TechBits

Web writing tip: Just give them the fish

Photo credit: Penny Mathews

You've probably heard the proverb, "Give a patron a resource, and you satisfy his curiosity for today; show him how to find a resource, and you teach him to learn for a lifetime."* Be careful about applying this advice to your library's website. Sometimes you should just give the patron the resource, in the form of a direct link.

Imagine a brief article for the library's homepage about a new online resource subscription. Which version do you think will entice more patrons to try it?

1. We are pleased to offer a new resource to help answer any question you could possibly think of. Use it to find directions for any task, get a new and better job, and make the correct decision in every situation. To get started, click the "Resources" link above, then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the link that says "Magical Font of All Knowledge."
2. Would you like to find directions for any task, get a new and better job, and make the correct decision in every situation? Try Magical Font of All Knowledge, a new resource that we are pleased to offer. Magical Font of All Knowledge can help answer any question you could possibly think of. Learn more.**

Blurb A is what you should teach patrons when they visit the library and say, "I'm really interested in using Magical Font of All Knowledge. Can you remind me how to find it?"

Blurb B makes the resource easy for casual website visitors to try because the links are right there. Website visitors are usually in a hurry, and they are unlikely to fish around to find resources unless they absolutely have to. Direct links increase the odds that visitors will try the resource.

* It's an old information literacy proverb, right? I'm sure that's how it went.

** Imagine all these links pointed to the authentication URL for the database. I wish it existed. Database vendors, are you listening?

One link for desktop + mobile access to EBSCOhost

When you want to direct patrons' attention to EBSCOhost databases* in email or on the web, you no longer need to provide separate links for mobile and desktop users. EBSCO has announced that they will be phasing out the separate mobile version of the EBSCOhost search interface. Instead, they are offering a new Mobile 2.0 platform that can be accessed with the same link used for desktop access. EBSCOhost now recognizes whether or not users are connecting from a mobile device, and sends them to the appropriate version of the interface automatically.

If you are currently providing links to the old EBSCOhost Mobile interface, now is the time to get rid of those links. The old interface will be dead sometime in the future (EBSCO has not specified when). Replace it with your link to the main EBSCOhost interface (for SCLS libraries, use the same URL as this link: EBSCOhost).

More info about the new interface:

• What is EBSCOhost Mobile 2.0?
• EBSCOhost Mobile 2.0 Help Sheet (pdf)
• EBSCOhost Mobile 2.0 Tutorial (ppt)
• What is the difference between the EBSCOhost Mobile profile and EBSCOhost Mobile 2.0?

* EBSCOhost is available for Wisconsin residents through the BadgerLink project.

20+ tips for improving your library's website

Back in January, SCLS co-sponsored the webinar "20 Things You Can Do to Make Your Library Website Better Right Now" presented by Laura Solomon. If you contribute to your library's website, I strongly recommend watching it! Be prepared for some no-nonsense, tough-love tips for making your website look better and work better.

20 Things You Can Do to Make Your Library Website Better Right Now

Edit photos with MS Office Picture Manager

Did you know that you may have photo editing software hidden away on your PC? I'm not talking about Microsoft Paint. I mean Microsoft Office Picture Manager!

Where can you find it? MS Office Picture Manager has been bundled with the Microsoft Office suite since Office 2003. On most* PCs with MS Office, you can find it by going to Start > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools > Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

You can also start using it by clicking on your image in Windows Explorer and then selecting File > Open With > Microsoft Office Picture Manager, like so:

What is it used for? Basic changes and corrections to photos, like:

• Brightness and contrast
• Color
• Crop
• Rotate and flip
• Red-eye removal
• Resize

Why would you choose MS Office Picture Manager instead of MS Paint? MS Paint doesn't have options specifically for correcting photos (like red-eye removal), and on Windows XP its crop/resize capabilities don't make it easy to get photos sized to pixel-precise dimensions. MS Office Picture Manager does better with these tasks.

Where can you get help using MS Office Picture Manager? Support for MS Office Picture Manager.

When will you know you need a higher-powered tool for editing images?

• You want more control over colors and corrections.
• You want to combine your photos with text, color, and other images and edit each component as a separate "layer."
• You want to be able to save your work and come back later to edit the "layers" of photo, text, color, and other images.

* On SCLS-supported patron PCs that have MS Office, MS Office Picture Manager is not in the Start menu and you will need to use the "Open With" technique to start using it.

YourLibraryWebsite.XXX?

In the not-so-distant future, you or your library's patrons may happen across websites with domain names ending in .xxx (for adult entertainment). ICANN, the organization that regulates domain names, is making it possible to have new top-level domains (other than the usual ones we are already familiar with like .com, .org, .net, .info, etc.), and .xxx is the first example.

Some academic institutions are now buying .xxx domain names matching their .com or .edu names to prevent them from being appropriated by the adult entertainment industry or purchased by cybersquatters (people who register domain names speculatively with the hope of selling them later for big bucks).

I'm not advocating that your library do the same thing, unless you believe it is critical for serving your patrons. The important thing is to be aware that this type of domain name is available, you have the choice to purchase it or not, and this type of choice may become more common in the future as additional as-yet-undetermined top-level domains become available in the future.

