Chapter 5. Website Design Tips

Authors

  • Laura Solomon

Abstract

Before I dive into the many reasons for which one should hate these things, let’s be sure everyone knows what a carousel is.

Does your library’s site have any widgets with rotating images? Especially big ones, that take up a big chunk of the site’s home page space? Technically, just about any widget that rotates images, automatically or not, is a carousel. But in my own experience, libraries are overly fond of the ginormous kind that is front and center and screams “I’M A COOL ANIMATION!” at the user.

Yes, these things can look amazing. However, for something that takes up so much real estate, do you know how many problems a carousel solves?

Author Biography

Laura Solomon

Laura Solomon is the library services manager for the Ohio Public Library Information Network (https://oplin.ohio.gov/) and a W3C-certified front-end web developer. She has been doing web development and design for more than twenty years, both in public libraries and as an independent consultant. She specializes in developing with Drupal (https://www.drupal.org/). She is a 2010 Library Journal Mover and Shaker (https://www.libraryjournal.com/section/movers). She’s written three books (https://www.meanlaura.com/books) about social media and content marketing, specifically for libraries, and speaks nationally on both these and technology-related topics. As a former children’s librarian, she enjoys bringing the fun of technology to audiences and giving libraries the tools they need to better serve the virtual customer.

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Published

2022-04-05

Issue

Vol. 58 No. 3 (2022): April

Section

Chapters