Orientation and Navigation
Link to your library website directly from your institute’s homepage
Never underestimate the importance of a direct link from your institute’s homepage to your library’s homepage. In a study conducted in 2000, Bao surveyed the homepages of 143 institutions. He found that while only 57% of the organizations’ homepages offered links to their libraries’ homepages, such links can be very important.
A link to the university's library homepage appears on the Nicolaus Copernicus University homepage at
www.umk.pl/en “The location of a library home page link on its parent institution’s home page will determine the visibility of a library and will affect the effective use of the library’s online, Web-based resources.”
— Xue-Ming Bao (2000), “Academic Library Home Pages: Link Location and Database Provision”
www.sciencedirect.com
Use consistent navigation
To orient users to your site’s resources, use one navigation bar, use it consistently and use it well. Usually a navigation bar appears at the top of every page, as a series of buttons or tabs. By highlighting the tab or button correlating with the user’s current location on your library website, you provide a visual clue and keep the user from getting lost.
To give another clue to a user’s location on your site, you might also include a “breadcrumb” trail indicating the location of the page the user is currently visiting relative to the homepage (e.g., Home > Resources > eJournals). For more on breadcrumb trails, see “Breadcrumb Navigation: An Exploratory Study of Usage” by Lida, Hull and Pilcher (2003).
A breadcrumb trail available throughout the site indicates the user’s location on the Utrecht University Library website at
www.library.uu.nl/library/12483main.html
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