[Sigia-l] Entertaining discussion on Web4lib

Wed Apr 9 14:25:03 EDT 2003

This issue popped up on the CHMINF Listserve on Monday.  I'm forwarding,
with his permission, the message Fred Stoss posted on that listserv.

Craig

Craig S. Booher
Technical Information Coordinator
Kimberly-Clark Corporation
P.O. Box 2001                                         Phone:
920/721-5219
Neenah, WI  54957-2001                          Fax:  920/721-8471

-----Original Message-----
From: Frederick W Stoss [mailto:fstoss at BUFFALO.EDU] 
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2003 4:51 PM
To: CHMINF-L at LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU
Subject: ALA Web site DISASTER in the Works????

Check your ALA URLs and be prepared to make some BIG changes to
accomodate
the new ALA Web sites.

I have a very sad feeling that ALA is creating a new disaster with its
new
and improved Web site. Maybe I should be more patient, but this looks
like
one of those examples of hurrying up and doing it wrong.

ALA released its new Web site today and along with it the NEW URLs to
all
of its 40,000-plus Web pages. Not every old ALA Web page has a redirect
connction made from it. Some new ALA sites as well as nearly every one
of
the ALA Web sites more deeply embedded below a top tier of ALA selected
sites provides now that simple 404 Error, stating that the site cannot
be
found. Try using the new and improved search engine? I cannot get it to
work, maybe too much traffic on the first day. Maybe I am paranoid.

See those new and improved URLs for your Web sites? They are now 40-50+
characters long! It will be easier to tell people how to navigate the
ALA
Web site to find things than it will be to give a simple URL!

This is like telling a person coming into our library, asking for a
book,
and being told: go up to the third floor, take a left down the second
corridor on your right, turn right in to the stack row numbered 145A,
which should be on your left, go the the third bank of shelving, and
then
to the fifth shelf, where you will find the book you want as the
fifteenth
item on your left (providing someone has not taken any items #ed 1-14
off
of that shelf).

I think only ALA is capable of doing this! Put this one in the file
marked

        CONFUSION @ your library [association Web site]

ALA Councilor, Karen Schneider, recently provided ALA Council with a far
more in-depth analysis of this.

I remain faithfully Shocked and Awed,

Fred Stoss
Frederick W. Stoss, M.S. (zool.), M.L.S.
Science and Engineering Library
University at Buffalo--SUNY
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 09:18:01 -0700
From: Karen G. Schneider <kgs at bluehighways.com>
To: ALA Council List <alacoun at ala1.ala.org>
Subject: [ALACOUN:9274] ALA Web site

I am going through a list of 34 Web sites for ALA in a database I
manage. All have either moved to a very long address or redirect to a
page telling me that the resource is not found.

I understand why item-level resources (small pages) do not redirect to
their new locations, although with over 22,000 sites linking to ala.org
resources, it would have been good for ALA to provide a heads-up to the
library world before the site debuted so we didn't hear about it
third-hand at the last minute.  The site is responding so slowly to
search requests that I am assuming some sites, such as ALA Resources for
Parents, Teens and Kids (http://www.ala.org/parents/ ), are simply gone,
because the URLs don't redirect anywhere and the search isn't going
well.  (That Parents resource was alive and well as late as February
10.)

By the way, the search results should tell you how many resources were
found by your search, rather than just presenting 25 results per page
and letting you guess at how precise or imprecise your search is.

In some cases, resources which were advertised less than a month ago are
now 404s, such as the following two sites, announced mid-March:

Campaign to Save America's Libraries Tool Kit
http://www.ala.org/pio/csal_toolkit.html

Latest Funding Cuts [To Libraries]
http://www.ala.org/pio/funding_cuts.html

So, is ALA expecting us to drill through 20,000 pages to find these
resources, based on... what?  I took a wild stab at it, but the site is
responding so slowly that plowing through Issues and Advocacy (where I
assume these can be found, somewhere) is just not feasible... I made it
several links down and still can't find it, and that took several
minutes.

What I am also not understanding, in a big way, is why, in the case of
major resources, divisions, etc., we are losing short URLs in favor of
long URLs, e.g.:

http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Our_Association/Divisions/ALSC
/ALSC.htm

replaces

http://www.ala.org/alsc (ALSC)

and

http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Our_Association/Offices/Intell
ectual_Freedom3/Banned_Books_Week/Banned_Books_Week.htm

replaces

http://www.ala.org/bbooks/ (Banned Books Week)

and

http://www.ala.org/aaslhomeTemplate.cfm?Section=AASL&Template=/TaggedPag
e/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=17&ContentID=23240

replaces

http://www.ala.org/aasl/  (AASL)

This isn't technically necessary, and losing the mnemonic is not a good
idea.  If you can't write it on a p-slip or sound it out over the phone,
you've lost a major tool for sharing key site information--word of
mouth.

The memo I saw noted that "the Web site is in transition." I'm hoping
that the transition period includes restoration of major URLs, at least
as additional access points, so that these Web addresses can be marketed
and shared with librarians and library users without simply saying, "go
to the site and fish around--it's there somewhere."

n.b. the IRS is just one example where a very large site moved to a
design with lengthy, often temporary URLs, and then a few months later
repaired the site problem so that key resources were findable and
reasonably mnemonic (so that Business information is again findable at
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/index.html , for example, instead of some
incredibly long dynamic URL).

----------------------------------------------
Karen G. Schneider kgs at lii.org  http://lii.org
Ala Councilor at Large

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