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.

Further Reading

Your library online

IASL - Creating a web page for your school library

Blogs or wikis as alternatives for school library media websites

by Maxine