Introduction

There was a time when a library website was a nice addition to existing library services. An online presence was an exciting enhancement, but most services continued to function as they had for decades. In a short time, the library website evolved into an online brochure that had images, nice layouts and lots of text about the library. This iteration of website gave way to more service-driven, utilitarian sites that more seamlessly incorporated online catalogs, subscription databases and features such as chat or texting. Today, site managers are heavily incorporating social media. Library sites are evolving into mashups of locally-created content and externally-produced content held together by social-media-driven services.

Of course, simply adding social media tools to a library website does not make the site automatically better. Social media can be an inexpensive avenue to adding a range of functionality and services to a site, but adding functionality to a dysfunctional site may actually make a website less useful. Library staff, especially library website managers, must take a deep breath and carefully consider how best to incorporate social media into standard websites.

When does a social media tool warrant an appearance on the library homepage? As redesigning library homepages requires an investment of time and staff energy, site managers want to avoid integrating social tools into pages only to see social tools fall out of use and die away. Then the library site will contain dead links that detract from active and useful services. Thus, website managers may need to consider the threshold between experimental and established. When a social media tool is firmly established within the procedures and daily life of a library or department, then that social media tool should play a more prominent position on the library’s website.

The homepage is the homepage

I started managing my library’s website almost a decade and a half ago, when the web was relatively new and many libraries were happy just to have a presence online. This was a time when some sites were still coded by hand, and the first WYSIWYG editors were growing in dominance. Our college website was entering its first cooling-off stage after its birth. At this time, the website’s molten lava, which had spewed forth a few years earlier, smoldered and consolidated into a more standardized and organized site.

When I walked through the door, I found that our library actually had a split web-personality. Within the library, all public and lab computers were set to a page generated by our integrated library system (ILS). The ILS had been online for many years, but the move to the web from dumb terminals was still relatively new. The page from the ILS was a simple one consisting of a table of links leading to the library’s catalog and subscription databases. At the same time, the college’s marketing department had set up a library landing page which was mostly text describing services and staff. This page was linked to the college’s homepage. As a result, students found one homepage while in the library and another when outside of the library.

As one may imagine, library users found this very confusing. In classes, instructional libraries taught students how to navigate both pages. At the reference desk, librarians made sure students knew about both pages just in case they were researching from home. The page created by the marketing department was difficult to edit, because all changes needed to be sent through their staff. The page created by the library’s ILS was locked behind screens and menus in the system which were difficult to access and update.

Creating a unified homepage for the library became my number one priority. After several discussions around the issues, our library established a partnership with our marketing department so that I could directly access the library page created through their designers. The administrative wranglings were less of a challenge than trying to prioritize the goals of our site. We outlined existing content, filled in missing content and identified user groups. Eventually, we worked to incorporate both library homepages together into a single site. The ILS-generated homepage became a secondary page just for research, while the marketing-generated homepage became the primary page for the library. At last, whether inside the library or at home, library users were able to access the same library site.

Over the years, our site has evolved a great deal as the technology has changed and our services have expanded. Nevertheless, the essential lesson of this initial library redesign is still relevant: the homepage is the homepage. The library’s homepage is the entry point to the entire library site. The library’s homepage establishes the site’s navigation and organization. It must connect the library’s various online instances into a coherent whole, providing an online identity and paths for users to take to access services.

As individuals and departments experiment with social media tools, managers and leaders must take care that competing homepages do not pop up. Individuals may establish their own sites and gateway pages that do not connect back to the library’s primary web presence. In some cases, this may be needed for special populations or projects, but most of the time, social media and other sites should connect back to the general library site and make some effort to identify themselves as a piece of a larger site.

Land wars

In Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger (2007) discusses visiting the prototype test store of the office goods giant Staples. The prototype store is where planners test the user experience in relation to signage, shelf organization and store floor-plan. Weinberger (2007: 5) outlines five limitations on physical space and store design:

Weinberger argues that the success of the shopper is determined by the relationship of the one thing that is needed to the many other things in the store. For most visitors to Staples, 99 percent of the items on the shelves hide the 1 percent that is useful. If a shopper enters the store in search of a printer cable, then all of the paper stock, office furniture, pens, highlighters and countless other supplies are just clutter getting in the way of the printer cables.

