haines.p65
Librarians’ Personal Web Pages 543
Librarians’ Personal Web Pages: An
Analysis
Annette Haines
An e-mail survey and an investigation were made of academic librar
ians’ personal Web pages in order to understand what role they play in
the organization of the Internet. Subjects were selected from two Internet
lists of librarian’s Web pages. Results showed that most Web sites were
produced voluntarily and serve multiple purposes. An independent t-test
determined that those librarians who were provided with guidelines pro
duced higher-quality Web pages. Guideline effectiveness and sugges
tions for further research are discussed.
well-developed sense of orga
nization, knowledge of search
strategies, and understanding
of hierarchies serve librarians
well as they increasingly integrate the
World Wide Web into research and infor
mation services. Taking on the additional
role of Internet specialist, librarians are
exploring the possibilities of this virtual
world in many ways. Most notably, librar
ians are actually giving shape to the Web
itself as Web page designers. Librarians
have not only worked at developing li
brary home pages, but they also have con
tributed their own identities to the Web
by creating personal Web pages.
Research Goals and Objectives
This study was conducted to investigate
the role academic librarians’ personal
Web pages play in the organization of the
Internet. Specifically, why do librarians
produce personal Web pages, what do
these sites look like, and what type of
help and support did the librarians re
ceive along the way?
The information presented in this
study will benefit librarians just begin
ning to create their personal Web sites
as well as those with established sites.
In their research article on library Web
design, Mark Stover and Steven D.
Zink discussed the need for librarians
to attain competence as Web design
ers. According to the researchers, “The
organizational expertise and abilities
required to transfer information skill
fully to a broad audience through li
brary Web pages is one visible way
that librarians could showcase their
potential role in the emerging infor
mation age. To date, the effort has been
largely disappointing.”1 By looking at
what others have done well, and per
haps not so well, librarians can dis
cover new ideas and learn how to im
prove the design and content of their
own Web pages. The data collected
will also aid administrators in under
standing their role in providing train
ing and guidelines for librarians’ per
sonal Web pages.
Annette Haines is an assistant professor and reference librarian and bibliographer for the Social and
Behavioral Sciences at Central Michigan University Libraries; e-mail: annette.haines@cmich.edu.
543
mailto:annette.haines@cmich.edu
544 College & Research Libraries November 1999
Related Research
The tociological cole of Personal Web
Pages
Currently, no literature directly ad
dresses librarians’ personal Web pages.
However, Marcia J. Bates and Shaojun Lu
assessed personal Web pages in general.2
Although many of the personal Web
pages had features in common, they
exhibited much variety in both
purpose and content.
They profiled the structure, content, and
design characteristics of typical personal
Web pages selected systematically from
a Web page directory located on the
Internet to determine what sociological
role these pages fulfilled. Approximately
two-thirds of the sites studied served a
work-related purpose such as a resume,
a performance announcement, or a prod
uct advertisement. Twenty-nine percent
seemed to have no purpose other than
to show the site-creator ’s ability to de
sign a Web page. Three basic types of
pages were identified: a simple contents
menu of links to other pages with no
extraneous text; straight text with few
links; and many links with a menu or
contents at the beginning of the page.
Although many of the personal Web
pages had features in common, they ex
hibited much variety in both purpose
and content. Thus, the authors concluded
that the social form of the personal Web
page was still taking shape.
Characteristics of College and University
Library Home Pages
To gain an understanding of academic li
brarians’ personal Web pages, it is use
ful to look at the overall characteristics
of college and university library Web
pages. Several studies have examined li
brary institutional home pages. Laurel A.
Clyde analyzed library home pages
based on a survey of Nordic libraries and
a content analysis of fifty public and fifty
school libraries in thirteen countries.3
The most common features that library
home pages exhibited were: the library’s
name; information about the library;
links to selected Internet resources; an
e-mail contact link; the address of the li
brary; and links to resources about the
local area or region. This research
showed that in many libraries’ Web sites,
the target audience was unclear.
