Tame The Web

Made with snapper.net

Marketing the DominiNET Blog, originally uploaded by mstephens7.

These were all over campus yesterday. Simple. Intriguing. I wonder how the blog’s stats might jump after this type of guerilla marketing.

I’ve posted about this blog already but I have to come back to it. A Dominican University Journalism class is using a Blogspot blog to report news and more to the campus and beyond. Our Dean of Rosary College, Jeff Carlson, shared the URL with me and I subscribed immediately.

I was rather excited so I emailed the GSLIS Faculty and the Academic IT Committee:

It’s a journalism class - and the content just keeps coming! The voices are human, honest and engaging. I have learned so much about Dominican and student life from this blog - I’ve added it to my news portal. Created simply with Blogger, it seems to be generating many comments and feedback. I have pointed to it once on my blog but will be writing about it again and sharing it with my social tools colleagues.  Good stuff.

I truly believe this is the future of marketing and engagement - a perfect example of social media done right: sometimes messy, sometimes silly, sometimes thought-provoking…but very real.

I checked in today and found that the posts and comments continue, so here are five reasons I think this is a good thing for the University. This venue seems to be a useful way for students to learn and more:

They are learning journalism skills but also media and promotional skills. Check out the video embedded in this post about the blog’s promotion around campus. Images augment posts as well.

They are finding their voice. “Ya know what really grinds my gears?,” asked one poster. “Mandatory attendance at extracurricular academic activities.” Entering the conversation openly and honestly is important. Learning how to state one’s case fairly and evenly is even more important. A “grind my gears” post is a good way to express frustration and call for solutions. The act of writing it down helps the thinking process.

They are getting invaluable experience in new media. Blogging didn’t exist when i took journalism classes at IU. These skills are invaluable. And sure, blogging will fade away but the next online communication mechanism built on it will be just as important for our future leaders to understand. Imagine: the blogging undergrad of today might just be tomorrow’s library director.

They are interacting with University officials. The “Bullet found on Campus” story generated buzz and one young reporter found herself chatting with Dean Carlson not only about the story but about the journalism program. “After the 45 minute discussion Carlson and I shared, I left his office feeling fabulous about the possibilities DU can provide future journalists. I was enthusiastic to see how receptive, appreciative and understanding Carlson was in hearing what, why, when and how I think new courses would dramatically enhance the journalism curriculum…” Here’s another example of that interaction.

They are asking important questions. This post really interested me: within our MyDU Web site, photos are featured prominently, including some of students who did not know they were being photographed. “Perhaps the mystery photographer was trying to capture the “essence” of Dominican. I still don’t think it would have been ridiculous for the photographer to ask for permission, or at least make the students aware that Dominican was going to use the photos. What do you think about this? Would you care if this happened to you? Do you find it creepy, or not a big deal?” As we all deal with our online lives and “digital dossiers,” asking these questions about photos, privacy, student rights and the University are important in deciding how we might share ourselves. 

They are marketing Dominican University in a way that no PR campaign ever can. I really appreciated the varied voices, the honesty and the range of topics. As I said above, I’ve learned more about what’s up with our students and the way they see the University than any other online offering available. Google loves blogs and future students will find this blog and the voices and it may just help them decide to come to school here.

Well done, DominiNET!

It’s in my stack of books for winter reading and wil be included in my classes next semester. In the meantime, I’m enjoying Jenny Levine’s report of author John Palfrey’s talk in Chicago:

5 characteristics

1. “I blog therefore I am”
express their identity online and offline - they don’t distinguish between the two
avatars as another version of identity
one difference is “subscribe to *me*”

2. multitaskers
a lot of debate over multitasking and what it is, but they’re doing multiple things at once
example of game in which boys tried to maintain as many IM conversations with as many girls as they could at once

3. consumers to creators
interact with digital format - seems self-evident, but presumption is immediate access because digital (eg, digital camera vs a disposable one); movie theater vs YouTube, print vs searchable text
presumption of media in digital form and that it’s social and shared

held a contest to design the logo for “Digital Natives” project at Harvard Law School - got 136 entries (32 from the kid who won), just for the glory (no prize)

4. mash up different media, putting different forms of media together

comes down to a series of technologies - RSS, Google Docs, lightweight collaborative tools

5. an international perspective
“couchsurfing” Google Maps mashup - 89,000 friendships created

