Applying the Fundamentals of Librarianship to Technology:
Designing and Maintaining Your Library's Web Site

Eric A. Cooper

Introduction

Fundamental skills are a part of every profession. Without them, more complicated skills cannot be developed and maintained. Librarianship is no exception. Over the years, librarians have relied on access, organization and public relations to provide information. By emphasizing these fundamental skills, we have developed a specialized profession and established ourselves as leader in the information field. Today, our skills, usefulness and leadership are being challenged with the onslaught of Internet and other electronic information resources. Many feel that librarians will soon be replaced by those with a higher degree of technological training.

The following article attempts to provide a bridge by which librarians, through the design of library Web sites, can extend their fundamental skills to the field of technology. By emphasizing convenient access, organization and publicity when creating and maintaining Web sites, librarians can enhance the usefulness of technological resources and highlight the need for the fundamental skills of librarianship.

Identify Your Primary Audience and Their Information Needs

The first step in creating a World Wide Web site is to identify your primary audience. Knowing who will be looking at your pages will provide you with more insight as to what type of information should be included. For librarians, the most obvious audience includes faculty, students and other librarians. However, depending on the library, the primary audience may vary. For example, a public library home page will most likely be visited by a wide range of people, including young adults, college students and parents who have Internet access. On the other hand, a law library home page will be primarily viewed by law faculty, law students, attorneys and other law librarians. The groups that make up your library's patron base will most likely be the most frequent visitors to your Web site. However, Web site visitors will only be those who have Internet access and knowledge. Therefore, if one or two patron groups are likely to have more access to a Web browser and knowledge of how to use it, those groups will be the most likely to visit your site and should be considered as a primary audience.

Knowing your primary audience will help you provide information that is important and otherwise unavailable. Having access to and familiarity with a Web browser does not mean a group will automatically look at your Web site. They must perceive some benefit before they will choose your site over another. Visitors to your Web pages will return only if your site provides information relevant to their needs and not more readily available elsewhere. This does not mean that the information must be exclusive to your site. In fact, most information will be available in other places. In many instances, the form in which the information is presented is the true measure of a Web page's utility. For example, many legal Web sites provide links to the opinions of all 13 federal circuit courts within one file. This makes it easy for someone looking for recent federal opinions to look at each circuit. These full-text opinions are otherwise available in print or via online databases. However, Web sites that contain links to all federal circuits on one Web page are useful and popular because they save time over the print volumes and money over the online databases. In essence, combining information, or links to information, in ways not previously done can add value to the information and, consequently, your Web site.

Once you clearly understand which groups constitute your primary audience and what type of information will benefit them most, you must ensure that they can easily access your Web site. Remember, there

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will often be alternative sources for the information you include. Therefore, the more trouble people have accessing your site, the less likely they are to patronize it. The next three sections discuss strategies for providing easy access.

Provide Easy Access to Your Web Site

1. Make the Uniform Resource Locator of your page easy to type and remember.

Phone numbers are often selected so that targeted groups can easily remember what number to dial. For example, many 1-800 numbers will be followed by a word directly related to the service provided by the company. In the same manner, the location of particular World Wide Web files are more easily remembered if their address (Uniform Resource Locator) is directly related to the subject or content of the file. In addition to keeping the address relevant, keep it short. A shorter series of numbers or letters is easier to recall than a longer series.

Once again, knowing what is relevant is dependent upon your primary audience. If the audience is a highly specialized group, then more specific terms, or even professional jargon, may be appropriate, whereas a Web page designed for a wide-ranging audience should have an address consisting of general terms. When you have identified the groups for which you want to provide information, the information those groups desire, and the easiest URL for those groups to remember, you will be ready to create the Web file contents.

2. Create Web pages that are viewable by your target audience.

The age of technology has brought rapid improvements in both computer hardware and software. What was recently top of the line may be outdated or obsolete today. This problem is often difficult to avoid. Therefore, when you reach the point where you are ready to insert HTML code and image files, you should consider which software is best for you and your primary audience.

