Friday, November 26, 2010

Not cool: no "about" information on a website

No “about” information!

(Things about websites that may drive you crazy, but can be overcome by a savvy student. These same things are also lessons to the wise for mistakes to avoid when you yourself create your own Web content.)

The About information about a site is especially helpful when you discover a site by googling. The “About” link on a website is practically a default, an automatic section of a site that introduces you to the nature of its content. Reading the about may give you some time-saving clues as to how worthwhile it is to explore it further, whether its information will be pertinent or reliable for your information needs. (The same holds true about the “bio” information about the website author or authors.)

It can be frustrating to encounter that occasional site that doesn’t seem to want to tell you anything about itself or its creators. You have to navigate through the site to really get a good idea of what it’s about. It’s even more puzzling and annoying when a major national site of high repute has little or no about information. Does the site think it’s so well-known that no introduction is needed? An about should tell us the purpose and scope of the site, who its founders and contributors are, date of its creation, and so on. Sometimes the only way you can get about information about a site (if it is one of those really prominent ones) is to go to a Wikipedia article on it! I’ve done that quite a number of times when trying to describe a site that I’ve bookmarked in Delicious for the Library or myself.

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