First things first: The Newsbank headline was "Mark Your Calendar Today Thursday 19", which a few sentences in noted the Men's Book Group meeting (but Roselle wasn't listed first in the article). My Heritage Quest search resulted in 2 Abraham Lincolns in Illinois in 1860 - one born in KY and age 51, one born in IL and age 22. Since I know President Abraham Lincoln was not 22 when elected President, was born in KY and lived in Springfield/Sangamon County, President Lincoln was the first choice on the list I was provided.
Other databases I have explored: Grolier Online, World Book Reference, Automotive Repair Maintenance, and NoveList K-8. They were all very easy to use and helpful. Most were to help my kids, either with homework or to find books they might enjoy. I used the Auto Maintenance rather than buying the book for our outdated cars. They were helpful in changing out tail lights, fuses, etc.
For me, the least popular database would be the Thomas Register, although I don't know that I really know what it is. I know my husband used to use the big books, as did purchasing departments in companies I used to work for. Don't know if this is helpful to patrons or not, but personally of no interest to me. The most popular for me, and I would imagine to a large portion of our patrons, would be the educational 'from home' databases, such as Grolier, World Book, NoveList K-8, and Live Homework Help. Hopefully students throughout Roselle know about these databases and use them - and perhaps are taught to use them in the schools (Library outreach?) so that they know about them and can share the knowledge with the parents.
There's nothing our website is lacking to me. However, I DO think that we have too much information and not organized in a clear, concise way. Which is why we're working on a re-design. Personally, I prefer not to have to scroll up and down, and since my monitor settings are even smaller than the average (more can fit on the screen), I can only imagine how much up/down scrolling someone with a 'normal' monitor setting would have to do. I like simple - a few buttons from which to choose, click one, next page, click one, and I'm where I need to be.
One thing that we learned in a safety class in staff training is that our floorplan shouldn't be posted on our website - it's probably enough to let people know that YS is upstairs, and RASD/Teen/computers and study areas are on the 1st floor.
I didn't realize there was so much information (more than a blurb) on the Foundation, Friends and the Board of Trustees. There is a lot of text, but there are also a lot of pictures. Perhaps friendly graphics would make the site appear warmer, but all in all, it works well, makes items easy to find, and is easy to use once you have a PIN. WE ROCK!!!
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