Stover and Zink evaluated randomly
selected university and college library
home pages found in an Internet direc
tory.4 The authors ranked each page
based on established criteria. The over
all quality of the Web sites was found to
be mediocre. One of the most common
problems was that sites presented too
many links and/or graphics, which led
to disorganization and increased load
time for those with slower modems.
Also, of the forty sites examined, only
two of the pages contained a statement
of purpose.
David L. King took Stover and Zinks’s
research further.5 Without making any
judgments of quality, he examined the
home page design of all 120 ARL librar
ies in order to discover what the typical
ARL library home page looked like. His
results indicated that the typical library
Web site was approximately one page in
length and was usually only one to two
steps from the parent institution’s page.
About half of the sites used background
images or color. The document header
usually contained the name of the library,
and the document footer usually con
tained the name of the Web master and
some form of contact information (usu
ally an e-mail link). Most pages included
some form of simple graphics, such as
page dividers or buttons; and most in
cluded text-based hypertext links as well
as unlinked text.
Quality Considerations
Addressing the quality issue, informa
tion scientists Helen C. Strain and
Pauline M. Berry examined the literature
related to Internet navigation problems
and how human–computer interaction
models can be applied to hypertext de
sign.6 They proposed two areas of con
sideration for Web page design: “a good
Librarians’ Personal Web Pages 545
design model and good hypertext prac
tice.”7 The design model should have a
clear purpose and regard the users and
their needs. The hypertext design should
consider how and what links are pro
vided, should provide a coherent site
structure, should include meaningful
page titles, and should give a clear indi
cation of the page origin. The authors
conclude with a set of guidelines for Web
page designers based on these areas.
In Building the Service-based Library Web
Site, Kristen L. Garlock and Sherry
Piontek discussed the importance of
identifying a target audience for one’s
Web site.8 The authors made recommen
dations for good Web design to ensure
clarity for the target audience. These in
cluded limiting the number of images on
a site, using alternative text for images,
avoiding browser-specific tags, annotat
ing links to other sites, periodically
checking for broken links, checking
grammar and spelling, including an e-
mail link for feedback, and including the
library’s name in the title.
Establishing Web Page Guidelines
Several authors have published Web
guidelines for universities and university
libraries. Yale has posted a set of open,
conceptual university guidelines for its
Web site.9 The guidelines are organized
into four sections (General Principles,
Applications, Documents, and Pages)
with links to examples throughout. The
“General Principles” section reflects the
conclusions drawn by Strain and Berry.
This section recommends defining a pur
pose, paying attention to users and their
needs, and identifying the page source.
The principles also address the need to
use HTML in a form that can be inter
preted in both present and future con
texts. Also at Yale, the Yale C/AIM Web
Style Guide by Patrick J. Lynch and Sa
rah Horton provides a very practical
style guide that concretely emphasizes
the concepts outlined in the Guide for
WEB Providers at Yale.10
Nancy McClements and Cheryl Becker
discussed the steps involved in setting up
the Web guidelines for the University of
Wisconsin-Madison Campus Libraries.11
They studied current Web standards and
other publications dealing with Web de
sign to develop a set of very straightfor
ward guidelines. Authors of any new Web
pages originating from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison Campus, personal or
otherwise, are required to follow these
standards if they want to link to the main
library Web page. As with Yale, these
guidelines include identification of the
source of the page, including page author,
and link to the parent home page. The
guidelines also require the author to de
vise a plan for page revisions and to post
the date last updated on the page. The use
of standardized HTML also is required.
Summary
Although academic librarians’ personal
Web pages have not been the focus of any
systematic study, the research of personal
Web pages in general and the Web pages
of universities and libraries in particular
creates a starting point for investigation.
