6 Steps to Create a Great School Library Website

6 Steps to Create a Great School Library Website - A School Library Website is the virtual version of the School Library and the School Librarian. It's also a powerful advocate for our services and materials. Follow these 6 steps to create a School Library Website that's a valuable information resource for the entire school community. #NoSweatLibraryA School Library Website is our most valuable online presence. We may have a blog, social media accounts, and resource links on proprietary services, but none of these will serve our students and our community—nor advocate for the school library—the way a School Library Website can.

Creating any website happens not with the tips of the fingers, but in the depths of the brain. It isn’t the result of fancy software, but rather of good planning. School Librarians aren’t professional Web designers, so here are 6 recommended steps to create a great School Library Website.

1. ESTABLISH AN IDENTITY & USE IT CONSISTENTLY

Viewers should know exactly who we are, and after following a link, should know that they’re still within our school library website. That doesn’t mean every page looks the same, but identifying characteristics are consistent throughout the site.

Decide on a theme to clearly convey our identity: the graphics and the color set (an eye-catching combination of colors for images, background, text, and links). School colors, the school mascot, and library-related images—books, the alphabet, numbers—are an obvious, but excellent, theme for a school library website.

Choose the main identifying image and colors for the homepage, and complementary graphics and colors for sub-pages. For example, we could have school mascot images in school colors, then use a light outline of the mascot for a background image. Or, we could have books, singly or in stacks, then use ABCs or Dewey decimal numbers as a border or background.

Sample images of Bronco school mascot as website images

Flashy graphics won’t help an inconsistently applied theme, so keep it simple and be sure that viewers see “us” on every page of the site.

2. SUPPORT THE NEEDS OF OUR USERS

School Librarians know their users and are responsive to their needs; successful school library websites are the same. Students, parents, and community members visit our site for information about the school and the library: they want to know what’s going on, how we can help them, and how they can get in touch with us.

Provide the school library phone number and all staff email addresses on the homepage, and include our School Librarian email on every page. Parents and students don’t want to click through several pages before they can send an email to us.

Our student requests and parent emails can pinpoint what information to offer on our school library site. We can also ask the school’s phone receptionist what information our community requests most often.

Instead of duplicating existing information, link to District webpages for book searches, online resources, and other district services. Web users know how to use a browser, so insert a short message under the link inviting visitors to return to our page by using the Back button. These intra-district links promote interactivity and support the entire school district. (And relieve us from having to keep them updated!)

Teachers usually have their own webpages for instructional purposes, but we can determine what students may need from the school library to support their classroom learning and provide links from our homepage to that information.

Mapping out what to provide and how to provide it will save time and effort later. All websites change over time, but we want that due to changed user needs, not because the site didn’t meet user needs in the first place.

3. CREATE USER-FRIENDLY NAVIGATION

A school library website provides quick access to information through well-planned site navigation. Our site may start small, but imagine the complexity when we have webpages for information, for instruction, for student projects, and for various programs and activities. By developing a good navigation system now, our viewers quickly get what they need, and we can easily insert new pages of content as the need arises.

Create a site map to organize information, grouped by users or topics. A site map can be a simple outline with sub-pages indented from top level pages, or it can be sets of bullet lists, or we can use a table with colorized cells to identify similar types of pages. Make it easy to add new types of pages so site navigation continues to be user-friendly.

A site map is also valuable for web viewers. It’s like the table of contents or index of a book—it shows what’s there and where. By linking each page of the site map, we provide another navigation tool for visitors.

Determine the hierarchy of the website and create page templates for each level of navigation. We might want the homepage to have very few links—10 links is the most we can expect young students to comprehend at a time. For higher grade levels, we can provide more links so students can scan the full range of available information to find a specific piece.

