Please read and follow instructions and do in own words. Who can do this?

infotoday.com | MARCH 2017 | 9 Practical Technology Tools Everyday Librarians Can Apply by jessamyn west A rbitrary calendar dates are great for catalyzing deferred maintenance projects. I’m writing this in the first weeks of the new year. Past columns at this time of year have included suggestions for creating stronger passwords, checklists for better tech hygiene, and encouragement to block and ban bad actors in your social me- dia streams.

This year, I suggest performing a website content analysis, particularly within your support and help pages. It’s long been my as- sertion that poor tech support by large com- panies—phone companies, cable companies, and internet companies—exacerbates the digital divide by inhibiting what the Pew Re- search Center calls “digital readiness.” Pew states that users need to be technologically competent, but also intellectually discern- ing enough to know how and when to trust online information. Otherwise, they can’t, or won’t, take advantage of online learning op- portunities and will continually need human assistance even in situations in which other forms of support are available.

Trust is not just based on intellect, of course, but also on the emotional aspects of our relationships to technology: We have bad interactions with tech support, we feel bad, and we trust them less. This can de- lay learning and engagement with various kinds of digital content, including not read- ing ebooks and not filing taxes online.

To help people trust libraries, we should be making sure that the online information we offer is helpful, up-to-date, and accu- rate. We’re pretty good at this in person, but not always as good online. For a lengthier background on website content analyses, you can read Chapter 7 of Useful, Usable, Desirable: Applying User Experience De- sign to Your Library, by Aaron Schmidt and Keep Your Promises for a Better User Experience THE MORE WE BUILD TRUSTWORTHY WEBSITES THAT PEOPLE CAN RELY ON FOR ACCURATE AND TIMELY INFORMATION, THE MORE THEY CAN BECOME READY TO EXPLORE THE LARGER WORLD OF DIGITAL CONTENT.

Icons by Juan Pablo Bravo, Rflor, and Gan Khoon Lay, used with permission (CCBY3.0 US), thenounproject.com Digital readiness equation 10 | MARCH 2017 | infotoday.com COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES | Practical Technology Amanda Etches. I’m just going to focus on a small subset of content and when you should think about updating it.

Software Updates One of the funny aspects of print books in libraries is the New Titles shelf. In smaller libraries near where I live, this could mean “new to the library” as well as “newly printed.” It’s a relative term, depending on how many new books the library gets. When a library uses it, we’re saying something about the books on this shelf relative to the other books in the library. Similarly, online content has a time context and a relative context to other online information. Blogging al- lows libraries to include time-sensitive content that can be properly slotted into the time stream of library activities.

However, static webpages sometimes make assertions about the past, present, or future that need to be re-evaluated from time to time.When I created the Open Li- brary support pages—a set of pages I am particularly proud of—we used screenshots from Adobe Digital Editions to show users where to click to perform various functions such as re- turning a book. This was help- ful for users, right up until the software went through a rede- sign and all of our screenshots needed to be redone. Obvi- ously, it can be easier to cre- ate help files with no screen- shots or link to help pages on vendor-specific sites to avoid this issue, but we opted to save the user ’s time. When your help files include infor- mation about other software, make sure that you’re keeping it updated as often as the soft- ware is updated.

This is especially important if it’s your software and you’re promising something by a specific dead- line. Once the deadline has passed, up- date the files. Since the Internet Archive allows people to view historical versions of your site, keep in mind that patrons may remember your promises even if you’ve removed them from your website. Staff Changes Another motivation for reviewing your website is staffing changes. If an employee leaves the library and was in charge of a particular project, check to make sure he or she is not the sole con-tact for that project. Also, make sure someone else is responsible for the online documentation for that project.

