Making Library Web Sites Usable: A LITA Guide

Citation

Parry, F. (2009), "Making Library Web Sites Usable: A LITA Guide", The Electronic Library, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 741-742. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470910979714

In the preface to this new Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) guide, the editors quote from a 2005 OCLC study which says that only around 2 per cent of students begin an essay by checking out the library catalogue. There are several reasons for this. One is that library web sites start with the disadvantage that libraries do not own all the information which they provide – their web pages point to potentially hundreds of different databases and information sources all with different, maybe confusing user interfaces. Information seeking behaviour is changing and users are more likely to use one‐stop shops such as Google Scholar than the “official” sources which the library provides. Another reason is that librarians do not always make the best web site designers and may not have the necessary skills to design, test, assess and evaluate usability testing procedures. It might seem that there is something a little Canute‐like in attempting to entice information seekers away from Google and back to the library web site as a place of first resort, but this book is certainly a good start for those who want to make sure that library users who do stray onto their library web sites are impressed with what they see.

The book has a fairly logical sequence. After the introduction, Chapters 2‐8 deal with assessment techniques, Chapters 9‐11 are on general testing and Chapters 12‐17 pretty much cover all the bases with case studies from academic, public, corporate, government and special libraries. The assessment section contains chapters on heuristics which contains the first of many references to Jakob Nielsen's work in this area, surveys and focus groups and two very useful chapters on two techniques I would never have thought about – card sorting and paper prototyping. The section on testing includes a chapter on attracting users for testing which is a logical follow‐on from those on surveys and focus groups, usability recording techniques and, lastly, a chapter on how to communicate the results of a usability test to web designers and programmers. I would argue that the final section on case studies is the most interesting in the book as the focus shifts to usability testing in practice. It was certainly interesting to read some of these case studies and then test out the sites, although not all authors gave internet addresses for their masterpieces.

Some of the chapters appear a little dated. For instance, the heuristic evaluation form in Chapter 2 refers to testing on different browsers including Netscape – a browser which effectively disappeared several years ago. Also, and more seriously, although there is a chapter on web server log analysis there is no reference at all to Google Analytics which first surfaced several years ago and which is already establishing its credentials and potential for web usability testing. The bibliography is a little more up to date however, with some useful suggestions for usability web sites.

The book is aimed mainly at beginners and, as someone who has just low‐level experience of library web site design and testing, I found this “handy hints for the uninitiated” worked quite well. It is an edited work, although that fact is not mentioned on the title page. The authors come from a variety of backgrounds – web designers, systems developers and librarians – and have a broad range of experience in libraries. They have produced an interesting read which will hopefully stimulate librarians in their quest to design better library web sites to attract the Google generation of information seekers. As Barack Obama might have said, “Can we do it? Yes we can” […] try!