First, find out if there is a Web browser that most members of your primary audience use. Try to create the contents of your files based on the capacities of this browser. Web browsers will often read HTML codes differently and some will not read certain image files at all. For example, current versions of HTML include tags for creating marquees. However, only certain browser versions will recognize the marquee code. If your audience primarily uses a browser that will not read certain HTML codes, then try to use a code version that will allow each member of your primary audience to gain access to all file contents. Also, be aware of how different browsers will treat image files. Individuals using an older version of Mosaic will not

be able to view JPEG image files, while individuals using Netscape will. Even with newer versions of these browsers, JPEG and GIF files, though viewable, may appear at different places on your Web page. Netscape specific codes are another example of how different software can bring different results. If your audience uses a Netscape version older than 2.0 or Mosaic and you include a frame tag in the file, the audience will not be able to view the frame, because this tag is only recognized by Netscape version 2.0 and above.

As more people gain Internet access, it is hoped that software considerations will fade. For the present, however, those starting a Web site should remember that everyone is not using the same Web browser or version and that the choice of browser can affect what is viewable. When you ascertain which browser your audience generally uses, consult with your computer support personnel regarding which image files and code version to place in your Web files.

3. Keep files short and images to a minimum to insure fast loading.

Have you ever placed a call and been put on hold for what seems like a long time? Waiting for a Web page that loads slowly can be just as trying on an individual's patience. There are several reasons why a Web page may load slowly. The first, distance, is difficult to control. If your audience, or a portion thereof, is thousands of miles away from your server, they will probably wait longer for your page to load than someone on your network or just a few hundred miles away. However, the second and third reasons, file length and images, are much easier to control.

If a page takes more than 15 seconds to load, many people become impatient. Web pages often load slowly because the file is too large or contains too many images. If your page is taking too long to load, split the file into multiple files or remove some images, whichever is appropriate for that file. This will allow your page to load more rapidly and will ensure that your audience has convenient access. If splitting the file and removing images both seem inappropriate, you should consider creating graphical indexes.

Images that are slowing a file's load-time can often be replaced by a graphical index known as an image map. An image map is one large image consisting of several smaller images. It allows users to select particular images on the map and go directly to various points within that or other HTML files. In addition to serving as an indexing mechanism, image maps, being one large image, will load faster than multiple smaller images. Image maps will preserve the appearance of your page while improving its access time.

Thus far, I have underscored the importance of knowing your audience, their information needs and

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how to give them the easiest access to your file contents. I will now focus on the presentation of these contents. That is, how can the contents of your files make movement within those files easier for your audience? Many Web pages are easily accessible, but not easily interpreted. The following sections will suggest ways in which you can provide clear Web pages that are easy to move within and between.

Effectively Present Web File Contents

1. Emphasize different categories of your page by using headings, lists, breaks, paragraphs, and hard rules.

Human beings are very fond of categorizing their information. Our newspapers have sections devoted specifically to sports, business, leisure, etc. At home, we categorize bills, receipts, cards, etc. so that we will know where to find them in the future. Information contained within a Web file needs the same level of categorization for clarity. Even those highly experienced with the Web need clear and organized pages. To create this type of page, choose your categories early and be mindful of five HTML tags.

The first two tags are headings and lists. Text coded with these HTML tags will draw the viewer's attention. Headings will change the size of text and place it into boldface. HTML allows six levels of headings, with number one being the largest and six the smallest. Generally, heading one is reserved for the page title, while your main and sub-categories are coded with the number two and three headings respectively. This process continues with headings becoming smaller as the breadth of the category becomes smaller. In this way, the sections or categories of your Web pages are immediately emphasized to your audience. Items within categories or subcategories can often be presented in the form of a list using the HTML ordered or unordered list tag. These tags will place listed terms or phrases one above the other with either a number or a symbol immediately preceding them. Providing lists for your audience to view will allow them to quickly see and understand what information is available on your Web pages.

The third and fourth HTML codes are the break and paragraph tags. These, much like the heading and list tags, will help draw the viewer's attention to the various categories on your page. However, unlike heading and list, which draw attention by emphasizing text, break and paragraph, draw attention by providing textless space. Text following a break tag will appear on the next line down leaving the remainder of the first line blank. The paragraph tag performs the same function as a break, except that paragraph tags insert one additional blank line onto the page. Strategic placement of textless lines will often emphasize the text on the following line, particularly if that text is part of a

heading or list. The final tag, which emphasizes information categories, is the hard rule. This tag will impress a straight line, thin line on your page and separate particular sections or types of text. For example, hard rules can be placed above and below each category heading to further emphasize those categories, or they may serve to separate the title and closing sections of your page from the body.