When The New York Public Library shuttered NYPL Labs in late 2016, all of its social media streams abruptly ended and its nice URL (labs.nypl.org) got redirected to an NYPL collections page at nypl.org/collections/labs, which had information on NYPL Labs in the present tense. Projects that NYPL Labs were working on with the NYPL web development team are in limbo. At the very least, NYPL’s What’s Ahead for SimplyE page indicates that NYPL is planning to roll out features and ad- ditional apps “later this year,” which is vague and inaccurate wording for a mostly static help page. I sent a note to [email protected] and am not sure if there’s a person at the other end of it.

To be clear, this is not easy stuff. It’s tempting to want to talk about your vi- sion for future development, especially if a lack of money or time has caused you to launch a project without all the fea- tures you had hoped it would have. Open Library had a “coming soon” indicator on the user settings page next to the account deletion functionality—planned by the initial development team, but The New York Public Library’s promise is vaguely worded.

Open eBooks removed this promise of a web-optimized version of its app. TO HELP PEOPLE TRUST LIBRARIES, WE SHOULD BE MAKING SURE THAT THE ONLINE INFORMATION WE OFFER IS HELPFUL, UP-TO-DATE, AND ACCURATE. RESOURCES Pew Defines Digital Readiness pewrsr.ch/2gCenv1 Useful, Usable, Desirable: Applying User Experience Design to Your Library, by Aaron Schmidt and Amanda Etches alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=10981 Open Library Support Pages openlibrary.org/help openlibrary.org/help/faq/borrow#returns Open eBooks FAQs and Archived FAQs openebooks.net/faq.html bit.ly/2ikwhlM Shake-Up at NYPL L abs civichall.org/civicist/shake-nypl-labs NYPL L abs twitter.com/nypl_labs NYPL Help Pages gethelp.nypl.org infotoday.com | MARCH 2017 | 11 Practical Technology | COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES never implemented—for 7 years. This sort of thing degrades user confidence and is avoidable.

Big and Small Changes This section is more about the li- brary and less about support. When I first started helping libraries with their web content, back in the heady Web 2.0 days, it was to encourage them to have websites that were active, living spaces. This could be as simple as mak- ing sure the library’s hours were correct and the links all worked, but also that public documents such as trustee meet- ing minutes and all the library policies were put online in a timely fashion. I still tell libraries to do a quick content review of these things and include not only their own website but also popular sites that may republish that content.

Are your library’s hours correct on Yelp?

Does Siri know the street address for your library? Does Google Maps link to the correct library website address?

Does Facebook say your library is open when it’s not? If you switch between summer and winter hours, do these changes show up accurately in all these other places?

All of these things may have been up- dated by staffers or scrapped by content aggregators at some point in the past.

They should be regularly checked and updated. All of these sites have mecha- nisms for submitting correct informa- tion, although some can take longer than others. There is such a thing as reliable online information, and we can prove it.

The more we build trustworthy websites that people can rely on for accurate and timely information, the more they can become ready to explore the larger world of digital content. Q Jessamyn West says what she means and keeps her promises.

Subscribe to her newsletter at tinyletter.com/jessamyn. ONCE THE DEADLINE HAS PASSED, UPDATE THE FILES. Send us your case studies, best practices, and research results for publication in an upcoming issue. To see the complete lineup of topics for this year, consult the website and submit your query online. infotoday.com/cilmag JUNE JULY/AUGUST SEPTEMBER Ebooks Revisited Get ’er Done #library Assessment of ebook deployments in public, academic, and special libraries; collection management in a mixed-media environment; electronic resource management strategies; as well as usage data and ROI on ebook-acquisition modelsTips and tricks for using any library technology, how-to articles on implementing a vendor or open source solution, top 10 reviews of any category of products or resources that involve libtech, and anecdotes from your personal experience working with library ITStrategies for enhancing the user experience, online or via mobile devices; social media campaigns that worked; SEO techniques for library resource discovery; tips for web design or mobile apps; as well as web publishing, podcasting, and video conferencing Copyright ofComputers inLibraries isthe property ofInformation TodayInc.anditscontent may notbecopied oremailed tomultiple sitesorposted toalistserv without thecopyright holder's expresswrittenpermission. However,usersmayprint, download, oremail articles for individual use.