Chances are you know the work of Jeffrey Zeldman and Carrie Bickner, even if you don't realize it. Zeldman's many private sector commissions and the redesigned New York Public Library (NYPL) pages alike owe a lot to a mutual belief in crisp, clean design and straightforward language. A style guide that Bickner commissioned Zeldman to work on for NYPL staff has been circulating among both library and nonlibrary designers ever since its release at the end of October. Another coproduction, the web site for NYPL's Click On computer training program, has likewise garnered kudos and the attention of imitators.
Zeldman is also the man behind The Daily Report (www.zeldman.com [WebArchive]) and A List Apart: For People Who Make Web Sites (www.alistapart.com), a popular journal and online community center for like-minded designers. In addition, he consults through his firm, Happy Cog, recently published Taking Your Talent to the Web (New Riders, 2001), and plays a lead role in The Web Standards Project. That group has fought for adherence to official World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. Before turning his attentions to the web, Zeldman worked in journalism and advertising.
Web coordinator for the NYPL Branch Libraries, Bickner may be better known to library blog aficionados as the Rogue Librarian (www.roguelibrarian.net [WebArchive]) or for her articles on A List Apart and TER. While earning her degree at the University of Michigan's School of Information, she worked on both the Internet Public Library and the Humanities Text Initiative.
Any one of their initiatives prove that libraries can produce top-of-the-line web projects to rival and even best those of the corporate world. What is more, their ongoing association shows that a successful partnership is based on something other than just a contract. The client-consultant relationship flourishes when both parties share fundamental beliefs and are clear about their mission from the inception. Last December, they sat down with frequent netConnect contributor Leo Robert Klein to talk about their collaborations.
If you want to hear more, Zeldman and Bickner will be speaking at the Public Library Association meeting in March.
