I am truly fascinated when I view a media centers webpage. I personally enjoy the different options for research, upcoming events, teachers pages, homework helpers and links to various educational websites. I enjoyed viewing the required URL's for this assignment. I find that I can always locate something different or unique on every website. My pet peeves for ANY website personal or professional is a broken link, inappropriate graphics and too much content. I prefer not to have to read a book in order to navigate the site. Sadly, I have found this often and I am sure it can be very frustrating to a parent or visitor who accesses the website for the first time. We want to try to hold their attention for at least 30 seconds.
On the other hand, the webpage does not and more than likely can not begin to feature all of the information that is offered within the four walls of a media center. Our reading indicated that many media specialists are not given full permission to access their webpage in order to update and organize the material. I noticed that Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia has two fulltime media specialists and a media clerk to assist them. This webpage in my opinion is great, but again, it offers too much content (personal opinion). My first reaction was WOW, then lets get down to reading. It seems that they have made a great attempt at providing very detailed information about the programs in the media center. I prefer to draw the visitor to the media center to explore and ask questions. I am not stating that either approach is right or wrong, just a matter of preference. This option works for them.
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Since beginning this program, media center webpages have been quite intriguing to me. Over the past 12 months, I have observed a wide variety of content and target audiences. My exploration has led me to fully endorse web pages while simultaneously hoping media center webpage content can at some point be made uniform and significantly more substantive.
Cursory glances of most webpages reveals basics: school name, media specialists,and mission statements. Depending on the degree to which media specialists care, have administrative rights, and rich programs some web pages are far more robust than others. For example as an Atlanta Public Schools teacher, I have noticed many Clayton County and DeKalb County Schools websites have rich content and a plethora information useful to students, faculty, parents and community. Conversely however, many APS schools have hours of operation, links to other areas of the school website and some Accelerated Reader content.
As we move forward in our media specialists careers and as our profession continues evolving, my hope is consistency is achieved on a district and state level. Further, I am hopeful an interlibrary loan policy can be established across districts so long as policies are established and adhered to from a state perspective.
Media center web pages are useful, can often provide relevant information, and work to enhance the benefits of library media programs. Without them, many programs are virtually nonexistent or obsolete.
I agree with your pet peeve. I absolutely hate to be following links and find the one that sounds like it really is what I want and it doesn't work. It does take time to monitor websites, but that is part of the job. If we are designing something that links us to other sites, we have to have a method of making sure the links still work. One of my student helpers goes through the website every couple of weeks to make sure everything is still working.
I also agree with your assessment of the Creekview website. I had to really look around it to find stuff. I think they could have had bullet links that opened up in new pages instead of having everything on the front page.
I didn't even think about the amount of information being overwhelming, but you are so right! I hate to have to read forever to get the information that I'm looking for. I want to get in and get out! You're right about media specialists' not having full permission to access thier webpages. That is certainly the case in my county. In fact, we don't really have any creative freedom because we were given a template to use and everyone's is the same. Our tech specialist takes care of the website. Great post.
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