NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 23 number 3 - Spring 2003

A Virtual Tour of the NCSU Libraries

By Megan Oakleaf, Research and Information Services, and May Chang, Digital Library Initiatives

Some patrons come to the NCSU Libraries to use its valuable information resources. Some come to search online for materials. Some come just for the coffee. Library patrons visit the library for many reasons, but when they arrive for the first time, they often have the same experience--they are overwhelmed by the size, variety, and complexity of the library facilities.

Librarians have always posted signage and offered on-site tours to help new users become acclimated to the library environment. Increasingly, however, patrons expect to have access to such help twenty-four hours a day and from remote locations. In summer 2002 work began on a virtual tour project at the Libraries to provide visual, descriptive, and directional information to users via the Libraries' Web site. The NCSU Libraries Virtual Tour was completed in early January 2003, just in time for the new semester. It may be found at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/vtour/.

The virtual tour provides many benefits. Because access to the Libraries' Web site is available twenty-four hours each day of the week, the virtual tour is independent of time and location. This allows users to access the virtual tour from home before coming to the Libraries. They can familiarize themselves with the Libraries at their convenience. Reference librarians using virtual reference services can recommend the tour to patrons who cannot attend an on-site tour. In the Libraries, staff at all service points can refer to it when giving directions or answering basic questions about library services.

The virtual tour can also be used to supplement on-site tours and class instruction. Instructors may ask students to familiarize themselves with the Libraries before attending library instruction to generate questions ahead of time or just to find their meeting location within the D. H. Hill Library building.

Finally, the virtual tour may help prospective students and their parents to learn more about the services and facilities provided by the NCSU Libraries. Librarians may point prospective and newly admitted students to the virtual tour to help them become familiar with the building and facilities and to publicize events and resources focused on undergraduate students.

On the virtual tour Web site, users may take the tour, browse specific locations in the D. H. Library, or learn about the branch and affiliated libraries. The tour focuses on a selection of locations in the library most frequently visited by patrons. Every page has an image of the location as well as a floor plan, description and direction information, and a navigation menu. Where available, content is linked to relevant pages on the Libraries' Web site. The library has also included a self-guided tour that users can print out to take along on a walking tour of the D. H. Hill Library.

Behind the scenes, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is used in the architecture of the virtual tour Web site. XML, a WWW Consortium standard, is a markup language for documents containing structured information. Most people use HTML (HyperText Markup Language) to create pages for the Web. Unlike HTML, XML provides a facility to define tags and the structural relationships between them. XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is; HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks. This separation of content and presentation enables better Web management.

The descriptions and directions for each site were provided by staff of the Libraries and coordinated by Megan Oakleaf, librarian for instruction and undergraduate research. Photographs of the various locations were taken by Kelly Seiber, a student assistant, who also created the images with softer borders. Shirley Rodgers of the Libraries' Systems Department provided the images of the floor plans. Web site architecture, design, and graphics were done by Web Development Librarian May Chang with programming support from Tom Zack, both from the Digital Library Initiatives Department.

Please take the tour to become more familiar with the Libraries' facilities and to feel more at home while using its many resources.