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About This Site

CSU Libraries Website: Design, processes and applications

Purposes and Target Users of This Document

  1. Help new or infrequent users understand and use the site.
  2. Help users give feedback about the site.
  3. Help designers of other library sites to plan and design their own sites and give feedback about the site.
  4. Help Libraries Web authors understand the design of the site so they can create pages consistent with the design.
  5. Help the Web Team reflect on the Libraries site design and the site design process in order to improve both.

Site Design Process

Purposes and Goals

  1. Support the mission and goals of CSU Libraries
  2. Inform users about the depth and breadth of available library information, resources and services.
  3. Provide access for users to online information, resources and services.
  4. Assist and instruct users to be aware of, request, find, select and use library resources.
  5. Motivate users to use and learn about the Libraries.
  6. Create and conform to standards in coding, style and accessibility (Libraries, CSU, W3C, WAI, ADA).
  7. Improve efficiency of Web development and maintenance.

Target Users

  1. CSU students, instructors, researchers, staff and administration
  2. Prospective students, general public, donors, researchers and librarians from other institutions
  3. CSU Libraries staff (users of Staff Intranet and other internal pages)

Web Design Staff

  1. About 60 Libraries staff are Web authors who create and edit Libraries Web pages.
  2. About 15 technical staff design Web applications and maintain Web servers.
  3. A Libraries Web Team has existed since about 1998.
  4. Currently there are about 15 Web Team members who represent Libraries departments and units.
  5. The Web Team was led by Web Librarians in 1998 and 2004 and a Web Coordinator since 2005.
  6. A Web redesign group was formed to redesign the site in 2006.

Resources

  1. Web Authoring Information for Libraries Staff contains policies, procedures, guidelines, tools and resources for CSU Libraries Web authors.
  2. Web Design Tips contains technical information and links about Web design and coding that the general public can access.

History of CSU Libraries Web Site and online services

  1. CSU Libraries has had a Web presence since about 1995.
  2. The CSU Libraries Web site underwent major redesigns in 1999, 2002 and 2006, and minor redesigns in 2003 and 2005.
  3. The Libraries Web site started as a collection of static pages by reference librarians.
  4. Many services have been converted from paper, CD-ROM, or local network access to Internet-based services.

Site Design

Statistics for CSU Libraries main Web server (Spring 2007)

  1. About 3500 static HTML pages and 20,000 other files are available for public and staff use.
  2. About 80% of visits come from within CSU.
  3. About 75% of visits come from outside Morgan Library.
  4. About 97% of site users use Windows; about 2.5% use Macintosh.
  5. Browsers used by at least 1% of users include Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox and Safari.
  6. Only about 1% of site users have 800x600 or less screen resolution.
  7. Only about 1% of site users use a slow (dial-up) connection speed.
  8. Most frequently used Web pages include home, collections (Library Catalog, Research Databases, Electronic Journals, Archives), Services (Electronic Reserve, InterLibrary Loan, Access Services) and navigation pages (including main navigation tabs, My Accounts, Web search and A to Z).

Visual Design

  1. Colors
    1. CSU colors are green and gold. The header has a dark green background. Main menu and footer have a lighter green background.
    2. Page body is black text on white background for maximum contrast.
    3. Tabs and their corresponding submenus are color-coded with pastel colors to visually group related pages.
  2. Fonts
    1. The Libraries main font, Verdana, is used in all text-based headings, navigation menus, and body text.
    2. CSU requires use of Swiss 721 or Minion for graphical font headings such as the CSU Libraries logo.
    3. Text size is large enough for easy reading even on small monitors with high resolution.
  3. Links
    1. Link colors are green (unvisited), gold (visited), and black (hover).
    2. Link underlines are light green (unvisited/visited) and black (hover).
    3. Links to the current page are highlighted (bold and black with a colored background that matches the selected tab).
  4. Graphics
    1. Images should be identifiable, attractive, and accurately represent the Libraries.
    2. Images should use appropriate pixel and file size, file format, cropping and quality.
  5. Page layout
    1. Pages are 780 pixels wide to match other CSU pages and prevent horizontal scrolling on 800x600 screens, yet avoid extremely wide paragraphs when maximized on large monitors.
    2. Libraries headers and footers are as small as possible.
    3. Main navigation is always in the header for ease of maintenance and to leave space for content.

