About this site
What is the Virtual Library? |
How the Virtual Library Works |
The Future of the Virtual Library |
Accessibility Policy of the Virtual Library |
What is the Virtual Library?
The Virtual Library is the 18th library in Bedfordshire, open 22 hours a day , seven days a week. It aims to provide the same services online as you would find in any of our physical libraries, and the same levels of customer care.
The Virtual Library provides you with access to:
- The online library catalogue and borrower information, enabling you to search, request and renew items
- Information about Bedfordshire Libraries
- Specialist pages for local and family historians, as well as helpful hints to help your research
- Books, music and film news, and the opportunity to read reviews and contribute your own.
- The children and teen's virtual library - homework help, recommended reads and lots of fun things to do
- The Gateway to the Internet - recommended web sites, which are safe, reliable and regularly updated
- Local Information - whether it is a local organisation, club or society, this should be your first stop
- Learning - online and in the library, as well as advice and guidance on where to go to start or develop your learning
- Lots, lots, lots more
Plus you are able to use our online enquiry service to
ask questions and send comments to the professional librarians in the
libraries, just click the Contact Us button to get in touch.
The Future of the Virtual Library
The Virtual Library will continue to develop and grow in response to changes in the service and your comments. For example, we hope to translate much of the information into alternative languages which reflect the communities in Bedfordshire.
There is an ongoing programme of evaluation, if you wish to join a focus group or send in your views, comments
and suggestions please use the Contact
Us form.
How the Virtual Library Works
The Virtual Library has been separated into sections representing areas of our service. Move your mouse over a heading on the left hand side of the screen to prompt a flyout list of headings. These will appear whenever you move the mouse over the navigation, so allowing you to move around the site with ease.
All links are in blue and bold, click these to access another page in the Virtual Library or to go to an external web site.
To see the layout and architecture of the Virtual Library click on the Site Map button at the bottom of every page, this will show you what is contained within each section.
You can search the Virtual Library, using the search box in the
top right hand corner of the screen, and clicking Go. This will search the
whole of the Virtual Library. If you would like to limit your search to a
specific area click on the 'Advanced Search' link on your results page. Click the mouse in the circles to move the
black dot and select which area you want to search. Type your search
term/ keywords in the box and choose whether to search for all the words
or one or more, again by moving the black dot. The results are
ranked by the number of times your search term/ keywords appear, with the
most matches at the top. To access the page click on the Title line,
which is blue.
Accessibility Policy of the Virtual Library
The Virtual Library aims to be accessible to all areas of the community. Check out the Access Options page, where you can change the Virtual Library to suit your needs. This area will continue to develop over time, please let us know if there are changes you would like to see.
We are guided by a number of standards and laws:
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and their
Accessibility Initiative.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ - Disability Discrimination Act and the revised Code of Practice
www.drc-gb.org/thelaw/thedda.asp - The Virtual Library Pages have been passed through
various validators for accessibility:
Bobby web site evaluator for disability access
http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
Any Browser.com
http://www.anybrowser.com/siteviewer.html - The Virtual Library structure, content and metadata
follow the Guidelines for UK Government web sites:
webguidelines.htm
If you encounter any problems with the Virtual Library, please do let us know by completing the Contact Us form.
Page last updated: 27th May 2005
