This descriptive study examines effective online school library practice. A Delphi panel selected a sample of 10 exemplary sites and helped to create two research tools--taxonomies designed to analyze the features and characteristics of school library Websites. Using the expert-identified sites as a sample, a content analysis was conducted to systematically identify site features and characteristics. Anne Clyde's longitudinal content analysis of school library Websites was used as a baseline to examine trends in practice; in addition, the national guidelines document, Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning, was examined to explore ways in which the traditional mission and roles of school library programs are currently translated online. Results indicated great variation in depth and coverage even among Websites considered exemplary. Sites in the sample are growing more interactive and student-centered, using blogs as supplemental communication strategies. Nevertheless, even these exemplary sites were slow to adopt the advances in technology to meet the learning needs and interests of young adult users. Ideally the study's findings will contribute to understanding of state-of-the-art and will serve to identify trends, as well as serving as a guide to practitioners in planning, developing, and maintaining school library Websites.

Introduction. Against the background of the last decades’ developments of Swedish public library websites and the changing language and minority situation, a study of the multilingual web accessibility status is motivated, including identifying obstacles for moving forward on the topic. At its core it’s a question of democratic rights. Method. Website observations with multilingual aspects in focus were conducted on the public library websites housing their catalogues, for all Swedish municipalities. Same libraries and their web system vendors (or the like) were then invited to an online survey which complemented the observations with their thoughts and opinions on the topic. Both studies produced primarily quantitative data, although the response rate from system vendors (or the like) was low. Analysis. Quantitative analysis was carried out on the data, with an element of content analysis on the survey’s comments and open-ended questions. The quantitative analysis employed Microsoft Excel for descriptive statistics. Activity theory constituted the main theoretical framework for further analysis and interpretation. Results. Prerequisites of multilingual accessibility were largely in place, but potentials of underlying web systems were not fully utilized. Checking against selected official web guidelines in the public sector, library websites showed varying compliance but also room for improvement in general. Survey results proved respondents consider multilingual accessibility on library websites fairly important. Libraries show awareness of current language minorities although demographic assessments are rarely made. Lack of resources in a broad sense was stated as a hindrance for multilingual website work. The systems of Swedish public libraries are largely dominated by one vendor, although this is a field undergoing changes, with some libraries switching to open source systems. Conclusion. Results suggest progress on this topic is highly dependent on getting library management and decision makers on board. More co-operation is needed, and there’s room for education. A few suggestions for future research were given.