As we begin work on redesigning the library website, I’d like to put in my two cents for simplifying things. This quote from Aaron Schmidt‘s recent blog post at Walking Paper, “Library Websites Should Be Smaller,” nicely sums up the argument for me:
For years, I’ve heard talk about libraries cutting the cord on irrelevant services. Yet I haven’t heard as much discussion about which sacred web cows we can put out to pasture. This might in part be owing to the perception that a 200-page website isn’t more expensive to manage than a 50-page one. While probably true in terms of hosting fees, it isn’t otherwise true. Good content takes staff time to produce and arrange, and the navigational overhead can be a time expenditure for users.
