Ok so my librarian has asked me to build a website for my school's library. She left me completely free in the design that I would make. Before I start cutting the design apart and coding it I'd like to have your opinions on the site so I can improve it based on the constructive criticism I hope to receive here. Anyways here is the design, don't go too hard on me though

http://mathew.zzl.org/All%20Projects/Library

Nice and simple, good for some blog.

Suggestions ? well i did not try but i think it will look nicer if you moved the top navigation right a little bit, i think its to close to the left site of the layout.

I kind of noticed that myself, haven't had time to fix it. Thanks for your input. Anybody else got any suggestions?

Welcome, News, and the footer are hard to read. How about moving the shadow up a bit to make it more clear?

This is not bad, but the overuse of the text shadow effect is a tad "tacky". I would lower the shadow for the welcome / news headers.

I'll be replacing the welcome and news header as well as the credits at the bottom of the page with normal text. Other than that, is it a good design?

I think its good, no bad colours at all. Layout is not crammed with busy content and its easy to read.