Navigation Design

  1. Header:
    1. The Libraries logo and CSU logo help identify pages and link back to Libraries home and CSU home.
    2. The main menu contains 6 tabs that link to main category pages (Home, Collections, Find, Services, About Us and Help).
    3. Submenus keep the most important related links in each category visible.
    4. A to Z links to an alphabetical index of important Libraries pages.
    5. Site Map links to a page of all major categories and subcategories of pages.
    6. Search links to a page that allows search of the Libraries site, subsites and applications.
    7. My Accounts links to a page of possible user accounts on Libraries servers.
  2. Footer:
    1. Breadcrumbs link to the folders above the current file in the hierarchy (tree) of pages for orientation and navigation. All breadcrumbs start with CSU > Libraries.
    2. File URL and Modified date help users find online versions of printed pages and help Libraries staff with page maintenance.
    3. Content links allow users to contact the author of any page.
    4. Required CSU links help users navigate and understand CSU policies.
  3. Submenus
    1. A left submenu is for navigation within a section or subsite.
    2. A floating right navigation box is for a table of contents or related links.
    3. A top navigation bar is occasionally used for a brief table of contents or a few subsite links.
  4. File and folder structure
    1. File extensions for Web pages include .html, .htm, .zhtml and .php.
    2. File and folder names are generally lowercase, without spaces.
    3. Top-level folders are used for main categories, departments and services.

Content Design

  1. Categorization: Categories were chosen based on those used by other academic library sites, the available content and usage statistics.
  2. Terminology: Many users are unfamiliar with library terms and have difficulty learning them. Library Lingo is a dictionary of terms used at CSU Libraries. Pages are being edited to use simpler terminology.
  3. Labeling: Link labels are being edited to be more concise, descriptive and consistent.
  4. User tasks: Rather than just providing a list of tools and resources, the Libraries site provides links to common tasks, such as finding resources and contacting us.

Operating System and Web Server

  1. The CSU Libraries Web site uses the RedHat Enterprise Linux operating system.
  2. The Web site uses the Apache Web server.

Coding

  1. XHTML 1.0 transitional is the version of HTML code used for most pages.
  2. CSS is used to format the visual presentation of documents, including colors, fonts, page layout and print views.
  3. SSIs are used for including standard elements on pages (headers, footers, stylesheets and scripts).
  4. JavaScript is used for submenus, breadcrumbs, animation and other client-side dynamic page features.
  5. Perl and PHP are used for custom forms, dynamic pages and Web-based database access.
  6. MySQL is the database used for most Web applications.

Software

  1. Dreamweaver and FrontPage are used to create and edit the code of most pages.
  2. Photoshop is generally used to edit images.
  3. Flash is used to create animations, tutorials and some custom menus.

Web applications

  1. Google Mini,Google Co-op Search, Google Syndicated Search and Google Site Search provide search of the Libraries public pages.
  2. Google Mini and mnoGoSearch provide search of the Staff Intranet.
  3. FormHandler.cgi provides Web-based forms such as public comments forms and staff request forms.
  4. LimeSurvey (formerly PHPSurveyor) and Survey Monkey are used for Web-based surveys.
  5. MediaWiki is used for the CSU Libraries public wiki and staff wiki.
  6. MovableType is used for CSU Libraries blogs.
  7. Page2RSS is used for creating RSS news feeds of many pages.
  8. Meebo is used by some College Liaisons librarians for Web-based instant messaging.
  9. Google Language Tools is used for automatic language translation of many pages.
  10. Conduit powers the CSU Libraries toolbar, and other related search plugins and browser tools are available.
  11. WebTrends, AWStats, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and custom scripts like the Web pages list are used to gather usage and file statistics.
  12. Elsop LinkScan is used for detecting broken links in Web pages.
  13. A CMS may replace static Web pages within a year or two.

External Web applications servers

  1. The CSU library catalog, Sage, runs on WebPac Pro, a part of Millenium software by Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (III).
  2. Research Databases is a locally-developed application that lists and describes CSU-accessible databases containing journal articles and more.
  3. MetaLib by ExLibris is used for searching multiple databases for articles.
  4. SFX by ExLibris is used for finding journals and viewing full-text articles.
  5. DigiTool by ExLibris is used for the digital repository, which includes collections of items such as CSU theses, dissertations, research papers, publications, and digital collections.
  6. CONTENTdm by DiMeMa (now part of OCLC) is currently used for the CSU Libraries Digital Collections.
  7. ILLiad by OCLC is used for requesting materials through Interlibrary Loan and Local Document Delivery.
  8. RAPID is locally-developed software for Interlibrary Loan.
  9. ER is locally-developed software used for electronic reserve.