By now everybody has some sort of library web page (Intranet, Internet, or both), and we should all be evaluating our web pages and try to do a redesign at least every 2 years.
Why every 2 years? Things change, you have more online resources, you switch resource vendors, your users are increasingly more savvy and demanding.

It is very easy for librarians to have a myopic view of their site. In other words they accidentally start to think as the librarian and not the user.
For example:
We conducted a user survey to determine our user's needs and their thoughts and behavior patterns when they searched our Intranet page for information. The results were illuminating.
Most users were confused by the term database, they weren't sure what a database was and why they would use it. The web page usually referred to journals on the shelves as "print journals" or "print collection." These terms were confusing to our users, they inferred that meant you could click the print button on the screen for an online article. Many users were unfamiliar with a catalog and what information could be found in a catalog. Some users were searching the catalog as they would search an online database. They would plug in a phrase and expect to get a list of online full text articles displayed.

Now keep in mind this user survey was given to doctors, residents, interns, hospital administrators. These people were fairly educated users and there was confusion with these concepts. Can you imagine what happens when you start to library jargon like; ILL, OPAC, MeSH, etc.?

If you are interested in redesigning your site you might want to check out Vincent Flander's Web Pages That Suck page on The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004.

In my example, the library's original intranet site that contained library jargon or confusing terms unknowingly committed one of the biggest design mistakes. We accidentally the web site for our (librarian) needs, not our patron needs.

According to Flanders, "What visitors care about is getting their problems solved. Most people visit a web site to solve one or more of the following three problems. 1. They want/need information. 2. They want/need to make a purchase / donation. 3. They want/need to be entertained."

If your patrons can't get what they want from your web site (information) then they will go to your competitor's site (Google).

There are 14 of these biggest mistakes. Don't worry you don't need to be web geek to understand what he is saying. If you are not the web designer for you site, still look through the list so that you can offer suggestions and constructive criticism to your web designer. It will give you a new way to look at your web site.