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Do you want to improve the usability of your library website, but feel that it is too difficult, time-consuming, or expensive? In this book, you will learn that in-house usability testing on a budget is not only feasible, but it is practical, sustainable, and has the potential to lead to remarkable improvements of the content, design, and layout of your website. Usability Testing: A Practical Guide for Librarians will teach you how to: Make the case for usability testing Define your audience and their goals Select a usability testing method appropriate for your particular context Plan for an in-house usability test Conduct an effective in-house usability test Analyze usability test results and make decisions based on those results Create and implement a plan for ongoing, systematic usability testing Step-by-step instructions, along with a myriad of examples, allow you to use this book as a practical guide, and adapt the techniques for your own context. Techniques are appropriate for libraries of all types, including academic, public, and special libraries.
Library residency programs can be a great opportunity for early-career librarians to learn on-the-job-skills, determine their interests in librarianship, and develop a valuable career network. Likewise, such programs benefit the profession, the hosting organizations, and other organizational stakeholders. Developing a Residency Program: A Practical Guide for Librarians draws together scholarly literature, best practices, and the experiences of the authors and their contributors to provide practical advice about how to develop and manage a library residency program. The first two chapters of this book offer a brief overview of library residency programs and illustrate the benefits that such p...
User-friendly, cost-conscious, and filled with examples from libraries of all types, Intentional Marketing: A Practical Guide for Librarians helps you maximize the return on your marketing investment (ROMI) by showing ways to combine marketing theory with in-house data, creating a global strategy that will drive all of your library marketing. This book includes: Discussions of marketing theory and how a global approach makes marketing easier, more effective, and less expensive Step-by-step guides to help define what you are marketing, why you are marketing it, and to whom Ways to identify everyone who affects funding, and how to turn them into stakeholders Ways to increase staff and stakehol...
Specialized collections for tweens, or middle schoolers, are relatively new and becoming increasingly popular. This Practical Guide gives librarians everything they need to create such a collection. Beginning with a brief description of the early adolescent brain and developmental stages, and a history of youth and teen services in libraries, Creating a Tween Collection provides a solid foundation on which librarians can build support for such a collection. In addition, librarians will be given specific criteria for what constitutes “tween literature,” guidelines for forming parameters that will work for their community, and suggestions for using reviews and other sources in selecting ap...
Creating a Learning Commons: A Practical Guide for Librarians provides experienced and detailed research-based guidance for academic librarians and other professionals charged with creating a learning commons. Readers can follow the entire process of developing a library learning commons design and implementation plan from inception to post-occupancy planning and assessment. This practical guide is designed to help librarians develop sound strategies for navigating the challenging issues that often emerge in launching a dynamic and collaborative new library learning commons space within a university or college setting. Lampert and Meyers-Martin provide a practical guide, complete with examples and photos of award-winning learning commons designs. This book will help dedicated professionals identify best practices within today’s existing learning commons settings and get up to speed on how to best approach developing their own library’s new and innovative learning spaces.
The “first-year experience” is an emerging hot topic in academic libraries, and many librarians who work with first-year students are interested in best practices for engaging and retaining them. Professional discussion and interest groups, conferences, and vendor-sponsored awards for librarians working with first-year students are popping up left and right. A critical aspect of libraries in the first-year experience is effective information literacy instruction for first-year students. Research shows that, despite growing up in a world rife with technology and information, students entering college rarely bring with them the conceptual understandings and critical habits of thinking need...
Librarians have always been responsible for creating graphic designs but in the digital age the need for visual communication skills has multiplied significantly. The quantity of graphic design tasks has increased, so has the demand and expectation of the quality of the products that are produced. Graphic Design: A Practical Guide for Librarians gives librarians the help they need. Written by an artist and graphic design instructor the book has the tools and information librarians want and need to know to make their job easier and to give them confidence in creating professional looking designs. Valerie Colston makes graphic design easy to understand and fun to learn. The book outlines what ...
Written by two librarians with extensive publication experience, this book provides practical techniques and tools to prepare librarians to publish successfully. This book is neither a research methodology nor a ‘craft of writing’ book. Instead, its sole goal is to help librarians (and other information science professionals) start writing, identify an outlet for publication, and publish successfully. It dispels the mythos surrounding “scholarly writing” by providing practical tools and advice to help soon-to-be authors get started on the publication journey now. This book will guide aspiring authors step-by-step through the writing and publication process, from nurturing an idea to ...
Volunteers are one of the most overlooked and underused resources available to nonprofits and other organizations. This guide will help find willing volunteers in the community and utilize their skills in a way that benefits the volunteer as well as the organization. Overseeing volunteers can be a daunting task. On top of all of the other duties library staff are typically responsible for, creating a volunteer program from scratch can seem nearly impossible. The work doesn’t stop once the program is created: volunteers have to be trained and retained; job duties have to be written, assessed, and refreshed; the benefits of the program need to be documented and weighed. While “volunteer co...
Every person has the right to access information and the right to succeed, regardless of their capabilities or the challenges they face. These challenges can be even more difficult when accessing information online. Libraries often adopt new web technologies in an effort to quickly and widely promote information access and education, but they must always be aware that not all patrons are able to access those technologies in the same manner and at the same level. Making Library Websites Accessible provides practical information on web accessibility, specific to the processes and concerns of libraries. It includes the basics of web accessibility standards, laws and regulations, as well as accessibility testing templates. Features include: Real-life scenarios Checklists for accessibility testing Accessibility testing forms Guidelines for negotiations with library vendors