At this point, your page contains distinct sections or categories your audience can readily see. However, a sub-category heading or list item that says History may not indicate, by itself, to which nation's history, historical period or documents you are referring. To ensure your audience can quickly ascertain what specific information your page provides, the page must contain short explanatory notes.

2. Provide brief, clear and informative statements regarding the contents of your page.

It is frustrating to follow hypertext links from a Web page only to find that the referenced pages do not contain information you hoped for or expected. This is particularly true when the disappointing page(s) are slow to load. By inserting brief statements into your files that explain what information a hypertext link will provide, you can ensure your target audience does not experience this frustration.

As I explained earlier, the longer the file, the longer it will take to load. You should stay aware of load-time when inserting explanatory statements. Keep them short: Preferably no more than one line of the page. In addition to loading quickly, your pages will remain non-congested and easy-to-understand. By this time, you will know what information is relevant to your primary audience. Try to go one step further and pinpoint the materials they will be most interested in accessing. Name these materials where appropriate in your explanatory statements. Doing this will quickly inform your audience that the materials they are most interested in are available through your site. For example, if your audience consists of economics faculty and students interested in the current month's Producer Price Index, you should mention the PPI in an explanatory statement located immediately after or under a hypertext link for Economic Reports. The explanation may read as follows: Contains this month's Producer Price Index and Federal Reserve Chairperson's comments to Congress. This statement is brief, clear and immediately informs your audience that they can access these documents through your site. However, saying a document is accessible through your Web site does not imply ownership. The next section examines the pros and cons of housing full-text documents on your server.

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3. Provide a mixture of original documents and documents located at other Web sites

Many Web pages provide lists of hypertext links to remote files. As I stated previously, new combinations of hypertext links can add value to the information. However, relying solely or primarily on documents located on other servers can be dangerous.

Other servers can produce a variety of problems for you and your audience. Servers crash, experience too much traffic and change addresses. Many are located far from you and your audience. Any of these situations can cause your audience frustration when trying to access the documents you offer. If the server containing the document has crashed or changed addresses, your audience will receive a "File Not Found" or "DNS Entry Not Found" error. If there are too many concurrent users on the distant server and/or it is far away, your audience will have to wait longer to access the file and may still receive an error message. Unfortunately, placing a hypertext link on a page implies to your audience that they will access a particular document or type of document by following that link. If they follow the hypertext link but experience problems accessing the document, they will often perceive your page as problematic.

To avoid these frustrations and misunderstandings, try to provide as much original material as possible on your pages. Original material refers to full-text, hypertext documents located on your server. The more material you own, the less you will have to rely on other servers. Of course, this is easier said than done. To house material on your server, it must first be typed, scanned or copied and then converted into hypertext format. Staffing, time and intellectual property laws will restrict your ability to procure documents for your own server. However, this is not a problem. Having too many full-text documents on your server could create too much user traffic because individuals will access your server for longer periods of time. This will make it more difficult for other audience members to access your site and, in essence, create the access problem you are trying to avoid. You should strive to provide a mixture of hypertext links to documents owned by others and full-text documents located on your server. Providing this mixture will give your pages more credibility while decreasing the frustration resulting from too much reliance on other Web sites.

Now that you have provided easy access to your pages, organized their contents and provided hypertext links to documents, you are ready to insert administrative links. These links provide communication mechanisms and allow your audience to quickly move to other pages on your server.

4. Provide mechanisms for communicating with your audience and moving them between your Web pages.

When individuals read a book, they often have questions, such as when it was written, how to contact the author, whether new editions are forthcoming, or where other similar books are located. These questions will not disappear when your audience views your web pages and you need to provide mechanisms by which they can be answered. Administrative hypertext links provide these answers.

The first two administrative links to consider are "mailto:" and "disclaimer." These links should be placed, at a minimum, on your main or home page. The "mailto:" link allows your audience to send comments and suggestions to you via electronic mail. This can be very important in the beginning stages of Web construction when you attempt to pinpoint which materials are most relevant for your audience. Receiving comments and suggestions can also alert you to viewer problems accessing local or remote files. In addition to the "mailto:" link, your home page should contain a hypertext link to a statement of "disclaimer." This statement should serve as notice that your institution does not necessarily agree with the views expressed within any documents contained on your server or directly linked within your files. Linking to a "disclaimer" should offer you some legal protections and decrease the amount of opinionated e-mail you receive.

