My previous two columns have been on ways to get involved in New Members Round Table and in international librarianship opportunities. This time I’m going to take advantage of the editorial nature of this column to discuss an issue that is both relevant to New Members Round Table and significant to me: web site design and the use of content management systems.

As some of you know, I have been working with New Members Round Table’s Footnotes for the past couple of years and redesigned the look of our newsletter. In my own organization, I have played an integral part in the design and maintenance of the University Libraries’ main web pages and created the templates used throughout the site. As such, I have a lot of experience working with html, cascading style sheets, and web design. Which is why it pains me to criticize the content management system (CMS) adopted by ALA.

First of all, I’d like to acknowledge the noble intent of the system. The whole point of using a content management system is to simplify the process of distributing information via the web. Such a system allows each unit in the organization to add content to pages while the majority of the formatting is handled by cascading style sheets controlled at a higher level. Theoretically, this is a great idea: It permits people with little or no html skill to put up content and ensures a consistent look to all the organization’s pages. However, both the current web design and the CMS have problems.

The Design
The template currently in use requires that the ALA header appear at the top of the page and that navigation within a sub-section of the organization appears on the side. Additionally, a “breadcrumb” navigation line appears above the content section. Conceptually, all of these features are desirable. They provide consistency and improve navigability of the site. In reality, they take up too much space, leaving very little room for the actual content. The header bar with its nine buttons and search box attached takes up 800x138 pixels. This means that computers set at a resolution of 800x600 have a quarter of the visible screen taken up by the header. Additionally, something in the coding is pushing the header over slightly so that the header runs off the screen to the right. The sidebar contributes to the space problem. At 150 pixels wide (plus padding), it further reduces the space left on the screen for content.

Recommendations for the design:
1. Reduce the height of the header to a maximum of 80 pixels. This may mean that the buttons do not appear on every page, but as long as people can get back to the main page with one click this should not be a problem.
2. Aim for a header width of 790 pixels (which would leave a little leeway so it isn’t wider than an 800x600 screen), and use cascading style sheets to set a background color across the entire width.
3. Consider eliminating the sidebar. If the breadcrumb navigation works correctly and the site is well-organized, the sidebar would only save the user one click and the advantage of getting rid of the sidebar would be two-fold: more space for content and printing would be easier.

Content Management System (CMS)
As I stated earlier, the goal of a CMS is to make it easier to distribute content. Unfortunately, the CMS in use does not succeed in that goal. In theory, the system should allow people with no html skills to produce web pages. In reality, a person with no html skills would find the convoluted file storage system and the linking of files within it nearly impossible to navigate. To give you an idea of how complicated the system is, note that the training manual is 46 pages long! One of the more confusing aspects of the system is that there are two sections (which basically look the same, but work differently) labeled “Navigation Menu” and “Content Buckets” whose problems are frankly too complex to discuss in this article. Images are saved in yet another location. Another problem is that the URLs generated for each page are so long that you need to have the computer create short-cut URLs that redirect pages.

The incredibly intricate nature of this system means that even fewer people are allowed to create web pages. Moreover, it takes much longer to create and link the pages using the CMS than it would take to produce the pages using an html editor such as Dreamweaver.

My recommendation regarding the current CMS: Scrap it! The current system is inefficient. If a program can be found that allows members to add content easily, it would be worthwhile to use it. If not, maybe we need to go to a system that uses templates to provide structure and consistency, but allows web designers to put content online directly in folders on the ALA server. While this would involve some work on the administration side to make sure that people only had permission to work in specific directories, it would shorten considerably the amount of time it takes to keep ALA’s web information current.

This article reflects my own work with the system and is meant as constructive criticism. My hope is that ALA will examine how effectively the system has met its goals and whether some other options should be pursued.