And this post from Lindsay, one of my St. Kate’s LIS768 students:

• The way Digital Natives are interacting with information is changing rapidly. Librarians need to stay educated—be aware of the technology so the conversations/education seminars are relevant to Digital Natives. “This participatory digital environment requires all of us to become more media literate” (128). “We ignore the social norms of Digital Natives at our peril” (148). “Those who come to understand the dynamics of information production in the digital era will be better prepared than anyone else to thrive in the integrated digital world. And the best way to learn these dynamics is to participate in information production directly” (159).
• Use older Digital Natives to stay informed and current on how to engage Digital Natives—to create a community-based solution to the complex and continually evolving issues created by new information and technologies. “Tap into—and celebrate—the creativity of the Digital Natives to help solve the problem” (105). “And it is Digital Natives who are best poised to engage in this process” (125).

Remember the Flickr & Libraries post? Here’s a great respoonse from a library director:

My point is that we have so much legalese that comes in that it cripples a library’s ability to operate in this way. You can’t put people’s picture on flickr because of their rights (even though they don’t care). It’s no wonder that libraries can often seem faceless or uncaring. All the legal makes it so you can’t do very much or you violate someone’s privacy. Libraries are afraid to use a patron’s email to let them know about an event at the library or services they may be interested in. The only pictures we can use are of the building or inanimate objects. The only video can be of library staff. I understand the privacy issue. However, the LIBRARY is faceless as a result.

Great article in EDUCAUSE by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine. Alan writes the CogDog Blog, one of my favorites.

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/Web20StorytellingEmergenc/47444

A story has a beginning, a middle, and a cleanly wrapped-up ending. Whether told around a campfire, read from a book, or played on a DVD, a story goes from point A to B and then C. It follows a trajectory, a Freytag Pyramid—perhaps the line of a human life or the stages of the hero’s journey. A story is told by one person or by a creative team to an audience that is usually quiet, even receptive. Or at least that’s what a story used to be, and that’s how a story used to be told. Today, with digital networks and social media, this pattern is changing. Stories now are open-ended, branching, hyperlinked, cross-media, participatory, exploratory, and unpredictable. And they are told in new ways: Web 2.0 storytelling picks up these new types of stories and runs with them, accelerating the pace of creation and participation while revealing new directions for narratives to flow.

How can libraries tell stories in this manner?

We just opened an amazing room for early literacy at the Waukegan Public Library. The impetuous for the room was a survey conducted by the United Way on Kindergarten Readiness in Spanish and English. Cut to the chase—the children of Waukegan are entering school unprepared, children are not doing well in school and several schools in Waukegan are on the No Child Left Behind watch list.

Within 6 months we had architectural plans to put in a stimulating, engaging, room for preschoolers featuring multiple places to explore with hands-on learning. There is a pretend play theatre, arts and crafts center, science and math lab, nature center, music hall and a “crawl space” for infants.

We’ve gotten some good online press about it at I Love Libraries, School Library Journal, and the Suburban Chicago News.

Here is a some info on the planning.

The concept for the center sprang from a 2006 United Way survey that showed only 43% of Waukegan kindergartners ever attend preschool, and 77% speak Spanish as their primary language. Over half the kids surveyed had little or no exposure to books before entering public school. The study also showed that in this largely Hispanic community, eight out of ten new kindergartners can’t recognize the letters in the alphabet. The library had previously set aside 2,200 square feet to build a space dedicated to preschoolers, but prior to this study coming out the room’s primary function would have been to hold the preschool book collection.

“I was astounded by the percentages,” says Richard Lee, Executive Director of the library. “Looking at those deficiencies, we decided to set some measurable goals.” With guidance from Waukegan School District
60, the library began planning an Early Learning Center (ELC) dedicated to developing four pre-literacy skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Developers based the design on the Illinois Early Learning
Standards set by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), creating stations for science and math, pretend play, storytimes, arts and crafts, nature, music, and infant development.

Using the Kohl Children’s Museum in Glenview as a model, the architects crafted the space to engage the senses and appeal to each child’s inner explorer-with costumes to don, bells to ring, dough to squish and paint to dab. Of course, the center also holds an extensive collection of picture and board books, as well as games and puzzles to foster pre-reading skills. Signage appears in English and Spanish.

Elizabeth Stearns
Assistant Director of Community Services
www.waukeganpl.org

Custom Flip Mino HD, originally uploaded by jblyberg.