Your home page is appropriate for the "mailto:" and "disclaimer" links as it is the page from which all your other files emanate. To increase access to your home page, provide hypertext links to it from your other pages. This will be particularly beneficial as you increase the number of pages maintained at your Web site. The more pages you offer, the more likely individuals will access subpages instead of your home page. Consistently providing your audience a quick way home will help them browse all your pages without becoming lost or confused. Links back to your home page also will increase access to your "mailto:" and "disclaimer" links.

In addition to providing hypertext links back to your home page, include links to other important pages at your site. Regardless of how thorough you have been in clarifying the organization and content of your site, the need for cross-linking your pages will increase as your site expands and becomes more visible. Even with home page links, expansion will increase the likelihood that viewers will identify the particular pages they want to access. For example, a tax attorney may access your site at the tax law page not realizing that you also maintain a pension law page. To guard against this, you should cross-link these two pages, thereby increasing access to both.

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One way to monitor the usage of your server and its particular files is by placing a counter on your home page. Counter software monitors traffic on your server and provides periodic statistical reports summarizing which files are being accessed most and by whom. Having this information will help you refine your Web pages to meet viewer needs and strategically place administrative links on high use pages. There are numerous counters with varying capabilities available for downloading on the Internet.

As you receive audience and statistical feedback, you will probably modify the contents of existing files and create new files. As changes occur, you will need to inform your audience by including "Date Last Modified" statements and "What's New" hypertext links. Each file should contain an unobtrusive but noticeable statement revealing the date on which it was last modified. This statement will serve to reassure your audience that the materials contained on a page are current and trustworthy. "Date Last Modified" statements may be more important on some Web pages than others. For example, a date statement will matter more on a page containing statutory laws than it will on a page containing 19th Century speeches. In any event, "Date Last Modified" statements will lend credibility to your Web files.

The final administrative link for improving user access to your Web file contents is the "What's New" link. As stated previously, once users become familiar with your site, they will tend to go directly to specific subfiles. Merely mixing new links into an existing list may not grab the attention of these users. To keep your audience aware of new materials, include a link to those materials at the top of your home page and other heavily used pages. This will provide greater access to new materials and allow you to promote the continued growth of your Web site.

Once the informational and administrative links are in place, you should consider the aesthetic appearance of your pages. The color of text, hypertext links and backgrounds will influence how easy your pages are to use. The following section will address the use of color on your Web pages.

5. Color coordinate background, links, visited links and text so your pages will be easy to view.

Many Web pages come fully-equipped with background colors or designs intended to enhance their appearance. Text, hypertext links and graphics are placed over these backgrounds. The combination of these elements can create Web pages that are either very pleasant to view or unpleasant to view. To save your audience frustration and eye strain, keep the background simple and distinguish it from your text and links.

You should be concerned first with the colors of non-visited and visited hypertext links. Non-visited links are those in which URL's have not been accessed, while the URL's of visited links have been accessed. You can choose link and text color by placing the Body Text, Link and VLink HTML tags in your files and manipulating their RGB values. Try to create link and text colors that stand-out from one-another and from the background. For example, dark colored text and red links will be easier to read when placed over a light background than when paired with a purple or brown background.

Two additional reasons to keep backgrounds simple are audience equipment and file load time. Individuals may be using different Web browsers to view your page. This will not matter where backgrounds are concerned because older browser versions will omit the background but leave the remainder of your file unchanged. What will matter, however, is the video display hardware that individuals use. The type of monitor and video card used can significantly affect the way colors are presented on a viewer's screen. Some monitors provide more screen resolution than others and some video cards recognize 256 colors, while others recognize only 16. A 16-color video card will provide only basic colors and will often change the appearance of a complicated and colorful background. Thus, systems with different cards installed may present colors differently and make your pages harder to read. To avoid this problem, keep your backgrounds simple with minimal design and basic colors. Staying basic will not compromise your purpose of providing information. Instead, it allows your audience to easily view that information.

Basic background design and color will also ensure that your files load quickly. Load time is often slowed by images included within a file or background. You can produce a professional looking background that does not contain several colors and images. One example is a mono-colored, textured background. Although backgrounds can improve the appearance of Web pages, fast loading easy-to-read files will provide better access and increase the likelihood that your audience will continue using your institution's Web site.

