In the previous chapter we took a look at what's involved in building a basic site -- hardware, software, and expertise. Very quickly, though, you'll want to explore the added dimension that audiovisual materials can bring to your online presentation, or to set your site in the context of an overall site for your library, to keep it up to date, and to develop measures for assessing the success of your efforts.

[Sorry! Our agreement with our publisher does not allow us to put the entire book online. If you would like to have the entire text, and the CD, there's an easy way to get it: Spend $50 (cheap for a book and a CD!) Just call ALA Editions at 1-800-545-2433 or order online (for a few dollars more) at http://www.amazon.com (search for "fundraising and friend-raising")]

Normally, when we're putting up new pages at the Penn Library site, we try to steer clear of fancy-schmancy effects that make our users download plug-ins. We've found an exception to this case in the RealAudio or RealVideo technology. As many of you probably know by now, this technology lets a user begin to watch or listen to a sound or video clip while it is still downloading. We did our first test of this technology on a new online exhibition celebrating the gift of the Leopold Stokowski papers to the Library. We think the download process is simple enough that many users can handle it with no trouble (Laura tested it with a family member who can barely find is way from one link to another on a web site, and he managed it, so she thinks that anyone can probably do it.) This simple, no-cost download adds so much function to a browser that we are encouraging our users to do it.

You can see our page about the exhibition and related events in our Friends newsletter at

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