Does it make sense to maintain lists of generic web links when that information is available on the web from other sources? David King at Kansas Public Library started re-thinking the time and energy the library staff devoted to their lists of links, and at the same time wondered what they COULD do to better serve their patrons. While this case study centered on a public library environment, the questions and solutions are quite pertinent to all kind of libraries.
First things first. They had over 2,700 links, most of them to web resources. They learned from their statistics that the most popular links were to local web sites and library subscription databases. About 2,200 of their links were hit only 11-49 times per month. So they concluded that most links were't being used, and the local information was what their users were really after.
Where to go from there? They decided to abandon their lists of links and instead create guide-like topic pages in a similar way that "about.com" pulls together information on a topic, providing content by incorporating their own blogs and articles, links to library materials pulled from the catalog, focused web links, reader's advisories, local programs, and news. They also offer RSS feeds for each topic page.
The resulting pages are very portal like in the way a variety of information is displayed on one page. See their Harry Potter page for a good example.
It's easy to see how this model could be used in public, special and academic libraries to compile information on any topic. But perhaps the most important lesson is that we need to consider the cost-benefit of the services we provide so that we direct our efforts to services that are most important to our users.
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