Wednesday 26 October 2011

NSW.net eResources Seminar 2011

Yesterday I spoke at the above named conference. It was a good day with some interesting reports about how public libraries are dealing with the challenges of everything electronic - eBooks, databases, discovery layers and federated search tools.

My presentation was titled, 'Creating Great Content for Library Websites'. It dealt with the fact that most content on library sites is created and maintained by librarians who don't have any professional experience in the web design or development, and that often it shows.

A show of hands in the room confirmed my suspicion - while about 80% of people had responsibility for creating and maintaining web content, not a single person was dedicated solely to web duties. All had other duties and no one had any formal web design or development qualifications.

Despite these stats it was pointed out a number of times by different speakers the importance of having a professional web presence when it comes to increasing usage of our resources.

As I pointed out in my presentation, fortunately it's not that hard to create good content if you focus on what your audience wants and needs from your slides.  Anyway, here are my slides.