UT Libraries Technology Pros

I like how they feature a group of collections on the home page and then include a separate section of additional collections. It clearly shows which are of greater importance and leaves no question of where users can click to start exploring. On the con side, only some of these featured collections lead to digitized primary source materials. We need to make it clear for our users which collections are available online and which only include online finding aids.

the amount of effort required to get what Steve has on his phone built in...

I like the "Evaluating the results" section. Good ideas for involving more people in the evaluation process and making the prioritized list of improvements.

NCSU 10 Strategies for a successful library site redesign

good list of current open source link checkers

draft framework for bridging the present and past web - interlinking resources with their archival/version resources - I've been fascinated with how we might do this - glad somebody is looking at it.

really interesting use for embedded exif data

Hydra is a multi-institutional collaboration to build a common, open source framework for multi-function, multi-purpose, repository-powered applications.

I was reading for the punch line and sure this was published on April 1 and somehow resurected... but - hmm - looks legit. http://blog.archive.org/2011/06/06/why-preserve-books-the-new-physical-archive-of-the-internet-archive/

consequences of bulk download

Although purposefully-deceptive design is more likely to occur on for-profit sites, I thought this was an interesting article about the subtle ways design can hamper usability. Interestingly, Scribd.com got called out for Baiting and Switching on a grassroots wiki that documents dark patterns: http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Bait_and_Switch

I like how they simply call Summon "Summon" on the Find Articles page and give the option to search the whole library world. Other than that they don't bother the user with branding and you get the same results for a search from the tabbed search on the homepage as a search on this page.

Here they use a Summon image (with tiny illegible writing) to brand their search and a link to information and video about Summon. But do users really care? I'm not saying we should hide the search vendor branding entirely but does it make sense to feature it like this?