Wordle is kind of interesting so this might be something to play around with later.   Wordle lets you jazz up the tags with colors but since they aren’t clickable I’m not sure what the point is.   Rapid City’s tag cloud demonstrates one other thing that bothers me and that is tags want to be a single word.  if you have a phrase like reader’s advisory it wants to run the words together: readersadvisory.   If you have a lot of these it can be hard to read.  They seem to get around the issue by using the underscore a lot.

You can see how Live Oak Public Library is using tags for navigation.   At least one of their branches: Oglethorpe Mall is a tag they use.  Instead of doing it this way I have each library listed as a subcategory in the sidebar so when you click the name of the library all the articles appear on one page.

Tags are something given to a post while posts are assigned to a category.   The category already exists before (usually) you write the post and tags are created after you write the post.   Of course, one can create more categories but in general most people think categories should be few in number.  Tags can be many.   Many being 75 per post.   It is possible that the more tags you create the easier it is for someone to find your content.  Creating a lot of categories however, usually results in overcategorization.  You find a lot of people in forums talk about “de-cluttering” their blog because of something called category clutter.

Examples of how tags can be used

Some examples of popular web services that make good use of tags are Flickr, and De.licio.us.  If you visit our Flickr (photosharing site) page you’ll notice that we have tagged our photos.  Flickr is built around tagging.  By assigning tags to your photos it makes it easier for people to find them.  Not only this, it also makes it easier for you to find other related photos.  The photo of our Reading to Rover program has four  tags: therapy, dogs, library, and readingtorover.  You can search for it on our photostream by typing in any of these tags.  Additionally, you can also click a tag and find all related photos posted on FLickr which other people tagged readingtorover.  

One popular method of displaying tags on a site is the tag cloud.   Tag clouds are simply visual depictions of tags created by users.  The tags in a cloud are all hyperlinked and assigned weights.  Weights would be the number of times the tag was used.   Tags used more often are gven more weight and this is either represented by the tagbeing a larger font-size or it could be bolder.

Ann Arbor District Library uses a tag cloud for items appearing in their catalog.  These are items which were tagged by their patrons.   Because the font-size of items in their tag cloud is proportional to how many times the word was tagged it is easy to see cut through the clutter of information.   For example, just by looking at Ann Arbors tag cloud you can tell very quickly that users are tagging the Science Fiction books a lot more than say books on travel.  For the users its a way to discover new books to read which have been suggested by other patrons.

There are many ways tags are used.  For example, tags are used in social bookmarking sites such as De.licio.us.   Here people tag their favorite bookmarks and share them with others.  There are other social bookmarking sites out there such as  Furl,  and Scuttle.   Some public libraries such as Thunder Bay have used this idea to share their list of reference links.  

To sum up, the basic idea behind “tagging” your content is that it gives people a way to quickly find similiar information.  You can not only see all the different tags people use to describe their content it also allows you to find similiar items marked with the same tags.

What did you just learn?

• Categories are planned
• Tags are spontaneous

• Categories help classify content
• Tags help you share the content

• Relations between categories are more hierarchical (tree like)
• Relations between tags are more network like

• Categories provide an structure for your blog
• Tags can be internal or external (shared)

Really the difference between the two just comes down to how you use them.  Typically, category systems are structured and you choose categories with idea in mind to have as little overlap as possible.

Our blog’s layout is designed using categories which determine how our “post content” is presented.  That is, the two basic types of content we have on the blog are “post content” (blog posts) and “page content”.  Page content is all the static information that doesn’t change much (ie., genealogy page, literacy page, outreach, etc…).   When you create a post you’ll need to assign it to a category.  At the same time, you will also have the opportunity to assign your post a tag, or you can give it several tags.  In fact, you can go crazy with tagging since you are allowed to give each post up to 75 tags!  

So what are categories and tags?  A lot of people confuse the two.  Let’s delve into this topic by discussing categories.

What are categories?

At some point in school do you remember learning about the animal kingdom?  This is a taxomnomy created by zoologists to group together ”like life forms”.  The taxonomy organizes all life so that organisms conveniently fall into different categories.  The fact that this is a “predefined system” helps since anytime you encounter a four legged creature with hoofs and a mane you could fit the animal into the proper classification:  – “Animals -> Vertebrates -> Mammals -> Horses”.    Each of the terms is a category and they fall into a strict structure.

In order to provide a structure for our post content, and make it easier for our visitors to “discover content” (navigate) our site we can categorize our posts.  Categories house all of our sites information (post content).  They give you information about the post, and they group together similar posts about a topic.  Just like the zoologist’s taxonomy does.  They are also “predefined”.  You write a post and it falls into a category, just like the horse falls into it’s taxonomy.   Categories determine how information is presented on the blog.    

But what do you mean by how information is presented?

Right now our blog has 19 categories.  There are 7 major ones we use.  When you visit the main page you are presented with: adult programs, children’s programs, genealogy, literacy, reader’s corner.  The other 2 major categories are: headline and featured.

