‘Databases’, ‘Journals’, and ‘Reference’ are headings that are duplicated in each subject guide and in the sidebar on the left, under Resources. Though we library people know that each heading in the guide area is subject-specific, while the same heading in the sidebar is general and includes everything, this is not not necessarily obvious and should be clarified.
A quick ‘n’ easy fix would be to add another word to these sidebar headings to make the distinction clear, such as:
Databases, A-Z
Journal finder
Reference (general)
What’s your view? Tell us what you think …
I don’t know that "A-Z" and "finder" necessarily clarify that these are not subject-specific. Perhaps "All databases", "All journals", "General reference"?
However, is this actually causing problems for students? My intuition is that what we have is not so much a library-people thing as a web design thing: it’s standard for the sidebars to stay the same whichever subpage you’re on, while the main content changes, so I wouldn’t expect it to be confusing. If it is causing confusion then we should do something(1) but if it isn’t then I’d hesitate to add unnecessary wordage.
(1) But there could be all sorts of ‘somethings’ that might work. Eg (for the sake of discussion/controversy 🙂 ) a lot of the links in the left sidebar could be replaced by quicklinks to Search@Library, Subjects@Library, Study@Library.
Those are just suggestions – thanks for your ones Deborah.
The way I see it, our web pages should be as clearly signposted as necessary to indicate what can be found where. If there’s a difference in content to be found between two links, then the headings should clearly reflect that distinction. In these cases, they don’t.
I like " All databases, All journals, and maybe even "All reference".
Sometimes I think we have more links to other parts of the site than we have actual content! AJ
‘All Reference’ is far too misleading to be a contender.
would it be better to say "Some reference"
!!!!!
Re whether it is causing problems or not for students: it does quite often cause problems in the tutorial situation, where a student gets lost because they’ve clicked on the other journals (or reference, or whatever) heading, not the one we have asked them to click on.
Yes I have had the problem occur in a tutorial as well.
The fact that the sidebar stays the same where ever you are is not really relevant here. It seems very illogical to have identical headings and expect people to appreciate that they lead to different chunks of information.
I would like to see the siedbar heading change to relect this difference and
Databases, A-Z
Journal finder
Reference (general)
is an improvement on what we have now!
I’m not very fond of commas and parentheses in titles/links – it feels a bit library-jargonish and reminiscent of the old card catalogue headings that http://libetiquette.blogspo… makes fun of. 🙂
Compared to those, A-Z Databases would be an improvement for me (but misleading as the page also gives lists by subject), as would be General Reference. An alternative to the latter might be Reference Resources (as on the title of the page it links to). Looking at it again, Journal finder is nicely descriptive.
Journal Finder seems to be gaining some momentum from these comments at least. I think I like it as well, although I’m less sure about the reference and database alternatives.
Ideally the site would recognize who was looking, know what subjects they were interested in and offer a "More.." option for those they weren’t.
Ok so these three sidebar headings need to be amended to distinguish them from the identical subject guide headings, which should remain as they are – I think we can safely agree on that (at least I hope so!).
So where do we go next to decide on what the sideshow headings should be changed to? Various suggestions have been made – are there any others?
Come on, you chaps, get your ‘thinking caps’ on and see who can come up with the most ‘au courant’ suggestions!
How about:
Databases (all subjects)
Journals (all subjects)
Reference (all subjects)
It might be too long to fit in the side column & uses clunky parentheses but is simple and makes the point.
I’d like to turn this discussion on its head. I think that the links in the sidebar are correct (works for all other pages) and it’s the links on the subject pages (a subset) that are wrong. Why not change them to be Databases for [subject] etc. I know that the links are on a page already headed that subject name, but if there’s confusion maybe they are not being seen in context. You’ve got a lot more room on the pages to do this, and it leaves the links on every other page simple and contextually correct.
Catherine
This very issue was raised on 12th December 2007 in the context of the home page review. I suggested, as Catherine mentioned above, that we should consider changing the headings on the subject guides to Education Journals etc. You can find this post by searching Journals and databases. I agree with Catherine that it is the neater solution
As the subject links are already on a page heading with that subject name, it is largely redundant to have to specify in each case:
Reference / Journals / Databases for Mass Communication & Journalism (COMS of course would be shorter, but less desirable for clarity)
Here’s a neat solution: why not simply change "Resources" at the top of the sidebar to "All Resources", leaving everything else as is?