Better Together Blog

Here are some tips from Linda Demmers to help you think through good navigation and wayfinding design ideas for your library. The photos are from recently constructed public library facilities in California.

Wayfinding is so much more than signs on the walls. Good design provides navigational clues, in addition to graphics, signage, and maps, which begin at the user’s arrival. While signage is typically added at the end of a project, wayfinding, or site logic, should be addressed collaboratively in the earliest planning stages. Extensive signage systems cannot overcome a site that is not logical. A good building should be easy to use!

Tools that are available to help users find their way through unfamiliar environments and that can mold user behavior within the environment include lighting, floor materials, color, color-coding, finish materials, and ceiling treatment. Floor treatment can be used to distinguish public from staff areas, to create a path to a special area, to define a queuing area, or to define a specific space without walls or signage.

Establish consistency in the location of customer service centers that combine site maps, copy and print facilities, self-service centers, and in-house telephones.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of a number of interactive features at the Toronto Public Library's outstanding Youth Information Portal, Ramp, is called Express Yourself, where teens are encouraged to submit their art by email for online display or submit stories, poems, rants, reviews or other writing for the library's Young Voices Magazine.

Besides homework help, games and surveys, Brooklyn Public Library's KidZone offers access to the Brooklyn Expedition, a joint project of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Public Library where kids can learn about Brooklyn's history, take a tour of its neighborhoods, and find out about authors, illustrators and artists. In the TeenZone be sure to check out My Own Biz that gets teens thinking about starting a business. For Seniors, check out the Internet Tutorial.

Another exciting interactive online feature is from the ImaginOn, a collaborative venture of the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) and the Children's Theatre of Charlotte is Story Lab Online where kids can play games online and submit their ideas for the StoryJar. PLCMC's web site "family" consists of 15 sites that support its mission to provide direct access to resources, information and services.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Public Library (NYPL) has presented an outstanding variety of webcasts in 2005. Look at the following links to jumpstart your thinking about ways you might use webcasting to reach out and provide additional learning experiences for those who cannot be present at public programs held in your library.

The NYPL Archive includes:
Small Business How-to Video Seminars
SCORE: Essentials for Starting and Growing Your Own Business
Good Business Practices for Entrepreneurs
Retail Essentials: How to Open and Run a Successful Retail Store
A Quick Guide to Building a Successful Export Business

An Evening with Hal Prince
American theatrical producer and director, Hal Prince in conversation with Foster Hirsch, author of Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre.

Free Speech Zone: Authors Read From Banned Books
Authors Judy Blume, Deborah Hautzig, Robert Lipsyte, Walter Dean Myers, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Peter Sís, and Rita Williams-Garcia read from their challenged books. Also a multi-media art installation by Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese was on display at the time of the program. A PDF is available to provide more background on the exhibit.

Destroying the Color Line with John Hope Franklin and President Bill Clinton
John Hope Franklin's upcoming autobiography, Mirror to America, recounts not only the story of his life but also the epic story of the twentieth-century fight for civil rights. In 1997 he was appointed by President Clinton to chair the President's Initiative on Race. On October 27, 2005, they discussed race in America and how to "destroy the color line that continues to divide our country."

The Battle Over Books: Authors & Publishers Take on the Google Print Library Project
NYPL and WIRED Magazine presented a provocative discussion about the competing interests and issues raised by the Google Print Library Project, and whether a universal digital repository of our collective knowledge is in our future.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Better Together Conference Photo Gallery is now online.

This new feature of the Better Together Conference website is designed to provide ideas for the four conference collaborative project areas:

• interactive navigation and wayfinding techniques in physical facilities
• interactive displays/booths for use at community events/fairs
• interactive elements to enhance existing websites/portals
• production of public programs using webcasting

The first album in the Gallery showcases an interactive display designed for the Better Together Conference exhibit booth at the November 2005 California Library Association Conference.

The Cerritos Library and the Pacific Asia Museum, one of the Better Together Conference partners, collaborated on the design of the booth's backdrop. The museum provided images from the Nature of the Beast online educational and interactive exploration of the way artists of Edo-period Japan depicted animals and the natural world.

The Library provided selected items from its Art of the Book: The Book as Art special collection and designed an interactive visitor experience that resulted in the making of a new book for the collection.

Booth visitors were invited to add pages to the new book. Each page represents a visitor's wish for changing libraries.

Detailed information about the creation the Art of the Book: The Book as Art visitor experience will be provided at the Better Together Conference.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 02:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)