My library recently redesigned their website. It was awful before, but I have to say that I think it's worse now. For one thing, it's really ugly, but that's subjective, and I'm sure someone likes it. My complaint is with usability.

I don't know why anyone else uses the library's website, but I use it for two things--to search their book holdings and put books on reserve, and to check what books I have checked out and their due dates. Oh, and a third thing, I guess--to renew books that will reach their due date before I have a chance to return them.

On the old site, in order to get to your account information, you clicked a link that said, "My Account." When they redesigned the site, I searched in vain for that link, or for anything that said anything about an account. "Library Services," maybe? Nope. "General Information?" I finally clicked on a link that said, "What's on my library card?" Hm. Actually, I thought that might be a screen that explained what the various numbers on the card meant, but no, that apparently is the new account screen.

So once I figured that out, the next thing I wanted to do was search. The old "Search" link now says, "Search & Research," but when I click on it, I get a screen that asks if I want to "search this site," "search newspaper and magazine databases," "ask us a question," or access "search engines."

I don't want to do any of those things. I want to search the library's database, but there doesn't seem to be a link for that. Under "Search This Site," it says: "Looking for something on ______ Library's web page? Search here!" That's not what I want, I don't care what's on their "web page," I want to know what's in their catalog. I click on it, though, and I get a page with a dropdown list that lets me choose either "Website" or "Library Catalog."

That's what I want--why was it so hard to find it? I'm not knocking the library, I think it's wonderful that they're online, and I think it's great that I can do all these things, but I don't understand how things like this happen. I know that I'm a lot more cognizant of these kinds of things since I do it for a living, but, also, someone had to design and build this site, and one would hope that they also do it for a living. As the designer/programmer, you don't always have control over these kinds of things, but change just for the sake of change is seldom good.

"What's on my card?" Well, okay, maybe someone thought that was better. I don't think so, but maybe someone did. But the search thing still bugs me, particularly when they went to the trouble of writing a non-helpful explanation. Ah well.