Our school library has at least three different web presences. There is the OPAC page, the Destiny homepage, there is the library page on the school website and there is a now out of date SharePoint site (this is the platform that the district has provided for all teachers to have websites and virtual classroom).
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| The Library's SharePoint site. It is not currently being maintained. |
Clearly one downside to creating a user friendly polished appealing website that is well maintained and updated, is that most TLs don't have the time or expertise to produce something of quality. Neither of those things are in abundant supply. The platforms that are available for creating simple websites, blogs and wikis and others don't seem to (at least at my hands) deliver the results that I would want. SharePoint itself has got a variety of templates including this one for libraries that has the book on it. Many, however, find it difficult to use. Some of my colleagues do not use theirs at all because it is not an intuitive system and a lot of time needs to be spent in training to develop a site. Our staff development team does have SharePoint implementation learning groups which I have joined in order to develop my class website. It is not slick or cool but it is the best I can do. They tell us that when they upgrade to SharePoint 2010 it will be much better. (forgetting that it is now 2012). The SharePoint is password protected as well so it in not accessible by the public and students have to be able to figure out how to log in remotely to use it, in some cases this represents a significant barrier to access for students.
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| The library page on the school website |
The library page on the school website is the one that may be viewed most by parents and may be a good platform for launching a better page/ site. Certainly this page has the greatest potential for increasing access to library resources. It lists hours has a link to the catalog lists library personnel (Program Administration) the Destiny homepage contains links to search tools, databases, etc. (Information Access and Delivery) as well as links to information literacy tools, tutorials and other resources (Teaching and learning) and through Destiny Quest information about new books and our collection (Supporting Books and reading). We seem to be hitting all the highlights of Joy Valenza's taxonomy for a school library website. If this is the case then perhaps a third website like the SharePoint site are unnecessary. Having many different web presences to keep track of makes life more difficult for the TL and makes it less likely that teachers and students will be able to make good use of the site. They won't know which one to look at for which purposes. Unless the same information is replicated in all places. Overkill? Waste of time? I have no idea.
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| Kelwona Secondary School Library http://kss2.sd23.bc.ca/rc/index.html |
Most of the libraries that we are being asked to examine have a website, their OPAC,a library page on the school website, a blog, a twitter feed...Like this one:I have always liked the Kelowna Secondary School webpage, they have links to the catalog, database, special reference materials, and e-books.It has neat graphics and even links to a mobile site. I have know idea how the site was written but their blog is on WordPress. Judith Comfort's site at Dr.Charles Best created using Typepad seems to be the one in our district's only sites that are publicly accessible. In particular I have admired her use of widgets. I have already stolen a few of them for my class website.
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