is yet another reason to skip in-graphic text. Here is a web tool that allows you to check your site: https://www.toptal.com/designers/colorfilter/.

Content

Patrons need to have a reason to visit your website. Keeping content current and exciting will keep them coming back for updates. Look for ways to engage patrons by putting the good stuff at the top so that it's readily available and visible. A web page has only 25-35 seconds to convince the user it is useful (Wodehouse 2017) and nothing is quite so frustrating as having to dig for the most popular database or to place a hold.

Making your website a place where students can have playful interactions may help increase traffic. Quizzes, voting, games, and a place to share stories, reviews, art, or photographs may help your website feel less like a reference and more like a platform.

Consider adding an "ask the librarian" button, a web chat, and/or a link to your online office hours to your contact information. Definitely include your picture. Contacting a stranger to ask for help is intimidating in the best of times.

Sending out a digital magazine that drives traffic to your website will necessarily increase patron familiarity with your programming (See for example this one from the Arlington Public Library https://library.arlingtonva.us/2020/04/03/quaranzine-issue-1).

Reflective Practice

Last, it is important to take a look at your web traffic often. It will provide invaluable feedback about what is working and what is not. Every school community is different. Consider user and non-user surveys, soliciting input regularly. As we weed and purchase to keep our physical collections vibrant, so too should we use all the information available to keep our increasingly important online presence vibrant and vital.

While it was and is a new challenge not to be able to prop the doors open, put on the coffee pot, and welcome the crowds as we usually do, there are things we can do to welcome our students virtually. This begins by making our websites as welcoming and helpful as we are.

Works Cited

Chow, A. S., Bridges, M., and Commander, P. "The Website Design and Usability of US Academic and Public Libraries." Reference & User Services Quarterly 53, no. 3 (2014): 253–265. https://doi.org/10.5860/rusq.53n3.253

Rello, Luz, and Baeza-Yates, Ricardo. "The Effect of Font Type on Screen Readability by People with Dyslexia." ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing 8, no. 4 (2016): 1-33.

Taylor, Kelley. R. "Road to Accessibility." School Library Journal 66, no 4 (2020): 46–48.

"Fonts" WebAIM (September 2013). https://webaim.org/techniques/fonts/

Wodehouse, Carey. "How Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Helps to Guide Better UI Design." Upwork, Business 2 Community (June 5, 2017). https://www.business2community.com/brandviews/upwork/human-computer-interaction-hci-helps-guide-better-ui-design-01856347