Clearly, the focus of discussion has cen
tered on communication and the neces
sity of defining the purpose and identi
fying the audience of a Web page. In the
investigation described in the following
sections, the author surveys librarians
who have produced personal Web pages
and evaluates the design and content of
these sites. In addition, the author in
cludes an examination of how institu
tional support and guidelines affect the
overall quality of these Web pages.
Methodology
Potulation Surveyed
The survey was conducted via e-mail.
The survey questionnaire was sent to
academic librarians’ Web pages identi
fied via two Internet directories of librar
ians web pages. These directories were
publicly available at the time of the sur
vey, however, they have since been dis
continued. Respondents were sent sur
veys only if (1) their pages were in an
educational domain (i.e., contained an
edu, ca, or uk suffix), (2) the Web site be
http:Libraries.11
546 College & Research Libraries November 1999
longed to an academic librarian, and (3)
the site had an e-mail address listed. Al
though the librarians selected were not
anonymous to the researcher, all re
sponses were kept confidential. The sur
vey was conducted between October and
December 1997. Participation was volun
tary, and no follow-up letters were sent.
Development of Questionnaire and
Checklist
A small semi-structured pilot survey was
conducted prior to the final survey to get
a sense of the range of possible answers
to various questions. The final survey
contained multiple-choice questions
dealing with how and why the Web site
was created, how the site was main
tained, what training and guidelines
were given to the site-creator, and the
purposes of the page.
Following the survey, the researcher
filled out a checklist for each of the re
spondents to determine information
about the Web sites that was not appar
ent from the survey responses. Given
that previous researchers found an over
all mediocre quality to library Web sites
and have focused efforts on improving
this (see Clyde,12 Jonathan Furner-Hines
and Peter Willet, 13 and Stover and
Zink14), the checklist was constructed
based on quality considerations and was
designed to assess the types of informa
tion each site provided and how the site
was constructed.
Results
Response Rate
Of the ninety-two e-mail questionnaires
sent out, fifty-nine were returned for a
response rate of 64.1 percent. Eight were
disqualified because either they did not
fit the criteria of the study or their URL
changed during the course of the study.
Given that no follow-up letter was sent,
this was a relatively high rate of return.
Earlier research gave somewhat conflict
ing data on the effectiveness of e-mail
surveys (see Lee S. Sproull,15 Randall L.
Sell,16 and Susan E. Anderson and Bruce
M. Gansneder17). However, given the
convenience of this type of survey for
subjects in comparison to other survey
types such as telephone and mail (e.g.,
respondents could complete the survey
at their leisure, did not have to leave their
office to find a mailbox, etc.), the high
rate of return is understandable.
Purpose of Librarian's Personal Web
Pages
The first set of survey questions dealt
with the creation of the Web pages them
selves. An overwhelming 82.4 percent of
respondents indicated that they created
their pages voluntarily or on their own
personal initiative. An even higher per
centage (92.0%, N = 51) did the HTML
coding for their pages themselves, and
all of the respondents provided the con
tent for the sites themselves. It is clear
from the data that the majority of the li
brarians produced their Web pages as a
service to their library’s patronage. Of
the librarians surveyed, most indicated
faculty, students, and staff as the target
audience for their Web sites. The quali
tative analysis of the Web sites indicated
that the majority provided professional
information about the librarian (94.1%,
N = 51), the library (76.5%, N = 51), and
the parent institution (84.3%, N = 51).
Librarians themselves indicated that they
believed people use their Web sites for
various reasons, such as to find informa
tion about them (58.0%, N = 50), to find
information on their subject specialties
(50.0%, N = 50), and to find information
about the library or institution (42.0%, N
= 50). Although many were unsure of
how often others used their Web sites
(35.3%, N = 51), many believed that their
sites were accessed by others daily
(31.4%, N = 51) or more than once a week
(23.5%, N = 51). Less than ten percent
believed that others accessed their sites
less than once a week.
