From the Librarian
Keith Instone, instone@usableweb.com
Argus Associates
Hi, this is your "librarian" again. In an Internetworking article in September of 1998, I introduced myself and Usable Web, the site about web usability that acts as ITG's official link directory of interest to members.
A year ago I said that "it is hard to keep up with all of the new material". Finally, a year later, I am almost caught up with my backlog of resources to add to Usable Web. I did the last batch at once, with Usable Web growing from 400 to over 700 items in only a few months.
I did have to cut a few corners in order to catch up, however. Not all new items are fully described: some link are only a title, for example. I thought it was better to get them in there, even if their record is not complete. If I find myself coming back to certain items over time, then I will beef up their descriptions.
The additional items were fairly well scattered across all of the topics, but I did find myself creating some new topic areas, such as Advertising, News, Ecommerce, and Bad Design. I managed to find several older items from Usable Web for each of those topics, so each of them has a mix of old and new things.
One new feature added recently was a search engine, called Webinator, by Thunderstone. It was easy to set up because it is off-site (no software to download), and it is free. It seems to produce reasonable results for simple queries, so it was certainly worth my effort.
I also have a channel at My Netscape now, where you can put a "What's New" version of Usable Web right next to your news, weather and sports headlines on your personal web page. This is a fun little project because it involves creating an XML file on my site that a Netscape program parses once a day to make the channel. This is definitely the way to syndicate content on the web. You may have a wonderful collection of content at your site, but if you really want to support a wide range of ways to access that content, you are going to have to make several "channels" and get your content distributed to other sites. I am chomping at the bit for My Yahoo and the others to follow suit so that people can get Usable Web wherever it is most convenient for them.
You can add the channel directly, if you are logged in to My Netscape. Otherwise, you have to register and/or log in first. You also need to have Javascript turned on in order to use My Netscape.
Finally, Usable Web easily withstood the near-doubling in size, but while I was processing the 300 new items, I did get some ideas for better ways to organize things. I did content analysis for the older items and have done a few iterations on a new information architecture. Now I have to involve users, so I have some card sorting and paper prototyping lined up. Given my limited time for Usable Web, it will be a while before you see any drastic changes, but they are in the works.
I suspect that when I have a working prototype online, I will contact ITG members for your feedback. So be on the look out for that: I will take your feedback any time before then, too, of course. Let me know how you found it useful, when it did not help at all, and how it could be better. I really like mini-case-studies, where you tell me what you came looking for and how you tried to find it.
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Last update: December 12, 1999
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