So many responses to address! ah! The LITA support to this idea is lovely to see. Thank you very much.
I agree that code4lib is awesome and that we could potentially create a document which would gain traction in the wider community BUT I really do think official support/integration is the best case scenario. Shaun, http://guidelines.usability.gov/ is a neat site and I'll have to explore it more, even just for myself. How does this differ from my vision of what we're discussing (to say nothing of Josh's vision or anyone else's): 1. I think that it makes best sense as far as official validation/circulation (and for ease of use by all librarian's regardless of experience) to have a much abbreviated document listing best practices. And works cited. And maybe an appendix with more information. A sort of list that the group could agree upon that "Well, if a library does these things they are well along the way to great usability." It wouldn't address a lot of the nitty gritty details that guidelines.usability.gov does, for example "13:9 Use Radio Buttons for Mutually Exclusive Selections." That is an excellent point but TMI for the document I'm describing. 1a. This document would be succinct enough that managing it would be easy. We need to have something easy to update or it risks becoming old and useless. 1b. I really like the point made by Christina about not re-inventing the wheel. And this is exactly where I'm coming from. Yes, there's a ton of great UX stuff out on the web but what would be a great service to libraryland would be for a group of knowledgeable librarians to come together and do all that research work and present everyone with a simplified 'wheel' for general use. 2. But I'm picturing a lot beyond this. Some sort of website (wiki, whatever) where library people are able to pool knowledge and resources. Best practices with libguides. Libguides customizations. I recently did a complete makeover on our Illiad site - I could share info/steps on how I did that, for example. People could share useful scripts etc. etc. The first document would primarily/exclusively be general web best practices but the second thing - that would go beyond. Just my thinking. I'm game to help whatever ends up taking shape :) -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edu