Librarians also made use of their own
Web sites. Survey data showed that 39.2
percent (N = 51) of librarians accessed
their own sites daily, whereas 21.6 per
cent (N = 51) visited their own sites more
than once a week. Most indicated that
Librarians’ Personal Web Pages 547
they used their sites for job- TABLE 1
related reasons (70.0%, N = Types of Training Provided by Institutions and50). Given that most of these Other Sources, in Percentages sites were created on per
sonal initiative, it is not sur- Type of Training Institution Other Sources
prising that a large number
of librarians (46.0%, N = 50) Written documentation 23.5 38.8
also used their sites for Computer tutorial 2.0 14.3
avocational reasons. Workshop One-on-one
Training and Support Issues Other
Although the majority of
these personal Web pages clearly benefit
their respective libraries, many of the li
braries or parent institutions failed to
provide adequate training and support
for the librarians producing the Web
pages. Only 10.3 percent (N = 39) of the
respondents felt that they received more
than adequate training and support.
Moreover, although 38.5 percent (N = 39)
felt that they had received adequate
training and support, a nearly equal 35.9
percent (N = 39) had been given no insti
tutional training or support and 15.4 per
cent (N = 39) felt that their training or
support had been inadequate.
Table 1 indicates the types of training
that page-creators received from both
their institutions and other sources. En
tries in table I are the percentages of re
spondents (from a total of N = 51 for In-
TABLE 2
Specific Guidelines Provided to
Respondents Who Received Them
Guidelines (N = 18) Frequency %
ID or link to parent institution
ID of page-creator
Consistent style
Date last updated
Meaningful title
Defined purpose
Recommeded browser
Alternate text
Size/image limits
Length of page
Nonprofessional information
Logical tags
META tags
15
13
11
10
9
6
6
4
3
2
2
1
0
83.3
72.2
61.1
55.6
50
33.3
33.3
22.2
16.7
11.1
11.1
5.6
0
37.3 20.4
15.7 10.2
15.7 16.3
stitution and N = 49 for Other Sources)
receiving each type of training. These
percentages need not add up to 100 per
cent. Institutionally, the most highly em
ployed type of training was the work
shop, whereas individually the types of
training were more varied.
Related to the issue of support and
training, only 42.9 percent (N = 49) of the
respondents indicated that they had been
provided with a list of requirements
and/or guidelines for creating personal
Web pages. Table 2 indicates the specific
guideline criteria that were provided to
those respondents who received them.
Quality of Librarian's Personal Web
Pages
In lieu of the absence of consistent sup
port, training, and guidance, it is not sur
prising that the qualitative
analysis of the Web page
characteristics revealed
some inadequacies. Al
though research indicates
that a clear purpose is the
most highly recommended
feature of a Web site, only
56.9 percent (N = 51) of the
pages had either a clearly
stated purpose or one that
could easily be inferred
from the content.
In general, however, the
pages examined had two
major purposes: (1) to serve
as a self-promotion tool in
the form of an online re
sume or business card; and
(2) to provide links to sites
548 College & Research Libraries November 1999
in a particular subject area. The sites with
unclear purposes tended to serve both
of these purposes as well as to include
links and information relating to enter
tainment in a variety of areas, family
members and friends, and Internet help.
With respect to HTML coding, few
sites provided alternate text for most im
ages (22.9%, N = 48) or had an
HTML-coded title that truly reflected the
content of the page (29.4%, N = 51). When
scoring pages on whether the title re
flected the content of the Web site, the
rule established was that any individual
bookmarking the site must be able to
understand the contents of the site from
the title. Contents should not simply be
a reflection of who created the site, but
also should indicate what the site con
tained in terms of information. Thus,
sites that were titled in the format “Jane
Doe’s Home Page” were considered not
to have a title that reflected the content
of the page because one would have to
know Jane Doe in order to make sense
of the title. Conversely, a site in the for
mat “Jane Doe, Acquisitions Librarian,
XYZ University” would be considered to
have a title that reflected the content of
the page. Only 39.2 percent (N = 51) used
META data in the HTML coding, even
though this is a key issue of concern in
the library world today (see Dublin Core
Resource Page http://purl.ococ.org/
metadata/dublin_core18).