Now that you have provided easy access to and constructed all the elements of your Web site, is the task complete? Not quite. Your Web site will undergo constant modification as files are added or moved. Your audience and its individual members may change over time. This combination requires that you do more than provide "What's New" links and "Date Last Modified" statements. To truly maintain continuation and currency, you must consistently publicize your Web site to your primary audience. The final section will identify effective vehicles for publicizing your Web site.

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Effectively Publicize Your Web Site

Think back to the last library conference you attended. Remember the vendors, their booths, their products? Many library-related publications contain advertisements for vendors selling library products. Library product vendors publicize their resources in places where librarians are likely to be or look. In the same manner, you should publicize the information contained on your institution's Web site via forums to which your audience is likely to pay particular attention.

First, publicize in newsletters and electronic discussion groups where your audience will likely look. For example, if your audience consists of teachers who belong to an educational association, you should publicize the contents of your Web site in the association newsletter. If this association maintains an electronic discussion group, post a message explaining what is available at your site. You may also want to post this message to discussion groups more generally devoted to education and teaching issues. If your audience teaches in a particular area, such as history, a discussion group designed for history faculty would be appropriate. Of course, everyone's audience will not be quite as specific. This is where printed literature such as pamphlets come into play.

When your audience is more diverse, as is often the case with public libraries, you may not know of any particular newsletter or discussion group. In this case, brief, in-house pamphlets summarizing the contents of your Web site will reach the most people. For example, to publicize a public library Web site, place pamphlets in a high-traffic area of the library and have local school teachers distribute pamphlets to their classes. This will allow you to reach diverse groups that lack one common communication forum.

Another technique for publicizing your Web site to a diverse audience is to register it with one of the major Internet search engines such as Yahoo, Webcrawler or Lycos. You can register your URL's and provide brief descriptions of their contents. When individuals conduct searches using terms that match a word within one of those descriptions, they will be provided a hypertext link to your site. Although you cannot explain the contents of your site as thoroughly as with a pamphlet, registering with Internet search engines will publicize your institution's site to a large and diverse audience.

Although pamphlets and Internet search engines are often most useful when your audience is large and diverse, they can also be effective with a more specific audience. Members of a specific audience often belong to an association and gather periodically at association functions such as meetings and seminars. When convenient, these functions offer an excellent opportunity to publicize your Web site by distributing explanatory

pamphlets. When your audience is more specific, you might also consider registering your site with an area-specific Internet search engine. One example is the LawCrawler. This Internet search engine is limited to law-related Web sites. If your audience consists of individuals interested in some aspect of law, then your site will gain more publicity with a law-specific search engine. Not all fields will have their own Internet search engine.

Effectively building your Web site is an ongoing procedure that requires consistent and trustworthy audience feedback. To obtain this level of feedback, your audience must be aware of your site and the information it offers. Using the above stated methods for publicity will increase audience awareness and feedback and, in turn, allow you to maintain a more informative Web site.

Conclusion

Librarians provide access to, organize and promote awareness of information resources. Adherence to these fundamental tenets has Grafted our image as leaders in providing information. However, in this age of information technology and rumblings about a virtual library, librarians need to position themselves as leaders, not only in the information field, but also in the field of technology. A good place to concentrate this effort is with the design and maintenance of library Web sites. Through easily accessible, clearly organized and well publicized sites, librarians can extend the traditional fundamentals of librarianship to information technology and seize a leadership role in both fields. As information and technology resources increase, this dual-role will spotlight the need for librarians and strengthen the field of librarianship.

Biographical Note: Eric A. Cooper is assistant professor of Library Administration at the University of Illinois Law Library. As Reference/Electronic Services Librarian at the University of Oklahoma Law Library, Mr. Cooper helped create the Law Center's home page. Specifically, Mr. Cooper created and maintains "A Chronology of U.S. Historical Documents" (http://www.law.uoknor.edu/ushist.html) which has received awards from both the Computers in Social Science Journal (http://www.webcom.com/journal/hisdoc.html) and Education World (http://www.education-world.com/awards/past/). The author can be contacted at: Eric A. Cooper, Assistant Professor of Library Administration, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 142L Law Building, 504 East Pennsylvania Avenue, Champaign, IL 61820, (217) 244-3048, fax (217) 244-8500, e-mail eacooper@prairienet.org or ecooper@law.uiuc.edu.

*Eric A. Cooper, Assistant Professor of Library Administration, University of Illinois Law Library, Champaign.

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