If you look at the post Authors of Mystery and Horror you will notice it is located at the top of the page under the category Headline.

Why?  That is because the post was assigned to this category (by me).  The post National Day of the Cowboy is located in the Featured section of the page because is was assigned to the category featured.

You are allowed to assign multiple categories to a post.  So, for example both posts were also assigned the category children’s programs.  If you click the childrens programs link in the “Browse Categories bar” you’ll see these two posts will be listed together along with all the other posts assigned to this category.  Did you follow that?   On the main page they are located in two separate places (1) headline and (2) featured.   But, in another part of the site “children’s programs” they are grouped together.

This is an important concept.  Posts can “live” in multiple places on the site.  Assigning them a category of headline will cause the post to appear on the front page in the Headline section where it will live until a newer article is published.   After that, it will only be located with the other childrens programs articles. 

What you just learned

• Pages are not assigned categories.
• Pages are static.
• Posts are assigned categories.
• Categories determine the presentation of content on the blog.
• Categories are predefined.
• Posts can have multiple categories.
• Some areas of the webpage are assigned to certain categories
• Where the post shows up on the page depends upon the category you assign the post

Next I’ll talk about tags, the difference between the two and put all of this together.  Thanks for reading!

Posts

Posts are the principle element (content) of the blog.  In fact, without posts you would not have a blog.  Posts are temporary.  They are just like journal entries published within the blog.  Blogs display posts in reverse chronological order (i.e. the last post added appears first).  A post will always be added to the main page of the blog.   Another feature of posts is that they can be categorized while pages cannot.

Pages

A page holds content which exists outside the chronological order.   They are permanent.  When you create a page, a link to that page is added to the navigation section of the website.  Pages typically hold information which would not be expected to change so much (i.e., contact information, or information about the blog).  A page is viewed when a navigation link is clicked on the blog.   It is not viewed in search results, categories, or archives.  Pages also do not appear on the blogs feed.  Like posts, pages can be commented upon, but unlike posts they cannot be categorized.

I still don’t understand

If you aren’t following this don’t worry.  If you’ve never blogged before it would be difficult to understand the distinctions until you post something yourself.   Here is a short video which explains the topic: Creating Content in WordPress: Posts and Pages.   WordPress also provides a nice treatment of the topic in their Codex.

Drop Down Menu

 
After you make a selection the page will open and the sub menus disappear.  You will be able to tell which page you are on because each page has it’s own page heading.   Above the page header are breadcrumb links which show the path you took to arrive at the page.  Below the links is the page header.

Genealogy Page Header

In terms of websites we are also required to make them accessible to all people in accordance with section 508 standards. If you are interested in reading more I would suggest you take a look at Jim Thatcher’s site which provides a really nice overview and tutorial on how to ensure your site is accessible.

I just found Minow’s article which is dated but does remind me of the need to add descriptive text to all the alt tags.  WC3 provides a great list of evaluation tools.   I began by running the AccessKeys color tool to check the contrast between color brightness between text and background colors.   I thought we would pass 100% since the theme is black and white but the test showed that we need to change the light blue color we’re using for the heading tags.    I’ll be using this tool again.

Why do we need to change it?

Back in August, I attended a program on web redesign.  One of the comments Darin Givens made which reasonated with me, was his belief that when he started designing his library’s website that he would someday get to the stage where he was finally finished.  Like him, I too once held this same belief.  But, as it turns out what he realized instead was that redesigning a website is an ongoing process.  Because technology never stops changing one will never be done.   You just have to try and keep pace with new developments.

Right now the buzz is all about Web 2.0 and we need to be taking advantage of all that it has to offer. There are a lot of great features that we can’t currently offer to our patrons. One of these being syndicated content, which is number 5 on Hynchcliffe’s Ten Ways to Take Advantage of Web 2.0.

[excerpt]…”users on the Web, particularly the early adopters and influential users, are using browsers less and less, and information aggregators like RSS feed readers more and more. Advice: Make sure your web site offers its content up as feeds or Web services. If you don’t offer, you will be an island unto yourself “

IMHO our new site also really needs to invite user participtation and we need to incorporate some interactive features. To give some examples, this means letting our patrons forward posts to friends, receive RSS feeds from the library about upcoming events, allow users to post comments about books they checked out, and possibly adding MEEBO so people can chat with a librarian.

For the library staff, the big change would be to allow multiple staff members to post content to our site. Karen Coombs, explains in her article Building a Library Web Site on the Pillars of Web 2.0 the goal at her library was to decentralize control of their site so that staff could update content. I’d like to do the same thing here.  The details of this we would still need to work out.  This is an interesting article and I’d encourage you to take a look at it.

This blog is here to better communicate with all of you about the design plus give you a chance for input in the process before we go live. So, if you want to learn more about how the project is developing and offer your feedback, suggestions and general comments then you are in the right place!.

I’ve posted an online survey which I hope everyone will take some time to complete. I’ll also be posting documentation on the blog as I go, so you can peruse that also if you are so inclined. Please take some time and give an opinion, comment, or suggestion… Thanks for reading!