  • School Library Website few-to-many: For a school library homepage with few links but numerous support pages, create a unique homepage, a different unique template for 2nd-level navigation pages, and 3rd-level templates for each identified sub-group, using the same template for all a particular group's pages. #NoSweatLibrary #schoollibrary

    click to enlarge

    For a school library homepage with few links (1-6) and numerous support pages, create a unique homepage, a different unique template for 2nd-level navigation pages, and 3rd-level templates for each identified sub-group, using the same template for all a particular sub-group’s pages.
    linebreak

  • For a school library homepage with many links (10+), but fewer links off 2nd-level pages, create a unique homepage and a different unique template for each group of lower level pages. Use a unique icon on the homepage for each link to its 2nd-level page so the distinctive identity of each group is carried through all its sub-level pagesAs an example, school library pages can have books, student instructional pages can have pencils, school events pages can have yellow stars, student clubs can have notepads, parent pages can have apples.

The real test of site navigation is what happens below the homepage. Don’t expect viewers on bottom-level pages to return to the homepage and then re-click through the same intermediate pages. Use a chain of links (called breadcrumbs) in the same place on every page showing the navigation:
Homepage↔2nd level page↔3rd level page↔Current page.

4. LAY OUT PAGES FOR EASY READING

We want pages to catch viewers’ attention so be creative with page layout, but don’t confuse viewers; rather, give them the information they need. The better we do that, the more likely they’ll use our website again and again.

Analyze how text will be most readable: a busy background image would be unsuitable behind a lot of text, and don’t use a dark background and light text color on a page we expect to be printed out.

Here’s a basic rule from print: use margins and empty space for balance and symmetry. Our eyes see empty space as a block, just as we see a block of text or a block image. An eye-catching webpage uses empty space to highlight page elements and enhance readability.

The human eye encompasses about 4″ of text at a time, so text stretching from one edge of a browser window to the other is difficult to read. Blockquote margins make heavy text pages easier to read by indenting sections of text, creating a larger margin on both sides of the page.

Creative Webpage table layout example - Tables are a tool with enormous variety for webpage layout. Using merged cells in rows & columns can make unique designs. #NoSweatLibrary #schoollibraryTables offer enormous variety for page layout. We can adapt an appealing table layout from anyone’s webpage—HTML is open source. One disadvantage of tables is that navigation inside tables may not be readable by machines for the disabled, so provide text navigation at the bottom of each table page.

Size, shape and color of text areas can convey our theme, and highlight or contrast with our images. Text in bright crayon-box colors suggests children, while dark, grayed colors suggest maturity and stability. Just be sure text is easy to read.

Note: A browser displays text in fonts that are installed on the viewer’s device, so use standard fonts, such as sans-serif Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana, or the serif Times New Roman. Since serif fonts don’t display well on computer screens, use sans-serif fonts for small text.

5. CRAFT PURPOSEFUL CONTENT

Viewers come to our school library website for information, and if they don’t get what they need, flash and glitz won’t bring them back. Pack essential information into well-organized segments, and write clearly and concisely; give the what, where, when, why, who and how. Then, cut it in half: our webpages aren’t the place for flowery writing.

Web users prefer concise, 2-3 sentence sections, with topic headers, so they can scan for the information they need. Use bullet or numbered lists to focus the eye on specific points.

A question-answer format is user-friendly, so create FAQs—Frequently Asked Questions—pages. Add information that might be needed when the school is closed.

6. USE GRAPHICS WISELY

A school library website filled with images can have charm and impact, but they can overpower the viewer. Use graphics to enhance the theme and identity of the website, and bring clarity to content. There are 3 types of images we can use on webpages: GIF, PNG, and JPEG.

  • GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format) are clipart-type images. Some are animated by a string of movements which cycle continually, or cycle once and freeze on a single image.
    A single animated GIF at the top of a page punctuates a theme and adds a bit of whimsy. When the visitor scrolls down, animation scrolls off the window, so a viewer is not distracted while reading. On navigation pages with little text, we can use more animated images because the viewer spends too short a time on the page for movement to become annoying.
    linebreak
  • PNG (Portable Network Graphics) was created as a replacement for GIF and supports a wider range of colors. It’s the most widely used format on the Internet.
    linebreak
  • JPEG images (Joint Photographic Experts Group) are typically photographs, with subtle shading and blending rather than crisp lines.

