Most useful for reference desk staff who know what type of resource needs to be used. Very few customers have this knowledge.

Increase usefulness to customers:

• Use customer terminology
• Arrange and label sections by the task rather than the resource type
• Highlight information by lists, graphics, bold or italics so the customer's eye is drawn to what is most important
• Annotate the entries to explain content and search strategies (if applicable)
• Refer to instructional pages for customers who are less information literate
• Include how to get more information/assistance

Are there reference questions that the staff depend on you to answer? Why make the customer wait for you? Why not give your staff and the customer what they need to know to find the information on their own? You can do this with a web page.

The most difficult chemistry question is finding property data, for instance, the autoignition temperature of kerosene. By providing the Index to Chemical, Physical and Other Property Data

• all library staff have the information needed to assist customers, and

• customers have direct access to the information and consequently may not need library staff assistance.

Is there an assignment given each semester or each time a class is offered? Are students bombarding the reference desk with a plea for help on an assignment? Are your colleagues at the desk having a difficult time helping students with a particular assignment? Give both the students and your colleagues assistance via a web page.

• If an instruction session is given to a class, put your instructions on a web page.
  • When the students go to do the assignment, they may have forgotten what you said in class, but they'll be able to consult your web page for a refresher.

  • Your colleagues will be able to help students better if they also can see what you've told the students to do, what resources you have recommended, and your instructions on how to use the resources.

  • There's never enough time to include everything you need/want to say in a 50-minute class. The web page allows you to give the students all that extra information.

  • Arrange the page by the tasks the students need to do, not by the resource type.

  • Use outlines, lists, bold, italics, graphics, etc. to draw the students' eyes to the most important information. Avoid long paragraphs.

  • For each resource, tell why they should use it, what's in it and how to use it.

  • Include links to appropriate instructional pages for students who may not be information literate.

  • Provide link(s) to the instructor's web page for the class and/or to the instructor's web page for that assignment.

  • Include where the students can get more help.

• If the instructor does not want a librarian to come to the class or if the instructor did not know he/she could have had a librarian come - do a web page anyway! If you need to be politically correct, the page does not need to have the course name and number on it, just a title that will be recognizable to the students and your colleagues.

  For the example of CHM336: Pet Molecule Project Research Tools and Strategies, this could have been titled: How To Find the Synthesis of Organic Compounds or Pharmaceuticals.

Are these pages being used? YES! They are used by the science reference desk staff (8 librarians, 3 paraprofessionals), the Science Current Periodicals and Microforms Room staff (6 paraprofessionals and several student workers), the Science Circulation Desk Staff (paraprofessionals and student workers) plus the reference desk staff (librarians and paraprofessionals) in the main library. And many pages are also being used by students and librarians from other universities.

Usage statistics for Science Library's over 200 web pages during the Spring 2001 semester show that:

• the Property Data Index is the 2nd most used page (after the library's home page) with almost 6000 hits (average of 347 hits per week),

• the Science Reference Room page that is an alphabetical list of the web pages is the 4th most used page with 1506 hits (89/wk),

• the CHM336: Pet Molecule Project page is the 5th most used page with 997 hits (59/wk)

• the Chemistry Resources menu page is the 15th most used page with 401 hits (24/wk)