Hotter than hot. Did you know you could do a custom skin on a Mino? Very nice example of Darien Library doing just that with the library logo.

Remember this from November 2007:

Save our Small Libraries!

http://sospl.blogspot.com/

Dear Michael:

I want to tell you about my new blog. Aside from the standard issues that Librarians face here in Indiana we have a new one that has the potential for disastrous consequences for small public libraries here in Indiana.

Stephen Boggs

Looks like Stephen ran out of steam on his blog but the issue continues to be a concern and the proposed consolidation of Indiana libraries is getting more discussion here and there. LJ reports on the issue and quotes the director of my former library:

Don Napoli, director of the St. Joseph County Public Library and one of the few library directors to publicly support consolidation, told LJ, “Nobody wants to lose their boards, nobody wants to lose control of their own library.” Though his is a county library in name, only about 11 of 32 current county libraries cover the full county; one community with a separate library in St. Joseph County directly borders the central city of South Bend.

As for Swanson’s concerns, Napoli suggested, “They might get a better library… It’s more likely that we could build a new branch for them before they’re going to afford it.” He acknowledged that, statewide, there probably wouldn’t be much cost savings from consolidation, but “I think it’ll result in better libraries.”

He said it was natural for library leaders to want to keep local control. “But if they’re thinking the status quo is going to stay the way it is, they’re wrong,” he said. Also, said Napoli, library leaders should come up with an alternative that the governor and state legislature would accept—and that would have the support of all libraries.

Beyond consolidiation, unelected library boards will have trouble maintaining fiscal autonomy, as the commission has recommended that all library budgets be approved by local governments. “They may be able to retain their boards, but they’re not going to have taxing authority,” Napoli predicted.

I had breakfast with Meg Canada last weekend, while finishing my teaching duties in St. Paul. She shared with me a post she wrote at her blog called “How Librarians can be the Ultimate Community Managers.”

Meg writes:

What is a Community Manager? My friend, Connie Bensen introduced me to the concept at my first social media gathering. I know she has collaborated on the wikipedia definition, and as a librarian herself, and I hope she agrees with my assertion. Community managers help shape online spaces by representing organizations through starting and/or contributing to discussions. They are social media mavens and power users. Community managers solve problems, offer the best customer service, and give organizations a human face.

I’ll be adding this to the list of emerging LIS jobs. How are we training new librarians to be Community Managers? Did you ever think that might be a role you’d play?

Later she tape into that important bit about the ongoing conversation:

Not enough of us tweet outside our community or seek out our users in other social media. Some success with MySpace and Facebook is promising, but we can’t just friend and fan eachother. We need to connect with our patrons, customers and users in online communities. Historically we may not be known for savvy communication skills, but here’s another opportunity.

Gathering community input is also a key role of librarians. As we plan services, build new facilities, and evolve into our 21st century selves, libraries have to listen to what our community needs. Let’s face it Gen x and y aren’t attending community meetings at the library. The meetings are happening online. Do you Google alerts point to blogs, microblogs, or comments that reflect how patrons feel about the library? Are you listening and responding?

This so ties in to what Cliff Landis and I discussed over on ALA TechSource this summer:

MS: That brings up something that has been on my mind for the past few months as I watch more libraries diving into creating Facebook pages and other sites. What do you think about the Facebook pages for libraries that have a bunch of other librarians as fans? Frankly, it disappoints me. I’ve actually curtailed some of my “fan-ing” of pages lately. I’d rather leave the fandom to the users and watch to see how it goes from outside. How do the users find and adopt the page. What are the patterns of use and what types of outreach builds the community. Tapping into that is most important for understanding user needs.

CL: This is another symptom of librarians talking to each other, saying “Hey! Look at this neat thing I did!” and never involving the users. What do you suppose would happen if the person managing the library page wasn’t a librarian, but a student? (I can already hear the gasps of thousands of librarians.) Let’s face it–we’re control freaks.

And what David Lee King blogged about here.

Wouldn’t you rather be a community manager instead of a control freak?

A School Librarian writes:

Dear Michael -  I sat down with a bunch of my middle school students as they came into the library today and we talked about how we could transform our little public school library into a fabulous space for them. They had great ideas, and I shared some of YOUR ideas with them. I think we will begin changing things next week (I’ll ask permission from the boss after it’s done!).