Size of Images

Webpage example with Icon Links - Icons are small GIF or PNG images, about 24-32 pixels square. Visually descriptive icons can represent various links, especially if the icon is carried through to the page being linked to. #NoSweatLibrary #schoollibrary

click to enlarge

Icons are small GIF or PNG images, about 24-32 pixels square. Visually descriptive icons can represent various links, especially if the icon is carried through to the page. Intuitive icons, such as arrows, help navigation when used consistently throughout a site (but always provide text links at the bottom of a page for accessibility by the disabled).

Digital camera photographs can enhance content, but remember that school district access may be faster than that of a visitor. Photos that display quickly on our workstation may load slowly for visitors, and several on a page can take much longer than viewers want to wait. (Average wait-time is 10 seconds before clicking away.) For faster loading, use an image editor to reduce the file size and limit large photos to 1 or 2 per page.

For better page balance, we can change the viewing size of an image. A large image can easily be reduced, but maintain the aspect ratio to avoid distorting the image. Avoid enlarging small images, which causes blurring and pixelation.

Placement of Images

Where we place images on a webpage can enhance or undermine a page. A right-facing graphic looks better on the left side of a page, and a left-facing graphic looks better on the right side of a page. Use an image editor to flip an image for better orientation.

Webpages are more 3-D than printed pages. We unconsciously experience gravity, and our senses are jarred by composition that ignores it. Place weightier graphics further down the page than lighter ones or balance them with heavy text areas.

Pages are often longer than a single window, so if a webpage looks odd, try rearranging text areas, graphics, and empty space for better balance within each window.

Include ALT tags for every image

What are ALT tags? ALT stands for “alternative text” and is part of the HTML that displays an image on a webpage. Use a descriptive phrase to identify the picture, like Westside Middle School Eagle Mascot.

ALT tags serve viewers using audio screen readers or braille displays. Without ALT tags, images are shown as the word “image” so a disabled visitor doesn’t know what is displayed. When the image is a link to another webpage, a disabled visitor is at a particular disadvantage if no ALT tag is provided–they don’t know what the link is or where it will take them.

We can also use ALT tags to increase our site’s identity with search engines. For example, with a school logo at the top of the page, incorporate the school motto or some special recognition or award: “Westside Middle School—A State Recognized Mentor School where every child will succeed.”

FOR YOUR SCHOOL WEBSITE’S CONTINUED SUCCESS

Keep the school library website current. Remove dead links and outdated information. Create a discussion forum that invites users to interact with us and each other. Periodically, add a survey to invite reader feedback about the school library and about the website.

We can also embed various features and media in our webpages to make the site more attractive and useful. For some ideas, read my post An “Embedded” School Library Website.

Our school library website is our virtual library, and it’s seen by the entire world. Build it wisely and it is a valuable information source for our school community.

For more in-depth information about creating a website, visit Ms. P’s Web Design Tutorial.

line of books laying down - indicates end of blog article

Join my mailing list to get a brief email about new posts on library lessons & management . You'll also gain access to my exclusive e-List Library of FREE resources!

The School Library Environment – Guest Post by Susan Harris

The School Library Environment - Guest Post by Susan Harris - Welcome all students to visit the school library for pleasure reading, research, and study. Here's how to create a clean, inviting environment that is accessible to everyone and available when needed, so students want to come in. #NoSweatLibraryA recent edWeb contribution from Susan Harris, Librarian at Ridgeway HS in Memphis TN, was full of helpful information about the library setting, so I asked if I could publish it on my blog. Graciously she agreed. 