Weinberger’s points were made about a physical store with physical items on its shelves, but they are absolutely applicable to the design of a library homepage. The design of any webpage is essentially a challenge of bounded space. Designers can adjust screen resolutions, font sizes and image sizes, but they must work within design limits, which are similar to those defined by Weinberger above. I adapt them as follows:

Designing a library homepage is a battle over real estate. The top-left elements on a page are the most valuable, as Western eyes are trained to work from left to right and top to bottom. The further up the page a piece of content is located, the more likely it will be noticed and utilized by visitors. This is a balancing of competing needs. Designers must provide access to services, marketing of current or future services, administrative information, and information to support daily operations. Library managers and leaders should consider how the library homepage aligns with organizational goals. A visitor should be able to discern the library’s priorities just by visiting its homepage.

When library managers consider social media and the library homepage, they need to keep a close eye on organizational priorities. The staff member who wants to transform the entire homepage into a blog or who says that the library’s Facebook page could be the new library homepage may not have the right perspective on the library’s larger goals. On the other hand, social media sites that do not connect to the primary library site are also a problem. Standard sites and social media pages must come together in a way that makes sense. Users who visit the library’s standard site should be able to identify other ways to connect via social media. Library leaders should be cautious to prevent clusters of disconnected sites from popping up. This can confuse users, prevent users from discovering services, and waste staff time on maintaining multiple sites.

All library-wide social media tools should be present on the library’s homepage. Department-level tools or tools dedicated to specific user groups should be prevalent on department pages, but probably not on the library’s homepage. Of course, this decision is really up to the individual library. Some new services may need to be marketed on the library’s homepage.

Thus, defining what should be and what should not be on a library’s homepage is a land grab where limited space must be utilized wisely. There must be a process for making this decision. The site should not be the dominion of one manager who dictates the entire design of the homepage single- handedly. Input from users and staff should be at the heart of the process. The usability of the site is the ultimate goal.

Usability testing

A library homepage intermingles the following elements:

The essential test for any library homepage is whether or not a user can effectively utilize the site’s services. This is a test of usability. Jakob Nielsen (2003) has demonstrated that usability is a testable quality for websites. Many libraries do not conduct usability testing and therefore do not test the impact of social media on usability. The best way to understand the impact of social media on an existing site is to perform a test and ask users to access new and existing services.

A usability study takes sample users and asks them to perform tasks that align with the site’s goals. Testers record participant actions to identify wording, layout or design features that confuse users. If a site is truly usable, new visitors should be able to successfully navigate the site to accomplish tasks without instruction. Nielsen (2000) suggests that most usability studies need only a few users to discover the majority of usability obstacles. As few as five users are often enough, but many usability studies employ five to ten users to ensure that key obstacles are identified.

The following are the basic steps for conducting a usability study:

This process is a qualitative approach that attempts to provide fuel for creativity. As such, test administrators, moderators and recorders should capture their feelings and ideas throughout the process. Inspiration is likely to strike in the midst of data collection as staff members follow the thinking of participants. As a qualitative approach, moderators should work to build a picture of the website through participants’ eyes and be less concerned about data collection as a mechanical, objective process. Usability studies can be liberating for web designers who are seeking ways to make meaning as opposed to gathering data points.

Full-blown usability tests result in the most rigorous and systematic findings, but limited resources may not permit a full study. Staff limits or competing needs may keep a full study out of reach. If this is the case, informal tests may substitute. Any staff member can conduct an informal test simply by asking someone else to complete a task on the site and noting difficulties. This can be especially useful during information literacy classes or other library workshops. For example, one can ask students to take a few minutes and try to find an article posted on the library’s Facebook page or an item from the collection. The leader can take note where individuals hit road blocks. This approach is efficient and cost-effective while still identifying weaknesses in usability. As time permits, this informal approach could be accomplished at the reference desk as well.

In terms of social media, usability studies can be especially helpful in exploring the connection between the standard website and social media sites. Moderators can ask participants to identify Facebook, Twitter, Google +, or other social media sites. They can be asked to find training videos on YouTube or find images on Flickr. They could be asked to find a podcast from a past event held in the library or a blog post about a community issue. If users are unable to perform these tasks successfully, then the points of failure represent needed change.

