Cool, Slick, and Effective
Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2000
Sacramento (CA) Public Library Kids & Teens pages www.saclibrary.org/kidsteens.asp
How did the Sacramento Public Library (SPL) get such cool kids' and teens' pages on their site? According to Youth Librarian Rebecca Higgerson (rhiggerson@sacramento.lib.ca.us) it took a radical redesign.
Clean design: SPL's home page went up in April 1995, making it one of the first public libraries in the country to have a Web site. For three years the site was staff-built and supported, but in 1998, SPL hired SacWeb, a local Web designer, to redo the site, with staff input. The result was a clean design and lots of white space. While neither the kids, nor teen pages have white backgrounds (the kids' site is circus-tent-striped and the teens' site is radical black), the sense of openness remains.
Fresh links: Each page of links includes pointers to previous pages, similar to the familiar "folder system" used by Yahoo! Higgerson says that the philosophy for gathering and presenting links is to "keep it simple," so users won't be overwhelmed by a page of links a yard long. The authors' page on the kids' site (www.saclibrary.org/kids/default.asp) is an great example of effective links that are presented in a clear, "library-like" way.
Subtle graphics: The teens' home page (www.saclibrary.org/teens/default.asp) is well designed, with a subtle SPL logo beneath the sparse text; it's so stark, you almost need to study it twice. According to Higgerson, the redesign has met with community approval. "Our biggest triumph is the Web page's overall design and content," she says. "When we hear a teen or child murmur, 'tight,' when looking at our page, we know we've done our job." Higgerson adds that a Web site is a lot of work, but well worth the effort: "It's an exciting time to be a youth services librarian and we wouldn't trade our jobs for more money, notice, or influence--although we deserve it."