I am going to provide a few tips that I hope will be helpful to you. I always try to allow as much natural light in as possible, I always try to have “designated” spaces in my library, and I always try to make everything handicap accessible by leaving enough space between bookcases and tables and by not placing books on top or bottom shelves when possible.

I try to leave open shelving by my entrance so that I can create monthly book displays, and I have a bulletin board that I change monthly and use to promote literacy.

Ridgeway HS Library Halloween Display

Halloween Display click to enlarge

RHS Thanksgiving Bbd

Thanksgiving Bulletin Board

RHS Library Reading Corner

Reading Corner

When I was an elementary school librarian, I actually had a gazebo that children could sit in and read while other children checked out books. At my current library, I have a designated area for computers (like a lab setting), a “classroom” or meeting area where I have all of my tables and a mounted SmartBoard and projector, a “reading corner” and open space. There are so many furniture choices now for children and teen reading spaces if you can afford it. There is also portable furniture (tables) now so you can make your space more accessible.

I suggest that you always attempt to have sight lines when you arrange your library because you want to be able to see what all of your students are doing from where you spend most of your time. I fortunately have a monitoring program on all of my library computers so I am able to monitor the students’ computer use while I am at the circulation desk. Of course, the placement of your power outlets, wireless access points and/or Ethernet ports will determine where your technology goes.
Ridgeway HS School Library

When I was an elementary librarian I always had a colorful carpet for the students to sit on while I read aloud to them and I placed plush book characters on the shelves in the children’s area. For my high school students, I place greenery on top of the shelves and use Ficus trees and paintings for decor.

I know that some places now like to offer a cafe setting for students to encourage them to use the library but I prefer to ban food and drink from the library setting as much as possible. A maker space would be a good way to attract students of all ages if you have the funds and the space for it. I have a conference room for small group meetings for social workers, recruiters, book club meetings, PLC meetings, etc.

I strongly suggest signage to assist students with locating materials, and I suggest the use of colorful literacy-related posters. Remember to host as many literacy-related programs as possible: National Library Card Sign-Up Month, Teen Read Week, Banned Book Week, National Library Month, Read Across America, Read for the Record, Drop Everything and Read, etc.

Ridgeway HS Library Reading Interest SurveyI also do special things like trick or treat the librarian, and I have a library orientation scavenger hunt. I find that hosting annual orientation is the best way to make students aware of what you offer, your policies and your procedures. I also try to include students when ordering books by asking for recommendations from them. I have a survey on my school website for students and for teachers to complete about their interests and needs. I provide a link to the OPAC on my library website.

Many people are using social media now to strike up interest in the library. Let the children know that you are there for them. I try to go the extra mile by posting scholarship information on my website and by reading over students’ papers when they ask me to.

Providing a clean and inviting environment is one of the best ways to get them in the door. Make sure your collection is up-to-date. Offer a book swap basket where you place paperback books that can be exchanged (no strings attached) for paperbacks that students have already read and have sitting around the house.

RHS Library - a welcoming space

RHS Library – a welcoming space

Come in early, stay late, and leave the library open through all lunch periods so students know that they are welcome and you are available. Host a teacher library orientation session so you can get teachers on board with library use. Co-teach classes when possible. Many students will come to the library as their “safety zone” if they are loners or if they are trying to avoid trouble. Make everyone feel welcome.


Susan Harris, Ridgeway High School Librarian, Memphis TNSusan Harris is in her 26th year as a school librarian.  She has served as a public librarian, an elementary school librarian and a high school librarian.  Mrs. Harris graduated from Northwest Community College, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Southern Mississippi.  She holds a Master of Library and Information Science Degree.  She welcomes all students to visit the library for pleasure reading, research, and study, and is willing to stay after hours to assist students when needed.
Join my mailing list to get a brief email about new posts on library lessons & management . You'll also gain access to my exclusive e-List Library of FREE resources!