The Open University Library in your pocket

The Open University library is working to support mobile learners through provision of mobile access to information management skills tutorials, the library website, and the library helpdesk. In 2007, we joined hands with the Athabasca University library team to develop the first mobile-friendly version of our library website. Since then, we have been actively researching and developing around other mobile library services, and more recently have consulted users to identify their requirements and what services they–d prefer to access through mobile phones. Recommendations from this user consultation (and from other sources, including regular users' feedback and by tracking user behavior through Google Analytics) include revamping the mobile version of the Library website to offer only the most used services on the home page, implementing SMS (Short Messaging Service) such as loan reminders or library reference service, and developing a consolidated search to offer results from various sources including the library catalogue and e-journals collection

Vol. 5, issue 1

Reserve Study Rooms Online “User Friendly” Library Website Honored by ACRL Check Out the Library’s Mobile Website! Library Innovations: New ILS Forget your ………………. Borrow One! For A Limited Time Only! Check Out HELIN Database Trials Bryant Celebrates 150 Years! The Buildings of Bryant’s Beginnings Spot light on our awesome Student Worker, Adrian Simpson! Krupp Library Staff’s Bill Doughty earns MLI

News From the School

New website launched; Thurgood Marshall library portal; New students\u27 reception

Ministry Resource Center: Access Through A Database-driven Website

The new Ministry Resource Center (MRC) of Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary is a premiere collection of practical resources for all aspects of congregational ministry. To help MRC patrons locate appropriate resources, the College and Seminary s Hekman Library has created a website that combines information from manually created static webpages and bibliographic data imported from the Library s online catalog. The result is one website that gathers together, and provides access to, the entire MRC collection

UNH Library IMLS PLACE Grant News Announcement

UNH Library Website News announcement about the IMLS Grant for PLACE, November 7, 2014

Entrepreneurship resources in US public libraries: website analysis

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the entrepreneurship resources patrons can discover and/or access on the web pages of the largest 46 US public libraries to assess the strength of public libraries’ current support to their entrepreneur-patrons, and where, and by what means, public libraries may wish to expand, or further promote, their support. Design/methodology/approach – The author completed a website analysis of the largest 46 US public libraries, as defined by the criteria in the ALA publication The Nation’s Largest Public Libraries. Website analysis was completed via a standardized checklist assessment of each library website. Findings – Public libraries often have print and electronic resources, meeting spaces and programming that could be of use to entrepreneur-patrons, but these resources are sometimes difficult to discover on library websites. Libraries have strong partnering relationships with other government and nonprofit organizations, but they may wish to expand these partnerships further. Practical implications – Public libraries in the US often have multiple support services to offer entrepreneur-patrons. However, if libraries would like to reach entrepreneur-patrons beyond their walls, as well as within them, they may wish to consider further refining the resources both accessible via their website and promoted on it. Originality/value – While there are research articles exploring how both academic and public libraries support entrepreneur-patrons, as yet, there has been no in-depth research into how public libraries support their entrepreneur-patrons through not only their in-library offerings but also the materials highlighted and/ or available via their website. This research addresses this gap in the literature.Publisher does not allow open access until after publicatio

@Egan Newsletter

New Library Catalog Coming!; New Bookshelf; RefWorks; Staff Profile: Beatrice Franklin; Changes to the Egan Website; Coming Jan 1st: Capital City Libraries’ New Catalog

What Are We Doing with the Website: Transition, Templates, and User Experience in One Special Collections Library

[Excerpt] At the Eberly Family Special Collections Library (SCL), we have found that our website is often the first place a researcher will look to learn about our repository. Our online web presence is a business card, our chance to make a positive first impression. While our library, among others, has devoted time and resources to the development of new access tools and discovery layers, we have learned that our online presence also needs updates, revisions, and improvements. New tools and access points are valuable, but we can also improve existing tools even as we look forward to new developments in access and discovery. Through conscious efforts to include end users’ feedback in our website design decisions, we create more effective online tools. Our website is a crucial component of our efforts to direct users to our collections, and to publicize our services and programs. In this same vein, our end users can contribute to this design partnership through dedicated user experience testing. The SCL experimented with collaborative decision-making with its website committee, as well as with user experience testing in order to support our requests for additional web development work from the Libraries’ Information Technology department (I-Tech). Through this process, our library gained a more holistic understanding of the needs of online special collections and archives users; we also learned how to communicate more effectively between the department who worked with end users (SCL) and the department performing the actual web development work (I-Tech). While development work was limited to working within the mandatory web template, our user experience testing and the efforts of our internal website committee resulted in a better online experience for our stakeholders, based on the feedback we received from usability testing. Although our website is always a work in progress, we feel that we were able to develop practical ways to adjust to a website migration within in a dispersed and hierarchical information technology environment