Do you or your readers know of any “safe” photo sharing sites like FlickR that we might be able to access in schools. My District still blocks FLickR, Google images, iTunes, any social networking sites, etc. I have only been successful so far in getting edublogs.org unblocked… working on podcasting next… Again - one step at a time. …and I’d love to help create such a site if there is a way to do it!

Readers?

Really - I’m hooked on HBO’s True Blood!

But in Libraryland, the excitement is also building via this new blog “Bella’s Book Club,” a blog celebrating all things Twilight and counting down to the premiere of the film.

Created by Deb Noggle, the blog offers video clips, reviews, and engagement with the mebers of the book club. The good folks at ACPL sent this story along about the blog from Deb herself:

I’m taught my last weekend of LIS768 in St. Paul at the College of St. Catherine last week. The final Saturday of class is always group project day. Take a look:

One group developed a Ning for librarians: The Library Lounge. They also gave a presentation of background info and their findings from theexperience.

Another group developed a library liaison portal for a fictional economics department using Pageflakes. Their presentation details the background of the prototype.

The next group learned Drupal to develop a Website for a small library in Minnesota in a project called “Extreme Library Makeover: Web Site Edition.” They started with this very small site hosted at the library system and proposed a complete redo with Drupal. The results of their learning is here (hosted at TTW).

Finally, two soon to be library media specialists proposed a revamped curriculum for 4th to 8th grade that tied using social tools to current learning goals. The presentation, with links to examples and prototypes, is here.

I am grading their final papers today - papers on academic law libraries and social technologies, the Cluetrain and reputation online, to name a few. Good stuff! If you want to check in on their class blogging, all of the LIS768 CSC bloggers are listed here.

I have a new post up at ALA TechSource:

http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2008/11/a-commons-experience.html

The Commons puts students at the center. The idea of student-centered innovation was a theme woven throughout the commons field trips. The commons did not make it any easier for the librarians or to enforce library policies. In fact, Stacy Greenwell of the University was happy to tell me that they made it easier for students to use their cell phones in “the Hub.” “Yes, that’s right—at the Hub we actually installed infrastructure to make it easier for students to use cell phones. We actually encourage cell phone use. Truly the Hub is a No Shushing Zone.”

The Commons is built with student involvement. Stacy Greenwell of “the Hub” told me that along with the innovations the librarians wanted at UK,  “we sought student input throughout the planning process”.  Bob Seal highlighted the ways his librarians discovered students needed: space, access to technology, and ease of use.

The Commons is a welcoming, useful gathering place. The folks at Indiana University South Bend started with a specific goal: to be a welcoming center on campus. Michele Russo detailed this idea when it came to the desk: “The new service desk was also designed to send a welcoming message.  It allows space for librarians, IT consultants, and multimedia specialists to work at one of two levels.” The Zones at Georgia Tech included flexible “anything and everything” spaces. Faculty might give a lecture in the morning, folowed by a DDR tournament in the afternoon and video creation in the evening.

The Commons makes connections. These connections might be between students, betweeen students and library staff, or between students and the various faculty and staff that may use the space as well. Dean of Library Services Michele Russo at IUSB said: “We envisioned making the Library a true teaching-learning-research center by creating an Information Commons where content, technology, and services provided by reference librarians, technology assistants, and multimedia specialists were available to students and faculty in one place.”

The Commons is a relevant, required space on campus. At Georgia Tech, we ooh’ed and ahh’ed all over Zones 1, 2 and 3 as though on a tour at Disneyland, but Associate Director Bob Fox’s message was loud and clear: “We don’t build walls here.” The spaces, created by innovative library staff and student focus groups, are that central, all purpose place (with access to needed resources and technology) that Rose addressed in her article. The larger the investment of planning, input and participants, the higher the return on use and support. How could spaces like those in my 2008 Information/Learning Commons Field trips not be considered required and relevant spaces for the university setting?

Read the whole post at ALA TS.

Via Jessamyn and a slew of emails this weekend from TTW Readers:

http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/OCLC_Policy_Change

I need to catch up on all of these posts. Jessamyn suggested this one as 

http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/220/

So, OCLC decides to update its data licensing policy after 21 years because, quote: “The Guidelineshave also been frequently faulted for their ambiguity about WorldCat data sharing rights and conditions.”

