The group agreed to evaluate the Yale style guide carefully with an eye to adopting it at Cornell. If we adopt the Yale guide, we'll supplement it with some items that we feel to be important for Cornell, and we'll develop our own Cornell templates.
The group agreed to create an html page to contain a "draft in progress" of this document that would be supplementary to the Yale guide (or whichever we finally decide to select). This in-progress document will be considered to contain decisions made for the current environment, with recognition that new decisions will be made as the environment evolves.
Michael will begin to develop the home page he maintains for this committee (at http://www.mannlib.cornell.edu/design/design.html) as a draft template, incorporating examples of the group's decisions. It will evolve to reflect our work over the next few months.
A few specific design issues:
--Regular maintanance of pages is crucial.
--Use caution when using personal names -- staff come and go at institutions, it doesn't make sense to list staff who are no longer there.
--A standard header graphic is strongly recommended for unit library home pages, this header to follow the "upturned page" motif used by the CU Library Home Page and by various other units (Eng, Mann, Phys Sci, OKU for example).
--Each unit library should choose a color for its header and then use that color as a unifying feature throughout its pages. For example this color could be used around icons and buttons, and in lines separating sections. However, don't overdo it or the pages will be slow in loading. The color red should be reserved for the CU Library home page.
--In footer bars with strings of navigational buttons, individual gifs for buttons may be better to use than image maps for whole strings of buttons. With individual gifs it is easier to add or change individual navigational buttons.
--Terminology: a button is a feature that "goes somewhere" -- it has a link to another location. It may have a graphic on it. An icon helps you see where you are or what the purpose of a section is.
--Each page from every unit library should have something on it that identifies where it's from, but the "upturned page" header would be used only for a library's principal home page.
--It is important that text in graphics and buttons can be easily read. Legibility must be an underlying principle. Consider the visually impaired, the color blind, and users of nongraphical browsers when designing pages and selecting graphical elements.
The next meeting will be 1/19, 9am, Olin 106.
A proposed regular meeting time for the semester is 9-11 on Tuesdays. Group members will check their calendars and get back to Pat about this time.
Susan Barnes
Posted 15 January 1996