Welcome to Part 2 of my two-part series introducing LibGuides CMS for use as a website. Read Part 1 (with comments from Springshare!). This companion piece was released March 27. Why LibGuides? We can design surprisingly good websites with LibGuides 2.0 CMS. WordPress and Drupal are free and open source, but Springshare, the maker of LibGuides, also delivers reliable hosting and support for two grand a year. Moreover, even folks clueless about coding can quickly learn to maintain a LibGuides-based website because (1) the interface is drop-and-drag, fill-in-the-box intuitive, and (2) many academic librarians create research guides as part of their liaison duties and are already familiar with the system. Most importantly, libraries can customize LibGuides-based websites as extensively or minimally as available talent and time permits, without sacrificing visual appeal or usability–or control of the library’s own site. LibGuides-Based Websites There are some great LibGuides-based websites out there. Springshare has compiled exemplars across various library sectors here and here. Below are screenshots showing what you can do. The Albuquerque…
Tag: web design
2008 National Forum: A Homegrown CMS
With all the commerical and open source content management systems on the market, why would a library still choose to build their own? In 2006, the University of Houston Libraries did just that. Rachel Vacek discussed their rationale and effort in Putting the Library Website in Their Hands: The Advantages and Challenges of a Homegrown Content Management System. (Note: Rachel indicated her slides will be available on rachelvacek.com, but were not there as of this writing, or I didn’t go deep enough into her site.) UHL chose to develop their own CMS primarily because they wanted a system based on their vision of what a CMS is and should do, rather than modifying someone else’s. UHL feels that the CMS should be a growing and changing system. They felt that by building their own system their staff would be able to fix problems and incorporate customer feedback more quickly. They felt that by building their…
Optimizing Library Resources for Screen Readers
LITA National Forum 2008 Presenter: Nina McHale, Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver. The speaker started her presentation by sharing her experience navigating a website with a user with visual disability. She pointed out that even though the information structure on a website makes sense for us (the visual users), it does not necessarily make sense for users with screen readers. Making your website accessible is very important because the goal of a library is providing access and not providing barriers. Accessibility matters because: 10 million people in the US are blind or visually impaired; 1.3 million people are legally blind due to age or other health issues. screen readers are used by blind users as well as people with learning and physical disabilities. writing good code is good practice and makes the web pages more accessible to all. Nina pointed out why accessibility is an issue: proliferation use of…