AADL Website is a Winner
Launched on July 1, 2005, the new aadl.org has been selected by the American Library Association as the best library website in the nation for libraries with budgets of $6,000,000.00+. Skidmore Studio located in Royal Oak, MI worked with seven members of the AADL staff for five months in 2005 to determine the site goals, conduct usability studies with the public, determine a new site logo, and to develop simple administrative tools for maintenance. We wanted our site to be functional for all levels of computer proficiency, and we wanted to use interactive tools to facilitate communication with our customers.
We got what we wanted and so, apparently, did our public:
| Feb 05 | Feb 06 | % Change | |
| Stat Visits | 77277 | 108601 | +40% |
| Unique Visitors | 28206 | 33518 | +18% |
| Ave. Visits per Visitor | 2.74 | 3.24 | +18% |
| Average Visits per Day | 2760 | 3878 | +40% |
| Pages Per Visit | 5.6 | 17.7 | +216% |
| Registered Users | unknown | 22272 | (over 50% of patrons) |
My thanks to staff members Amy Cantu, Chuck Yates, Terry Soave, Jenny Hoffman, John Blyberg, Eva Davis, and Eli Neiburger for their great work in the development stages and to the Information, Access and Systems staff for everything that has come after.
Comments
This shouldn't surprise me. I visit the site nearly every day and I stopped thinking about how to get around months ago, which is a sign of a really great design. Great work. You deserve the award.
Mark
Congratulations! Your web site is definitely a winner--easy to navigate, appealing, informative, and readable in terms of content and style. In addition to all these qualities, I would like to commend you for creating a truly interactive site. Thank you for providing non library card holders like myself the opportunity to communicate with you.
Elba Barzelatto
Assistant Director
Princeton Public Library, NJ
Thank you, Mark. Your comments along the way were a great help to us.
Elba, you are more than welcome and thank you.
Well, this site could have been made with any basic CMS. Also, you can't browser by some materials (ex. music scores), and a lot of content was changed/removed since the last website. I haven't seen the 24/7 internet contact program on here in a long time. Perhaps it was hidden somewhere? I tried contact us but didn't see a very good link or anything that would lead me to it. The double menu is confusing; most menus are rather constant. A collasable menu would be a good change and an example can be found at "http://dynamicdrive.com/". However, overall, this website has improved a lot. It seems more organized and advanced but could definitely inprove.
Kelt, We are always interested in improving, and appreciate the feedback.
Could you make it easier to log in and then go directly to the catalog? I am new and had a convulted time trying to reach Search the Catalog.
Approximately how much has the new web site cost to date?
I love having my request list online. So easy to manage! It's the main reason I am such a frequent user. Thank you.
My only wish is to be able to change the status of my holds without library personnel involvement. Of course, it wouldn't be fair to be able to move myself in front of other users who have requested materials, but it seems like it would be reasonable to be able to move myself backwards in line.
For example, if I knew I was going out of town, or knew that I already had on hand more materials that I could read, listen to, or view, I would love to be able to kick myself back a few notches, and let other users go in front of me, without losing my place totally.
I am sorry that you had difficulty with the search feature. After you log in, click the catalog button and that will take you directly to the search function. If you continue to have difficulty, submit a description of the problem through our online form at the Contact Us page and we will help you figure it out.
We paid 30K to the design firm and then 3 staff developers worked over a period of 3 months on the website and another month on the first revision in November. The software is open source so there was no cost to that.
The catalog is separate although it appears integral to the site, which is one of the major successes of the site. ILS systems and associated costs, are expensive, and ours cost 500K. We do not expect to migrate to a new ILS system for years. We used our last one for 13 years!
Many on staff, including me, work on the site everyday. It is considered part of the cost of doing business and is covered in several budget categories.