Embeddable Slideshows for Your Website

Would you be more likely to watch a slideshow if you saw a link to the slideshow, like this:

View the slideshow "3.0 tools without 3.0 million dollars" *

...Or if you saw the slideshow embedded on a web page, like this:

View more presentations from Sarah Houghton

(Did you pick the embedded one? I did!) Since PowerPoint doesn't have its own embedding options, here are some services where you can upload your own slide deck and get an embed code to put the slideshow on your website:

• Google Docs
• Scribd
• Slideshare

* Slideshow by Sarah Houghton-Jan, aka "LibrarianInBlack." (Handy for demonstrating embedded slideshows and full of useful ideas too.)

More on Finding and Using "Free" Images

From the online suggestion form: "It would be nice to hear a discussion about downloading images (from the web) to be used on library websites, etc. Only some of them may be copyright free." I agree—it would be nice to discuss that, because we keep finding new sources to share.

letters in stone by myfear,
on Flickr © 2004Kerri and I tend to be creatures of habit. She loves finding free images with Wylio, and I keep going back to MorgueFile and Stock.xchng. Here are a few other sources that we've heard of recently and have been meaning to try (YMMV):

• Behold (recommended by Wisconsin-library-blogger Sites and Soundbytes)
• EveryStockPhoto
• FlickrCC
• Image*After
• Open Clipart Library
• OpenPhoto
• WikiMedia Commons
• Giant lists: Wikipedia: Public domain image resources, 50+ Sites with Free Stock Photography

As you're searching, be aware that many free image sites are supported by ads—for images you have to pay for. All images are protected by copyright (unless enough time has passed for the image to have entered the public domain), and even "free" images may have strings attached.

If an image is intended for re-use, it's common for a copyright license to be associated with it specifying how it can be used. Many creators of free images use Creative Commons licenses. Creative Commons is a nonprofit that provides 6 different types of copyright licenses. All Creative Commons copyright-licensed images require attribution, and some may place additional limitations on use. (There is another type of Creative Commons tool called CC0, which allows creators to waive their copyright, but it is used less than Creative Commons copyright licenses.)

If you're having trouble finding a copyright license, sometimes image-search sites hide blanket licenses under labels like "Terms of Use," "About," or "FAQ." When in doubt, getting permission directly from the creator for your use of an image will always keep you on the right side of copyright law.

Thanks to Carol at Spring Green for suggesting this topic!

Viewing web pages in alternate browsers

There have been previous TechBits articles that mentioned the IE View extension to Firefox. IE View is handy if you need to compare the view of a page in FF to the same view in IE, and it's essential if you use some site that (even well into the 21st century) still requires its users to have Internet Explorer. If you rely on such a site, you can configure IE View to always launch IE for links to that funky application.

But if you're a web site developer or tester, IE View may not be all that you want. You may also want to compare the view of a web page in Chrome, Opera, and Safari (or even Amaya, Epiphany, Konqueror, Maxthon, Lobo and...). In short, you may want the Open With extension for Firefox.

After you have installed Open With, your View menu should get populated with an "Open With <browser name>" item for each other browser that is detected on your PC. A similar menu item can optionally appear in several other contexts as well. To set up Open With for various contexts, pull down the FF Tools menu and choose Add-ons, then select Extensions and click the Options button for the Open With extension. A new tab will open showing the Open With settings that you can tune for the View menu, context menu, tabs and the tool bar.

What about different versions of the same browser? You want to test FF 3.6 and FF 7, and IE 8 and IE 9, right? Sadly, this is often not possible without multiple PCs. Even in cases where it is possible to have two versions of the same browser on one machine, it tends to get a bit funky to manage those installations. Depending on your OS license and hardware capacity, you may benefit from running "another PC" inside a VirtualBox or another virtualization platform, but that level of complexity is far beyond what I can cover in a short blog posting.

Using book cover images on the library website

Wouldn't it be nice to post book cover images on your library's website without that lingering feeling that you're breaking copyright law? What's the safest way to do it?

First, check with your catalog vendor or the vendor that supplies cover images for your catalog. Your usage agreement might permit you to use cover images on the library's website, too. It turns out that the cover images found in LINKcat can be used by LINKcat libraries on their websites as long as the images link back to the catalog. Bowker/Syndetic Solutions, which supplies cover images for LINKcat, has given this their blessing in their Syndetics Classic FAQ and via email. (Yes, I emailed them to be absolutely-positively-no-doubt-in-my-mind sure about this!) Make sure you use the new LINKcat Link Advisor to process your LINKcat URLs into durable links.

If extending the use of your catalog cover images isn't an option, try sources that supply free cover images. Two that I'm aware of are LibraryThing and OpenLibrary. These providers assert that using thumbnail-sized cover images can be considered Fair Use. Check the terms of use for each service and make sure your use complies.

Want more info about the legal stuff so you can make up your mind? LibraryLaw Blog discusses the copyright questions in "Book jackets - can libraries put pictures of book covers on the websites?" ALA also sponsors the Copyright Advisory Network, which includes a Fair Use Evaluator tool and a forum where you can ask specific questions about copyright.

Use Alt + F9 to Find and Replace URLs in Word

Last week I was working along merrily in Microsoft Word, using Find and Replace to change URLs in a document, until I realized that I was only changing the link's text... not the URL the link would go to when clicked. In Word, a link's text and its destination URL have to be changed separately if you are using Find and Replace!

I was worried I was going to have to start over and change each URL by hand, so I Googled up a solution: Alt + F9 is the keystroke to show Field Codes, including destination URLs. After hitting Alt + F9, the destination URL for each link was editable through Find and Replace.

Several Find and Replaces later, I hit Alt + F9 to toggle back to having the destination URLs hidden, and moused over my links to double-check that each link's text matched its destination. Success!