Usability of Websites for Teenagers from Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox

Update: here’s an article from CNN about the new study…
This is a must read: Usability of Websites for Teenagers (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox).
From the article: “Many people think teens are technowizards who surf the Web with abandon. It’s also commonly assumed that the best way to appeal to teens is to load up on heavy, glitzy, [...]

Commenting on “books will rule over internet”

I just read this at LISNews:
“A Piece From India Says In the age of internet, books would continue to dominate the minds of readers for taking society forward. This from West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee said today. Speaking at the inauguration of 30th Kolkata Book Fair here, Bhattacharjee said the importance of books would [...]

An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design

Just saw this, and found it quite useful… it’s titled: An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design, by 37signals.
It’s a simple way to sketch out web design, in an organized way. Basically, they go through these steps:
1. List stuff that needs to go on the page
2. Figure out what’s related
3. Prioritize
4. Design each part
5. [...]

Day in the life of a web manager

Just what does a web manager do? Here’s a list of stuff I did at work today:

Checked email, Bloglines (an RSS feed reader) throughout the day.
Met with supervisor about various projects - once formally in her office, a couple more times informally around the office.
Added our new interim executive director’s name and email to our [...]

A Podcasting Librarian!

Greg at open stacks just made a podcast! How cool is that? He even succinctly explains what a podcast is:
“Don’t be afraid of the word podcast; it’s just an mp3 file, as normal as can
be. However, if you’re an iPod user or have an aggregator that downloads
enclosures automatically, you might want to grab my podcast [...]

walking paper: some problems with virtual reference

Aaron Schmidt at Walking Paper just posted some great points about Virtual Reference - go read it.
One point the Bailey-Hainer article Aaron mentions should be highlighted: marketing, marketing, marketing! I have seen libraries with dismal usage statistics… but they also claim to have not really marketed the service (even on a bookmark), have part-time hours [...]

Forwarding… Call for Speakers: Implementing Top Tech Trends for Public Libraries

Michael Stephens is organizing a track at the Internet Librarian 2005 conference. This could be a VERY COOL THING.
So take a look and send him ideas! What would YOU like to hear, if you went?

What the heck is RSS?

Aaron over at Walking Paper just posted something that I was thinking about last night. He’s quoting someone else’s post about if customers know what blogs and RSS is/are.
For my part, when I read Jenny’s post about SIRSI, I emailed it to our automation librarian. He hollered over to me “David, what the heck is [...]

KCResearch - a cool project my library is working on

My library just received some good local press in the Kansas City Star. The article describes (very briefly) a new project my IT department is invlolved in, called KCResearch.
Basically, our two Project Librarians (three year grant-funded positions) are collecting all research done about Kansas City, and storing it in a database we created. We’re also [...]

SIRSI Has RSS!

Just saw the SIRSI RSS thing that Jenny Levine posted. Very cool on first glance! I hope it ends up to be what SIRSI is claiming it will be. If so, that’ll be one awesome product.
But for me, there are some questions I’ll need to answer to become completely satisfied with the product. Mainly, because [...]

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