(Courtesy, Gilles San Martin CC by-SA 2.0, Pediculus humanua capitis)
In preparing my marketing library email list platform, I am seeing library website after website, and they are communicating to me. It makes me reflect on two lines in Robert Burns’ poem from 1786 “O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!” I’ll leave the title alone.
Contact pages or boxes containing contact information communicate a lot. There are two major types of presentation as I see it. This is true of websites in general, not just library websites. There are sites that try to make it as easy as possible to communicate with those who arrive at the website, and there are others who underplay communicate to the point of appearing virtually shy or disinterested when it comes to two-way communication. The latter is clear when it comes to placing Contact Us buttons in tiny type and in locations where the website viewer would not necessarily look for it. At http://www.durangopubliclibrary.org/ the Durango Public Library in Arizona has a good model for a serious Contact Us page. Click the link, click About, scroll down to click on Contact Us. The contact type size is large enough not to challenge older people and it provides both phone for local access and email addresses for those for whom phone access is not the best choice. No question, it’s welcoming to patrons, potential patrons, and others.