Some of the librarians surveyed
indicated a certain amount of
hostility, or at least passive resis
tance, to institutional control over
the content of their personal Web
pages.
Consistent with King’s findings re
garding ARL Library Web pages, the ma
jority of the personal Web Sites provided
information about the parent institution;
however, only little more than half of the
sites provided links to the parent insti
tution (58.8%, N = 50) or the parent
library’s Web page (58.0%, N = 51).19
Thus, many librarians missed an oppor
tunity to benefit their own institutions
by neglecting to take full advantage of
one of the Web’s greatest assets: the abil
ity to create hypertext links between
sites.
On the positive side, most Web sites
were updated less than six months prior
to the evaluation (89.8%, N = 49) and
showed consistency in style within in
ternal site links (77. 1%, N = 35). How
ever, very few exhibited any consistency
in style, such as page layout, colors used,
etc., to the parent library’s Web site (17.1
%, N = 49).
An independent t-test was run on the
data to see if librarians who had been pro
vided with guidelines had overall better-
quality Web pages. The mean score of
qualitative page characteristics was used
to determine overall quality. The qualita
tive page characteristics used to calculate
this mean were: professional content;
identification and links to the parent li
brary and institution; statement of pur
pose; meaningfulness of page title; num
ber of dead links; currency; use of ALT
text; use of META data; consistency of
style; and size of images. The test was sig
nificant (t = -2.3 1, p = .025). Librarians
who had been given guidelines (M = .67,
SD =.16; N = 21) had better-quality per
sonal Web pages than those who had not
been given guidelines (M = .58, SD = .11;
N = 28).
Conclusion
Although academic librarians’ personal
Web pages exist for different purposes,
overall they provide an extension to the
library’s institutional Web page. Their
role includes providing information
about the library and providing links to
selected resources.
Librarians’ accomplishments with re
gard to their personal Web pages are to
be praised considering that many librar
ians are working with limited amounts
of time and resources. As an integral part
of the virtual library, however, there is
room for improvement. Based on this re
search, as well as on recommendations
made by previous researchers, these Web
http:http://purl.ococ.org
Librarians’ Personal Web Pages 549
pages could be perfected by better focus
ing on a target audience, making titles
more informative, clearly identifying and
linking to the parent library and institu
tion, using ALT tags more thoroughly,
and including META data.
There is some concern, however, that
too many restrictions will inhibit creativ
ity and motivation. Some of the librar
ians surveyed indicated a certain amount
of hostility, or at least passive resistance,
to institutional control over the content
of their personal Web pages. For ex
ample, one respondent remarked: “I be
long to the school that holds that every
librarian should have … relatively un
fettered freedom to mount and maintain
sites in their subject specialties, without
having to go through the regulatory
bottlenecks. I know [a librarian] who has
basically given up on maintaining a site
because she can never get her updates
mounted at all.” Perhaps due to the frus
tration with institutional bureaucracy,
some librarians indicated that they have
an “official” personal home page that
follows the guidelines of their institution
and an “unofficial” page. (Interestingly,
these “unofficial” pages were located on
the university server.) In his article en
titled “Web Policies That Work,” Michael
Stoner points out to university Web
policy creators: “You want to ensure that
your institution’s official Web pages are
well-designed, accurate, and in compli
ance with state and federal laws. But you
must also avoid stifling the creativity of
those who want to experiment with this
exciting medium.”20
As this research shows, library and/
or institutional guidelines significantly
affect the quality of page design. By pro
viding support and instruction, institu
tions can further help librarians who may
have difficulty finding the time or money
to seek outside training. Recently, Cherrie
Noble, in her article titled “Reflecting on
Our Future: What Will the Role of the Vir
tual Librarian Be?” expressed her
thoughts on the importance of continu
ing education for librarians. She stated:
“Staff training and professional develop
ment for librarians are fundamental in de
veloping the virtual library … This is a
critical issue for librarians, and one that
we will need to work on vigorously in
the coming years, in an attempt to meet,
and hopefully exceed, the expectations of
our patrons.”21 Ultimately, it will be up to
each individual librarian to make a pro
fessional commitment to learn the skills
required to produce an effective a Web
page. In the future, as academic librarians
continue to create personal Web pages, it
will also be important to look at how the
role of these pages change over time as
new policies are enacted and the Internet
evolves.
