The Denver Public Library

For this week's blog, I chose the Denver Public Library.

From examining the library homepage, I noticed that, the library appears to be very active in its community.

Additionally, I noticed on the main webpage, in addition to the date and time, users have the ability to check the local weather forecast. I thought this was a cute and unique feature.

On the left sidebar of the main page are links to a Kids page, a Teens page, and a page for Spanish language. The Kids and Teens pages are geared specifically for those age groups, and offer an assortment of activities and resources.

On the right sidebar is a Live News Feed, which shows an assortment of headlines from various news agencies. Users have the option to subscribe to the library’s RSS Feeds, which includes book reviews, library podcasts, the library newsletter, and more.

The library also offers an Ask the Librarian service 24/7. Users can chat online with a librarian and get an answer to their question any time of day.

Also within the left sidebar are various helpful links, including Research Resources, Denver Public Library Downloads, Events and Classes, and About the Library. I found the About the Library page to be a complete wealth of information. It covered everything from Budget Information, the history of the library, Dewey Decimal guide, to the Collection Development Policy and the organizational structure of the library, and much more! From one of the information sources on this page, I discovered that the library employs 500 people, and altogether the staff speaks 11 languages. I’m very curious to know what those languages happen to be.

This library appears to truly be an information institution. It offers a multitude of opportunities for all kinds of learning.

From the library catalog page, is a link titled “Didn’t Find It? Try This.” This directs you to a new page that shows what else you can do to locate your item. One available option is the Prospector, which is a combined catalog of over 23 Colorado and Wyoming libraries that will loan items to your local branch. Also available is a link to WorldCat, which will search a national and international catalog. The library also offers the option request the item, and states that they will do their best to either purchase or borrow the item for you. I found this to be a very pro-active and user friendly approach. I know that personally, it’s never occurred to me to actually request an item from the library if I know they don’t own it.

For all the information and services available throughout the library website, I found the actual catalog to be relatively unimpressive. The search results page is pretty plain. Looking at the full record for an item is equally basic. There don’t appear to be any special features or unique functions. The presentation is boring compared to the other OPACs I’ve looked at. But, I suppose that it serves it’s basic purpose. It gets the job done without being too flashy.

For a select few, the item full record offers links for Excerpt, Summary, or Review, as available. Some titles have all three links and some have none. The summary option, however, is just a basic one-sentence notation annotation.

One positive is that when using the author search, you can search for the author’s name in any order, which is helpful. Somehow, I typically manage to forget to enter the last name first. So, this would save me the time of having to go back and correct my search.

However, if I left the search page inactive, it would give me the message: "Your search in the DPL catalog is about to time out. Your session has been idle too long and is about to time out." If I didn’t click on the link to re-activate, after about 5 minutes it would re-direct me to the library main page, losing my search results. I’m not entirely sure why it does this. It seems a bit unnecessary, but perhaps it is trying to protect my privacy in this manner.

Overall, I enjoyed exploring the library's webpages. The library seems to be a real resource to the community. The actual OPAC isn't too fancy, but seems to meet the very basic needs of the user.