WebJunction LAUNCHED

Continuing the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's U.S. Library Program, OCLC, the Colorado State Library, The Benton Foundation, Isopyh, and TechSoup have created WebJunction. This technology portal is a web-based, public access computing center that provides information about using technology effectively in a public setting. It is intended for use by public librarians and other organizations that help the public use computers to get information and resources.

WebJunction currently has five main areas:

Policies and Practices helps libraries keep track of the various political and environmental issues that are critical to sustaining public access to information technology. It includes sections on technology planning, acceptable use policies, issues around accessibility, and strategies for fundraising and marketing.

Technology Resources helps library staff stay ahead of technology issues, problems, and innovations. The portal helps librarians maintain existing infrastructure while keeping pace with new trends. It includes tools and tips for handling hardware and software within the library, overview of basic and advanced networking options, security measures, and guides to basic troubleshooting.

Buying Guide helps librarians plan review options before making decisions to upgrade or change the existing installation. It includes reviews and peer opinions of hardware and software, purchasing advice, and information about buying discounted and used hardware and software.

Learning Center is an online learning environment that has online courses, downloadable lesson, training tips and other tools to enhance public access computing knowledge and skills. It can help staff acquire and update their own skills and help them learn how to teach the public.

Community Forum allows freewheeling interaction with peers around the country. Librarians can post and discuss items of mutual interest, attend online events facilitated by experts, and access career information, event calendars, and success stories.

Connecting to WebJunction is easy. You must have Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher OR Netscape Navigator 6.0 or higher. When you log on you can register to become a member, opt-in to help evaluate and develop the portal, or just search for information.

To design the most useful library portal possible, WebJunction conducted a needs assessment and gathered more than 1,800 responses from library and technical staff, as well as state library and regional library cooperative staff about what they would like to see the site contain. With the needs assessment in mind, WebJunction is designed to help users collaboratively plan for the merging technology needs of their organization. WebJunction improvements and enhancements will be driven by portal users who provide feedback about their use of WebJunction and their needs. Content will be enhanced by contributions from portal users.