The city of San Leandro unveiled a new website a few weeks ago, and I’m already frustrated with it. For one, it can be really slow. Unfortunately like so many others the city chose bells and whistles instead of basic functionality. But my real beef is with the library website, or, more accurately, websites. There are two of them.
If you do a google search for “San Leandro Library”, the first hit, under the title “San Leandro Public Library” is http://www.library.ci.san-leandro.ca.us/. Here you find the full catalog of the library as well as access to your personal library account, allowing you to see what books you’ve checked out, renew books and place holds. It’s very useful and quite functional.
But that website is of no use whatsoever if what you are looking to do is find out library hours, services, activities or talk to a librarian. To do so, you have to go to: http://www.sanleandro.org/depts/library/default.asp – but to find this page, you either have to go to the City website and look in the “Departments” folder for “Public Library”, or go to the second page on google, which few people do.
Now, just HOW HARD would it be to put a link to the Public Library homepage from the catalog page? Not that hard, I’m sure – and yet, they haven’t done it. Just in case it was an oversight, I just e-mailed the head librarian about it. Let’s see what happens.
On the plus side, the Public Library homepage now has a chat tool with the information desk which you can use to ask your questions and even request books! Of course, someone has to find this webpage first šŸ™‚