Library Homepage Design at Medium-Sized Institutions

Abstract

This study sought to describe and analyze the home pages of academic library Web sites at 313 mediumsized bachelor's and master's general institutions. The authors evaluated an unprecedented number of library home pages for the presence of 118 design elements and reported common and uncommon design practices at these libraries. They found 21 elements present on at least half of the home pages studied.Seven of these occurred on at least 80 percent of the pages studied: links to the university home page, library hours, images, portals by subject or links to subject guides, links to interlibrary loan services,

Factors Impacting Library Visibility on Academic Institution Home Pages

“…Users were able to find what they wanted in less time with fewer eye fixations and more accuracy using the vertical menus (p. 468). In their study of library home page design, Jones & Thorpe (2014) caution that interactive links (by which they mean drop-down menus) render differently on mobile devices and should be tested before many of them are added to the library website.…”

A Design Analysis of Indiana Public Library Homepages

“…These evaluations reflected studies performed for both public and academic library populations (Powers 2011;Jones and Thorpe 2014). Website evaluations may take a variety of forms, including usability testing, surveys, and analysis of web analytics data.…”