InfoSoup Development Blog

We have developed some Guidelines for linking to web sites in InfoSoup [pdf] and would appreciate your input on them. The guidelines will help us when developing future pages for InfoSoup. For example, we have a new subscription to BookLetters that we have been trying to get ready for public consumption. When preparing the BookLetters info, it led us to create a Readers' Page with additional information to complement both the catalog and the BookLetters booklists. Ideally, we would add a small, controlled list of web sites to the page, but don't want to proceed with that before the linking guidelines are agreed upon. (The Reader's Page and BookLetters info is almost ready to go, and we're hoping to have it ready for your comments by the end of the week.)

We appreciate your input!
Beth and Evan

We have been working hard on preparing our new BookLetters subscription for public consumption. BookLetters are "annotated lists of new or noteworthy books covering a wide variety of subjects and genres." Most are updated monthly and you can subscribe to them to have them delivered to you via email or RSS feed. Take a look at the BookLetters page to see what is currently available. BookLetters also provides lists of award winning books. We have an adult Award Winners page and an Award Winners for Kids page. We have plans for an Award Winning Books for Teens page as well, but it's not quite ready for prime time. (NOTE: some of the headers/navigation on the BookLetters pages don't match, but we're working on it!)

Prepping the BookLetters info fed into a bigger idea for a Readers' page and a much better version of a Kids page, now called Family Page. We wanted to pull together info from the catalog, BookLetters, InfoSoup booklists and some outside resources to make pages that would be interesting, timely, and helpful for our patrons. Evan spent a good deal of time reviewing relevant sites for these pages based on the guidelines we presented earlier this week, so these pages will show you more tangible examples of what we were describing in the guidelines. Even though a good deal of work has been put into these pages, we are hoping that you will have feedback on what you like, don't like, sites that we could consider adding (or removing), etc. We're very excited about them and are happy to be posting them for your comments.

Headers that have an * by them are looking for good names if anyone has a great idea! And overall site navigation on all of these pages will be tweaked once we know what will stay, go or change.

Also, we are working on a Teens page and hope to create a Movies page, a Music page and possibly an Audiobooks page based on the models above.

We look forward to hearing what you think.
Thanks!
Beth and Evan

We have posted another set of guidelines for your review and comments. This one concerns the cataloging of electronic resources in InfoSoup. The last guidelines were specifically related to linking to web sites on other InfoSoup pages, while this one focuses on what sites or resources are actually cataloged. Please take a look at Cataloging Electronic Resources in InfoSoup [pdf] and post your questions and comments below. Thanks!

As promised, we have drafted a Teens page following the design of the Readers' and Family pages already discussed. Please take a look and post your comments and/or questions. Thanks, Beth and Evan