Carrie’s LIS Weblog

Here is the link to my website! 

http://domin.dom.edu/students/fogeelle/carrielis753/page1.html

For the website assignment, I chose to make a site about library resources for college theater majors. I work at a performing arts library, and while we have lots of resources for music students, we’re still lacking in reaching out to theater students. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to get some ideas going. I started by creating the story board and thinking about what kind of information I wanted to put on each page. I decided to make the opening page state what the library can do for students, include some images, and have links for the other pages and emailing the staff. The second page would include library resources such as new books, a list of theater periodicals, and a list of musicals on VHS or DVD. I decided to have the third page include links to theater websites, Chicago area theaters, and a list of online databases.

Designing and laying out the pages turned out to be more difficult than I thought. Not because making the tags was hard—actually, by the end, that part was easy—but because I kept changing my mind. First I would think something looked good in the center, than I’d move it back to the left, than I’d move it to the center again. I also debated with factors such as font size, whether certain information looked better on the top or the bottom, etc. I rearranged the pages several times, trying different layouts until I felt satisfied. Part of this was because I wanted to minimize scrolling as much as possible. I was also trying to put myself in the patron’s shoes and wanted to make the site as visually appealing and accessible as possible.

Some tasks turned out to be fairly simple. For example, I had never made a pdf file before, but converting it took less than a minute; I was surprised at how easy it was. Other tasks, such as creating tables, proved more challenging. At first, I just couldn’t get the codes right and the tables wouldn’t show up properly. However, after trying it a few times, I finally got the hang of it and didn’t need to see the example sheets anymore. After awhile, things started to gel together and I was able to craft some decent pages.

Although it had been stressed that we shouldn’t worry if other people in the class have more web design experience, I admit that I was still concerned that my pages would look too basic compared to everyone else’s. However, I then realized how far I had come. Before this class, I had never made a website in my life and knew nothing about HTML coding. By the end of the project, I didn’t even have to look at the instruction sheets anymore; I knew the tags by heart. I began to enjoy experimenting with the pages and felt a sense of accomplishment every time I refreshed the page and saw the tags work. While I’m still not super website-savvy, I have learned so much from this project. The skills I have developed will help me in the future if I am ever asked to help create and/or update a library website.

*Note–a little added frustration today.  When it was time to put our files on the I drive, I clicked on “my computer” only to see that my I drive wasn’t there!  I had filled out all the paperwork, so I went to the IT department to see if anyone could help me find out why it wasn’t coming up.  No one was on staff though, so I came back and Michael said to ask a classmate to let me use their username and I drive.  Thankfully, Ellen was kind enough to let me use hers.  My website link has her username in it, but at least now my site is up and working!  It’s frustrating when you do all this work only to have something go wrong, but that’s just how technology is sometimes.  It reminded me to relax when these things happen and remember that there’s (almost) always an alternative solution.