Having had to deal with such ambiguity myself when discussing about releasing the Barton Library data from the MIT Libraries, I have to say that I very much welcomed any sort of update in clarification and a more modern and up-to-date licensing agreement between OCLC and its members libraries, if only to focus more precisely what is wrong with it.

Some people believe that OCLC is a thing of the past, created in an era where data interchange and inter-librarian communication was hard, more expensive and much harder to coordinate and destined to succumb to some cheaper and higher quality grass-root approach that will emerge spontaneously on the internet.

I personally don’t subscribe to that vision: I’ve witnessed with my own eyes the Apache Group turning into the Apache Software Foundation and growing from a few tens of people to thousands, from a relatively unknown bunch of geeks to a pillar of the web ecosystem, a business-school subject and a poster child for modern bottom-up self-organization.

My point being that any grass-root approach that will get big enough to take on OCLC on the metadata collection and redistribution service that libraries need will have to incorporate under the pressure of its users (if only for legal liability protection) and will have to find an answer to the same set of problems (policy, governance, financial sustainability) that OCLC has.

So, OCLC, or another non-profit entity, is necessary to exist in this space, no matter how the data is generated and what license regulates its sharing.

Unfortunately, OCLC itself seems to be believe they are a thing of the past, that they are going to fall victim of the drop of data distribution and coordination costs, much like the record industry, and that they have to fight with their teeth to avoid to succumb to the web-powered winter of data monopolies.

I don’t see any other explanation for a policy that prevents people from competing with them, with data they don’t own and that others contributed to them: if they thought their existence was not in danger, and their membership loyal, why would they want to prevent others from competing with them?

Last time somebody tried a similar anti-competitive move, BitKeeper comes to mind, it unleashed a tremendous amount of frustration-generated creative effort that not only displaced and totally evaporated BitKeeper’s position in that market overnight, but also reshaped the entire market because of some of the innovation that was created in the process.

It is true that OCLC’s monopoly position in this market is eroding: it is only a matter of time geek techy librarians catalyze enough coordination to eventually re-route even just a tiny fraction of the cataloging effort of librarians around the world to another data pool, one that feels more like an open Library of Congress and less like a librarian version of Microsoft.

That last line is wonderful. I am aching for the time when the “geek techy librarians” coordinate enough to make some really big changes in library land: with OCLC, with vendors, with the ILS providers. Indeed.

Read the whole post. it’s a good one.

We recently presented a workshop in London at Internet Librarian International, based on our writings here, and realized that throughout the columns we’ve identified a set of mile markers for the journey toward transparency.

Give everyone an avenue to talk. 
Play nice and be constructive. 
Grow and develop your support community. 
Be willing to accept anonymity. 
Tell the truth. Lies don’t work. 
Focus on user-driven policy, not driving users away. 

Read the whole column here.

Don’t miss Jen Waller’s Flickr sets of her travels to various libraries in The Netherlands. I’ll be using these in future classes for sure!

Shanachies are in Perth, originally uploaded by sirexkat.

The Shanchies are visiting Australia! Follow them at:

http://www.shanachietour.com/

Via Brett Kochendorfer

Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. This means means more people engaging more deeply with your website — and with each other. In this video, Google Product Marketing Manager Mendel Chuang gives a short introduction to Google Friend Connect.

Very interesting -especially the bit about ease of sign on via any number of services and adding the Friend Connect to your site takes no programming skills whatsoever. Looks like ratings, friends and comments can easily be integrated. Ways it might affect libraries:

• Folks will come to expect this type of functionality more and more. Sites that aren’t “friendly” might not be the most popular.
• Some libraries will experiment with this as an easy to configure “buy it now” (for free) social option for their sites.
• This could become a popular add on for many Biblioblogs.
• It certainly positions Google to have even more integration into what we do on the Web.

Take a look at the video. What other uses do you see? What misuses do you see?

http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20081113

Did the authors read my tweets about yesterday’s program?

LPL Flashdrives, originally uploaded by Lester Public Library.

512K Thumb Drives, Friends of Lester Public Library Fundraiser, $15.00 each, comes in pink, black, green, red, and blue. Purchase at the circulation desk. Lester Public Library, Two Rivers, Wisconsin

Library Services Hierarchy, originally uploaded by herzogbr.

