-RANT BEGINS-

Visiting Zeldman.com, I found a link to the redesigned New York Public Library. And it’s way too awesome! I hope this will pave the way for a redesign of the unsuable island’s library site.

The first reason why I need to heap praises on this excellent piece of art is that it is so usable. The front page presents information regarding the library and the books and materials presents a page of different databases that i can search. And each catalog’s link is easy to remember and just typing that in would get you to the search area for that catalog. And what’s more each catalog loads zillion times faster than the Singapore’s online library “catalogue”.

The National Library of Singapore has a link to a mysteriously named “catalogue” on its main page. On clicking that, you are asked to choose two “databases” -one of which is that of a Military Institute, though I have no idea why I would search the database of a military institute (which deserves a separate search icon on the main page). And then finally, after a long wait (during which I try to count the number of vowels in the Page-Loading message - and always have time for a recheck), I see a semblance of a search page loading. This is where my quest to search library materials should technically end. But it doesn’t, I am again asked to choose the mode of my search -Easy or Advanced, after which, I get to actually search what I want. And I always regret visitng the site.

Another regret is the pathetic use of colors. From what I have seen, all government owned organizations use horrible colur schemes. Be it on a website or on multistoried apartments built by the Housing Development Board. The apartments are sights for sore eyes, freshly painted with sickly blue and each having the block number painted over the WHOLE building in pink!

P.S. Note the use of frames in both the Government Websites. Specifically note the color of the “e-services” banner ad that kills your vision in the HDB site.

-RANT ENDS-