Building Better Web Sites: A How‐To‐Do‐It Manual for Librarians

Citation

Calvert, R. (2005), "Building Better Web Sites: A How‐To‐Do‐It Manual for Librarians", Online Information Review, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 215-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520510598075

This is a comprehensive guide to the technologies and issues associated with creating library web sites. Song states that a web site may be a library's only contact with some of its patrons, so it has to be easy to use and must present all the most important information where the casual user can find it. If the reader works through this book carefully, and uses the examples from the enclosed CD‐ROM, he or she should end up being able to create a decent web site at the end. It won't necessarily look good, but it ought to “work”.

I liked the first chapter, which emphasised the need to plan the creation of a new Web site if you want it to last. Make sure you have a good idea of who is to do what, and by when, and how much there is in the budget. The remaining early chapters are a good introduction for those of us who never bothered to learn the nuts and bolts of HTML. Chapter 2 gives simple instruction in the use of tags, headers, images, links, anchors, mailtos and lists. This chapter also deals with tables and forms, and then, perhaps surprisingly, frames, which seem to have lost some of their popularity recently. There is a useful little section here on cleaning up HTML. Chapter 3 covers harder topics in JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets, Dynamic HTML and CGI. Someone new to making web sites be carried away with this if not careful, but simple techniques such as rollovers can make a site look professional. Chapter 4 deals with web graphics, and here the differences in file formats are explained clearly. The newcomer will also discover the use of “web safe” colours. Chapter 5 covers the use of additional software such as PDF, audio and video files.

I wasn't too sure whether the book should have stopped there, but Song has gone further than the basics dealt with in other introductory books on making web sites. In Chapter 6 he has covered Java, XML, SMIL, VRML and database‐driven web sites (such as ASP and Cold Fusion). Of these advanced technologies, XML is clearly being used a great deal in electronic publishing, and ASP lies underneath many larger sites. I am still not sure how much of this should be in a book for the beginner, but there is no questioning Song's ability to present the subjects clearly. Some of the material has started to look dated, but that is bound to happen in a book on the web, and this will not affect the beginner too much. In the last chapter Song has tried looking into the future to see what lies ahead for web site creation. There is an appendix, bibliography, and useful index. Overall, I would rate this one of the better books I have read on creating web sites.