Usability tests can be useful in seeing how well users can navigate a social media tool on a library site, and usability tests can also help designers see how well users navigate within a social media site. If a department decides to use a new social media tool, knowledge about how well target audiences navigate within that tool may be useful. Library designers may not be able to redesign a site like Facebook or YouTube, but they can understand where their users get stuck and provide assistance in navigating the sites.

Usability studies give site designers insight into how users approach websites. A good study should generate data that lead to change. Ideally, such data will be gathered using a strong process, but usability data can be gathered through simple observation. The underlying point is that the ways that library websites are designed and the ways that library sites connect to social media should be designed using direct input and data from users.

Integrating across the sites

One of the large questions for library site designers is the degree of inclusion for social media. Will links to social media sites be included on every page of the site? Will they appear on the library’s homepage only? Some staff members will say sites absolutely should be on every page, and others will see these links as cluttering up pages. Some library staff members would go so far as to prefer the library’s homepage be transformed into a blog so that that discussions and valuable content are the first things that a user sees when visiting the site. Many libraries have done this, so it is not just a hypothetical example. Some libraries have put “read our blog” or “follow us on Facebook” in page banners that appear on every page. Deciding what to include and what to exclude can be difficult. It is unlikely that every social media tool can be included, or banners and homepages will be jam- packed with links.

The library’s user population may provide some direction. If users are heavily active in social media, then links should have a priority, but most communities include a mix of active social media users and others who are less active. Usability testing can provide some direction as to how the inclusion or exclusion of links affects the larger goals of the site. However, usability focuses on the functionality of a site, and not what content should be included. Usability might tell you how well users can identify a link or whether the inclusion of a link prevents other links from being found, but it cannot dictate which site goals are a priority.

Managers may want to consider which social media tools reach the widest audience. If a library has a library-wide Facebook account, Twitter account or blog, then these should probably be present on the library’s homepage and also as small links in the library’s banner. Audience-specific pages such as Facebook pages for book groups should probably be included at lower levels of the library site on pages describing services to this audience. Site designers may want to find a way to highlight some of these audience-specific services on the homepage to increase their visibility, but this can be a balancing act depending on how many services exist.

As designers and managers consider how best to integrate social media across the site, they should remember that users come to sites for content and for services. They typically do not visit the site to find Facebook pages. When designers include links to social media tools, they should give visitors a reason to click. Instead of a link saying “Facebook,” it might feel better to say “Connect with us on Facebook,” “Keep up with us on Facebook” or “Follow the action on Facebook.” The tone should reflect the library’s relationship with users. Similarly, a link that says “read our blog” is about as bland and uninviting as possible. Blog links should reveal the purpose and content of the blog. Blogs are extremely flexible and content-rich. The ways that standard sites connect should reveal the blog’s exciting content, even if the link includes only the blog title. A link might read “Visit our search tips blog,” “Check out our sustainability blog,” or “Read our new book blog.” It is even better when blog posts can be incorporated into the site (see the following section on RSS feeds).

So far, this discussion on integrating social media into a site has considered linking users to social media accounts, which is probably the initial issue to consider. However, a more powerful way to connect standard sites and social media is to make library web content sharable. This is the step that helps libraries utilize the power of the social layer of the web. Imagine a local historical society that could use a single click to share a library’s webpage about an upcoming lecture across Facebook, Twitter and other sites. This is perfectly possible and quite common. Most major news sites include “recommend this” links on news stories. Libraries could make every page of their sites sharable.

One of the most popular social widgets that makes page-level sharing possible is Addthis.com This little gadget is free and fairly easy to use. It connects to over 300 social media networks and provides valuable analytic data about how content is shared. To sign up, a site administrator completes a form with information about the site and desired social networking tools. Addthis.com provides script code that can be pasted into the HTML of a webpage. Addthis.com has videos and other instructions on its site, with more detailed information on setting up the service and using its analytics. With one click, visitors will be able push content from the library site out to their networks.

