Chicago Public Library (Website Time!)

For the purposes of disclosure I will state right away that I currently work for the Chicago Public Library and so feel a bit odd about reviewing their website for this project. However, if people from within the organization are not watchful of their own content, who else will be? I strongly believe that it is our duty to make sure that we are providing our patrons with excellent and relevant content both in person and online.

The first thing we are greeted with upon opening the Chicago Public Library Kids section are two green links at the top of the page: "Search all kids events" and "Find All Kid Events." Right away I am not impressed with the graphic design of the site. The lack of consistency and punctuation editing in the links does not bode well for the rest of the site's design. This is problem number one: Good Design = Care and Care = Use. In other words, the better a website is designed, the more its creators care about it, and the better a website is taken care of, the more helpful, and thereby more used it becomes.

Fortunately, the website's design issues do not hamper its usefulness in this case, although there is still a strong argument for use issues. It was not pleasant working through the website and really disliking the way everything looked. Considering that CPL just had a major overhaul of its website a couple of years ago, I would hope that its Kid's section would be better looking. Anyway, the resources provided through the website are numerous and showcase what a great public library system can bring to a city.

The calendar feature allows patrons to search by keyword, event type, program name, and location to find programs they they might be interested in attending. The Type Search link gives the normal Author, Title, Subject search headings and the Explore link gives general categories that slowly narrow until a list of books appears on the screen that fit the searcher's interests. There are links to Popular Topics, Book Reviews, Homework Help, Teacher Resources, and Parent Resources. In fact, there are very few areas of interest that are not supported through one link or another on the front page of the Kids section. One might argue that there are too many links, but because they are organized nicely on the sides of the page, it is not too overwhelming or hard to navigate.

All in all, I can say that I am not overly embarrassed to point people to our website at CPL for Kids resources. Other than some design issues, it seems that the website is a well functioning piece of equipment that can reliably point patrons to good resources and programming.