Take a look:

http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2008/11/13/what-is-necessary-what-is-possible

Not that any of this is rocket science, or isn’t discernible by anyone else that works in a library. I think I did this as an exercise to illustrate patron-centricness. When it comes to library services, everything we offer should be addressing a need from “up the chain.” Offering services just because we can, or because it’s something being pushed on us from “below,” doesn’t justify that service. If a service doesn’t address a patron need, then should we really be offering it?

youtube contest for high school students, originally uploaded by pollyalida.

Good example of generating interest and promotion about “Ask a Librarian.” Hey Tampa folks, you should have told me about this last week. I’ll add it to my talks.

Fascinating article in SLJ from David Loertscher:

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6610496.html

Last year, when I thought of revising my book Taxonomies of the School Library Media Program (Hi Willow, 2000), I realized that I had pushed the traditional model of school libraries about as far as it could go. We don’t need a revision. We need a reinvention. Experts say that the rank and file of any profession can’t re-create itself because it’s too enmeshed in the status quo. We’re more hopeful.

What has to happen for school libraries to become relevant? If we want to connect with the latest generation of learners and teachers, we have to totally redesign the library from the vantage point of our users—our thinking has to do a 180-degree flip. In short, it’s time for school libraries to become a lot less like Microsoft and a lot more like Google. With this notion in mind, I collaborated with two of my colleagues, Carol Koechlin and Sandi Zwaan, Canadian educational consultants, to develop an idea we’re calling the school library learning commons.

This is great! The learning commons taken to the school media center. Loertscher continues and offers some advice for “flipping:” (emphasis mine)

Thinking differently—and creatively—is never easy. Here are some exercises to help you make a 180-degree switch.

Resolve to think like a patron rather than a provider, a customer rather than a store owner. For example, right now your library is probably open throughout the school day. Imagine what it would mean to students and teachers if it were open 24/7, 365 days a year.

Let’s say each student is currently allowed to check out two books. What if each child could check out an unlimited number of books or download digital or audiobooks to their Kindle or iTough device anytime they wished?

In some schools, students only get credit for reading books in the Accelerated Reader program. How about giving them credit for reading everything and anything?

Many of today’s students read textbooks and take notes in class. Imagine a learning environment in which the multimedia world of information fed individual students’ needs, and where on-demand digital textbooks/multimedia/databases are available 24/7 and under the control of the user.

Here’s another 180-degree flip: a typical classroom assignment and library Web site are examples of one-way communication. Adults tell learners what to do, how to do it, and where to find information. But in the new learning commons, homework assignments and library Web sites offer two-way communication.

How? It’s easy. The teacher posts assignments on a blog that’s linked through an RSS feed to individual students in the class, each of whom can access the blog through an iGoogle page or another personal home page. When an assignment is given, everyone—teachers, librarians, students, and other specialists—can comment, coach, suggest, recommend, and discover together, and push everyone toward excellence. Content flows in and out of students’ iGoogle pages via RSS feeds to help them complete their assignments and work together constructively. Involve the tech director in developing this system, and watch the barriers fall.

Let me pick myself up off the floor.  This is what I imagine our schools could be like in a world where the barriers are down and teachers are using the tools. I would suggest anyone involved with school libraries take a look at this article.

Don’t miss this article from Sarah Houghton-Jan and Aaron Schmidt:

http://www.infotoday.com/mls/nov08/Schmidt_Houghton-Jan.shtml

While there are many quick, one-time things you can do to make your content findable, we’ll address those later. First, we have to make sure that there’s a reason to promote your library and its website. If you’re not offering relevant services or interesting content on your site, there’s really nothing to promote.

The most important and effective thing you can do to make your content findable and to draw people back is the most difficult: Make a good website. Creating a website is ridiculously easy, and it takes about 5 minutes to start a blog. Filling such sites with interesting content, however, takes skill, effort, and inspiration. Anyone can hit the “publish” button, but to learn about the interests of your community and to systematically present relevant content takes time. This is what you must do.

One way to approach the issue of content is to use the strengths of your library’s staff. Perhaps you have employees who are passionate about romance novels or get wired about fixing computers. This excitement will show through if you have them talk about their interests online. One great thing about public libraries is that almost anything in the world is within their scope of interest. Highlighting the expertise of individuals in your library not only can produce interesting content, but it can also illuminate the humans in your facility. This helps build relationships, one of the most important things librarians can do to promote themselves. Good content makes your website more findable because the better your content is, the more people will talk about it and link to it. These links are the lifeblood of Google’s PageRank. And you want links. Badly.

I’ll be adding this to course readings!