Obviously, social media sites have an incentive to encourage readers to share content across their sites. When users push content, the sites benefit from the richness of discussions. Thus, many social media sites provide guidance in incorporating sharing buttons in standard sites. For instance, Facebook has a web developer site that offers instructions, code and useful approaches to incorporating Facebook buttons (see http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web/). Like Facebook, Google + has many developer tools (see, for example, the discussion on use of the + 1 button to share content at http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/).

As discussed earlier in this book, many library social media sites are under-utilized ghost towns with few followers and little interaction. One reality around social media is that most people do not comment because they try to avoid public conflict. A critical mass of users must be reached before activity takes off. Some industry leaders have said that 1500 users is the base number required to reach heavy activity. This number may vary, but it is clear that site managers must have patience and perseverance to grow their audience. Integrating standard sites with social sites is a vital step to growing this audience.

Gaining efficiency through RSS

RSS may be the simplest and most powerful tool that most people don’t know about. RSS allows for the easy sharing of content. RSS stands for “RDF site summary” or “really simple syndication” depending on who describes it, but for this discussion, the importance of RSS is in streamlining the sharing of content between platforms. RSS is a standardized form of XML, which basically means that it is a text file where information is labeled and described. Many social media tools can create RSS “feeds” to deliver a regularly updated flow of content. For instance, all blogs have an RSS feed, and when the blog gets updated, so does the RSS feed. Literally, the title, body, date and other information from the blog are added to the RSS feed. Blogs are not the only social media tools with RSS functionality. Podcasts, social bookmarking sites, wikis, social networking, microblogs and other sites all have RSS feed options.

The thing that makes RSS so useful is that the RSS file does not include design elements. Thus, content is separated from design, which is handy because that content can be imported into other sites. This is commonly known as a “mashup” between sites. The RSS feed can be used to pull articles, links, audio files and other content into webpages. Many news sites, like those of the New York Times or the BBC, have RSS feeds that allow users to pull content into other pages. Thousands of sites make RSS feeds available. Individuals can use readers such as iGoogle, Bloglines or Netvibes to view updated content from many sites all at once. Site designers can use RSS to incorporate social media into standard websites. Blog posts, tweets, podcasts and Facebook updates can be pulled into homepages. This is a great way to incorporate actual content into a site. Instead of having a link that says “read our blog,” visitors can see actual titles from blog posts or names of podcast episodes.

RSS feeds are one reason that blogs remain so powerful. RSS allows the content of the blog to flow all around the web and be reviewed by many sets of eyes. The titles of blog posts provide useful previews for the content of the blog. Five to ten titles from a blog can easily be incorporated into a homepage as a bulleted list without sacrificing valuable space. When a new blog post is published, the title of the new post will automatically appear in the homepage and the oldest will be removed.

Luckily, site designers do not need complex programming skills to manipulate RSS. There are several sites that make incorporating RSS relatively painless. Feedwind and RSSInclude are two examples where designers can sign up for free and create a box that reads RSS feeds and displays them on a site. A designer just needs to know how to cut and paste the link to the RSS feed. The services provide code that can then be pasted into a webpage.

Designers can also use RSS to send content to social media sites. Twitterfeed is an example of a service that takes an RSS feed and turns each new post into a tweet with a link back to the original source. A library’s blog RSS feed can be easily fed into a Twitter account so that community members can follow the Twitter stream and open posts that are of interest. Additionally, followers can retweet posts and reply to them. Similarly, a tool like RSS Graffiti can be used to incorporate RSS feeds into a Facebook account. RSS Graffiti is a Facebook app where multiple RSS feeds can be pulled into a Facebook page. When an RSS feed is updated, the content automatically updates on Facebook. An additional tool that may be useful for library site designers is an aggregator like Yahoo! Pipes, which can be used to pull together multiple RSS feeds into a single RSS feed. This new feed can be incorporated into social media sites so that updates from multiple blogs can be aggregated into a single account.

