The Athens Regional Library System (ARLS) serves the residents of Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Georgia and its surrounding areas. The website for ARLS is fairly serviceable but is in serious need of an update. The addition of Facebook and Twitter buttons are good first nod toward a forward-thinking “web 2.0” social media savvy website but overall the look, feel and general usability of the site is outdated. The information necessary to the average user is (for the most part) there to be found but the hierarchy of information is not intuitive which makes it difficult to access. Furthermore, information is not packaged well which greatly hinders both the usability of the site and effective information relay.

Using the Menu Bar at the top of the page you can jump to critiques in five main areas: Information Design, Usability Design, Graphic Design, Accessibility Design and Functional Design. While these areas do tend to overlap, high-level and specific (“easy-fix”) critiques can be found on the page for each area. You can also find a Resource Page with links to the sites consulted to evaluate the Athens Library System Website.