Notes
1. Mark Stover and Steven D. Zink, “World Wide Web Home Page Design: Patterns and
Anomalies of Higher Education Library Home Pages,” Reference Services Review 24 (fall 1996):
15.
2. Marcia J. Bates and Shaojun Lu, “An Exploratory Profile of Personal Home Pages: Con
tent, Design, Metaphors,” Online & CDROM Review 21 (Dec. 1997): 331–40.
3. Laurel A. Clyde, “The Library as Information Provider: The Home Page,” Electronic
Library 14 (Dec. 1996): 549–58.
4. Stover and Zink, “World Wide Web Home Page Design,” 7–20.
5. David L. King, “Library Home Page Design: A Comparison of Page Layout for Front-ends
to ARL Library Web Sites,” College & Research Libraries 59 (Sept. 1998): 458–65.
6. Helen C. Strain and Pauline M. Berry, “Better Page Design for the World Wide Web,”
Online and CDROM Review 20, no. 5 (Oct. 1996): 227–38.
7. Ibid., 233.
8. Kristen L. Garlock and Sherry Piontek, Building the Service-based Library Web Site: A
Step-by-Step Guide to Design and Options (Chicago: ALA, 1996).
550 College & Research Libraries November 1999
9. Yale University, Guide for WEB Providers at Yale, [Online] 1995. Available at .
10. Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, Yale C/AIM Web Style Guide, Yale Center for Ad
vanced Instructional Media. [Online] 1997. Available at .
11. Nancy McClements and Cheryl Becker, “Writing Web Page Standards,” College & Re
search Libraries News 1 (Jan. 1996): 16–17. Also found in Electronic Library Access Committee
(ELAC), User Documentation Working Group, UW-Madison Campus Libraries Web Page Stan
dards and Guidelines. [Online] December 4, 1997. Available at http://www.library.wisc.edu/
help/tech/Web_standards.html>.
12. Clyde, “The Library as Information Provider,” 549–58.
13. Jonathan Furner-Hines and Peter Willett, “The Use of the World-Wide Web in UK Aca
demic Libraries,” Aslib Proceedings 47 (Jan. 1995): 23–32.
14. Stover and Zink, “World Wide Web Home Page Design,” 7–20.
15. Lee S. Sproull, “Using Electronic Mail for Data Collection in Organizational Research,”
Academy of Management Journal 29 (Mar. 1986): 163.
16. Randall L. Sell, “Research and the Internet: An E-mail Survey of Sexual Orientation,”
American Journal of Public Health 87 (Feb. 1997): 297.
17. Susan E. Anderson and Bruce M. Gansneder, “Using Electronic Mail Surveys and
Computer-Monitored Data for Studying Computer-Mediated Communication Systems,” So
cial Science Computer Review 13 (spring 1995): 40.
18. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Dublin Core. [Online] 1998. Available at .
19. King, “Library Home Page Design,” 460.
20. Michael Stoner, “Web Policies That Work,” Case Currents 21 (Oct. 1995): 37.
21. Cherrie Noble, “Reflecting On Our Future,” Computers in Libraries 18 (Feb. 1998): 52.
http:http://www.library.wisc.edu
http:http://www.komm.ruc.dk
www.cis.yale.edu/webguide