At the end of Chapter 4, I discussed the flexibility of blogs. Blogs remain the backbone of content distribution via social media because of the flexibility of RSS feeds. With a little setup time, a library’s blog can become the source of content across multiple social media sites. A blog can feed content into a library’s homepage, Twitter account, Facebook and other sources. Community members can connect with the library in the avenue that is most convenient for them. Posts from library social media tools will flow to users and be incorporated into their daily information consumption. For library staff members, the use of RSS can add a great deal of efficiency to social media use. Instead of having one person managing the Twitter account, another managing Facebook and another updating the library’s blog, one person can post to the blog and all of the other accounts will be updated. This is especially useful for smaller libraries where staffing may not permit one person for each social media tool. One person can update multiple social media tools with a single blog post.

Learning how to utilize RSS may seem overwhelming at first, but cheap help is available online. YouTube has many short videos that help explain the how to incorporate this into HTML sites. Videos on Twitterfeed and RSS Graffiti are also available on YouTube. The abilities to search on YouTube and copy code are the most important skills in pulling RSS into websites and social media tools. Getting feeds to function properly may take a bit of playing around and testing, but librarians with basic knowledge of web design can make RSS into an effective tool.

OPACs, subscription tools and social media

Social media tools are connecting tools. They provide a social context around content. This is a powerful idea for libraries and librarians. The online revolution has seen card catalogs transform into online public access catalogs (OPACs), paper indices transform into subscription databases, and physical formats migrate online. The next phase for library research tools is to take the online search tools and fully integrate them with the web’s social layer. This transformation is well underway.

Many integrated library systems are allowing users to incorporate functionality into social media sites. For instance, several ILS vendors are making OPAC interfaces in Facebook so that users can search collections in Facebook. Email alerts about overdue items are standard in most ILS installations. Messages in Facebook or Twitter are a logical next step. News sites such as the Huffington Post allow users to log into the site with their Facebook accounts, and it is no stretch to imagine library systems working with Facebook to make this functionality available. The incorporation of “Share on Facebook” or “Tweet this” buttons in OPAC results seems to make sense.

Book reviews, tags and comments are a regular part of online life within library information tools. The integration of a library ILS with social media will be commonplace within a very short amount of time. Connecting with subscription databases and online journals will be equally as common. These connections can enable easy sharing of library content. Social media will not be just an extra, fringe service, but a more integrated part of a library’s operations.

The death of social media pages

Social media are becoming increasingly vital in supporting library services as communication tools, information- sharing platforms, and a social layer for library research tools. Even as these tools become more prevalent, managers and leaders must remember that the social media phenomenon is still relatively new. Serious tests of business models and organizational systems will come down the road, and some social media tools are bound to die away. Additionally, library leaders may start a social media page for a library, but users may not follow. Sometimes staff energy is better used in other directions, so managers may decide to stop using a particular site. Letting a page die can be very difficult especially if there are a few active users. Abandoning users can be painful, but sometimes it might be necessary. The question for managers is how we let these sites die.

Managers should not be afraid to pull the plug if sites are not being used. Time is a precious commodity so most libraries cannot afford to waste staff time on services that are not utilized. Of course, managers should take care not to pull the plug too early, because it takes time to attract users and build an active online presence.

Ideally, when social media services are abandoned, users should be given alternatives in service. For instance, when libraries pulled the plug on MySpace pages, many of them could redirect users to Facebook or blogs as an alternative. If nothing else, users should be directed back to the library’s homepage. Once a library has made a connection with users, care should be taken to keep that connection in place. Therefore, users should be given a warning about the end of a library’s social media site as early as possible, and they should be given an explanation so that they understand the reasoning behind the decision. Some users will be particularly fond of a site, and they may be frustrated or even angry when a service is discontinued. Explanations may not eliminate all frustration, but they may help.

Importantly, social media sites that are abandoned should be locked down as much as possible. For instance, if a blog is no longer being updated, a link back to the library’s homepage should be provided and all comments should be turned off. If possible, the blog should automatically redirect users back to the library’s main site. Problems may arise from abandoned sites where visitors can still post comments. Abandoned sites will attract comment spam like circling vultures. Managers, directors and governing boards will not want a library’s name associated with adult sites, poker sites and the other usual spam suspects.

Unified voices

The library’s homepage should bring together all of the online services, tools and informational pages into a somewhat coherent system. As loosely-coupled systems, libraries require an overarching design that connects the various areas of service and the diverse ways that these areas of service may connect to segments of the community. Connecting the different voices within the organization requires vision and leadership.