User-­Oriented Approach to Content Improvement in Official Library Websites

Abstract

The creation of official websites of modern libraries has opened up for them fundamentally new opportunities to present a wide range of information resources and services for remote users. The purpose of the article is to reveal the problem of determining the rational composition and placement of headings and subheadings in the content structure of library sites and to present a typical content model as one of the possible means to ensure the orientation of users on the sites of the same type of libraries from the standpoint of a user-oriented approach. A typical model of the content of the official website of the central libraries of the subjects of the Russian Federation is proposed. It can be used in any of the libraries of the types under consideration (republican, regional, autonomous districts and regions, as well as central libraries of cities of federal subordination). The proposed typical model is aimed at overcoming the unreasonable diversity of structural elements by reducing the existing list of headings and subheadings and bringing them to uniformity and to provide mutual understanding between library site developers and remote users. The unification of the content structure of official library websites can become a condition not only for improving the quality of the content of individual sites, but also for ensuring their compatibility to form uniform digital library and information space in Russia.

Keywords

• official library websites
• user-oriented approach
• standard model
• site content
• unification
• headings
• subheadings