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Thursday, 06 September 2012 Posted by lisa

Thomas Jefferson in 2012

By Linda Mc

Thomas Jefferson, arguing for a publicly-funded, universally accessible, education system for the United States in 1818, wrote the following about education. See if it reminds you of anything.

‘The objects of primary education:

To give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business
To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing
To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties
To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either
To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion and fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgement
And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed’

Thomas Jefferson: Report for the University of Virginia, 1818

Sounds like the Key Competencies, don’t you think?

Thinking; Using language, symbols and text;
Managing self; Relating to others; and
Participating and contributing

It incorporates much of what is taught in the Values Curriculum as well. The intention of the piece resonates pretty well with what we teach today.

What is the relation to libraries? Jefferson, by 1814, had accumulated the largest personal library in the United States, a collection which was to become the foundation of the Library of Congress.

He recognised that his books provided him with knowledge far wider than he could attain through personal experience or travel. As librarians, we facilitate access to collections - online along with the hard copies familiar to Jefferson - as well as facilitating the creative drive necessary ‘to express and preserve… ideas’.

Jefferson again:

‘I think that by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness.’

Letter to George Wythe, 1786

I wonder if he’d recognise his vision in our schools and libraries two hundred years later.

It's all in a label

by Maxine

Labels It's all in a label: About the library, About us, What we do, Who are we?

Website labelling is a key element in guiding your visitors to where they want to be. Labels are used throughout website navigation as signposts intended to help visitors locate what they need easily and quickly.

Good labels avoid confusion and jargon to create clear and unambiguous navigation as people browse and search your site. A quick Internet search reveals multiple ways in which library websites label links to their catalogue:

Online catalogue
Catalogue
Find books
Library catalogue
OPAC
Online library catalogue

It is important to consider the following points when deciding which terms to use for your website labels:

Is it meaningful to site users is it a clear description?
Is it unambiguous? be specific and say what you mean
Have you considered other terms that might be better?
Have you asked your target audience what they think?

While you are in the planning stages of your site there is an opportunity to talk to your prospective users about terms that they would use to describe particular content areas of your website. Remember that you are familiar with the content and terminology of your site but what is it that your site visitors expect and want to see?

Card sorting is one method which can assist you in establishing how visitors expect site content to be grouped, and what labels they would assign to each broad area. Open card sorts allow users to group site content cards and create their own labels. Conversely Closed card sorts provide users with site content cards and your predetermined labels for grouping them. Read more about card sorting including a description of the process on the Usability.gov website.

Depending on what type of card sort you use with a group of potential library website visitors you can then analyse the results to establish any:

Content that could fall under more than one label
Consensus in the labels they used to group content
Major differences in the terms used for labelling content groups
Possible suggested content areas that you hadn't anticipated

Another approach to creating meaningful labels for your site is to survey your audience. Mark Aaron Polger has published some research he conducted this year which examined what vocabulary students prefer on library websites.

This article includes the survey questions (as an appendix at the end) that were asked which you might find useful in your own research and planning.

All of this valuable information gathering can assist you in creating a new school library website or adding further content to an existing site. Whatever labels you eventually decide on the most important thing is to be consistent across your site and use the same terminology whenever that label appears on a menu or as a link.

The main aim is to create a site that is responsive to your target audience by including their perspective in the organisation and labelling of your site's content.

Plan your library website

The first in a new series of blog posts about school library websites.

Usability is a key contributing factor to the success of your school library's online presence.

The concept of usability focuses on the user experience when they visit your website. Before you launch your site and start creating pages, writing content, and adding images it is important to sit down and do some planning.

Planning

Consider the following questions:

Who is your target audience ?
What is the purpose of your site – the school library's virtual front door, information, interaction?
What will you call the site?
What are the main content areas you wish to include?
What activities do you want to include for site visitors e.g. making comments, contributing video reviews?

In terms of tools to assist you in your planning you need use nothing more than a pen and paper but for those who prefer to do their planning in a more visual, online way you could use a mindmapping tool such as SpiderScribe which Carrie reviewed recently. This allows you to pull pieces of information together and see what it might look like as a framework. Forward planning also assists you in seeing how your web presence might grow and the type of communication that you require e.g. formal, informal.

Consultation and Collaboration

Once you have a broad outline of your purpose and content areas it is time to think about what tool you will use to create your site a blog, wiki or website. For background reading on the differences in these tools take a look at our page on blogs and wikis.

Firstly it’s important to discuss this with your school Principal and ICT team to find out what the preferred options are and which tools are already being used by staff and students. If there is an existing school website this can provide you with a jumping off point for the library. This is also an opportunity to advocate for the library’s real estate space on the school website as an important extension of your current services for both students and the wider school community. Ensuring the school library’s online presence is easy to locate is vital!

Time is a major factor in the development and ongoing maintenance of any website so consider collaborating with other staff in your school to share the load. Utilise all members of your school library team including the librarian, TLR and your student librarians.

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