Final Project

This Web 2.0 project is for my library, West Springfield Public Library.  It is a mid-sized city located in Western Massachusetts and is a community of just over 25,000.  There is one public library that is well used and we have a very active Youthroom. 

The idea for the project came about based on a question to me by a patron (mother of young children, and very frequent user of the library). She wanted to know if there was any way she could find out which non-fiction DVD’s were new to the collection.  While we do have a few displays of new items that stay on the “new” shelf for six months before being recatalogued into the general collections, there are still several item types that do not get displayed in such a way.  I thought it might be nice for us to have a blog that gave highlights of some of the new books and media that come in each month.  The other children’s librarian and I could list a few new items from each of the different collections each month with a short annotation, or review if we’ve had a chance to preview them, and ask patrons to comment on the items after they’ve viewed them.

The goal of this project is to inform our youth and parent patrons of some especially nice new materials that have recently become available at the library, entice patrons to visit the library and to give patrons a place to respond about our acquisitions.  Patrons could get a few ideas of items to borrow on their next visit well before coming into the library and could look at any comments posted as to whether or not other patrons felt the materials were worthwhile.  In addition to the above, the library staff and board of trustees is cognizant of the fact that the library needs to remain very visible to the local community for the next few years because a new building plan is in the works, and any technology or project that enhances services to our patrons is not only another way we can show we are trying to improve our services, but is also something we can use for publicity.

We will be using a free blogging service, Blogger.com, as a platform for our blog.  This blog is already in the works and can be found at wsplyouth.blogger.com.  I tried to create a blog in WordPress.com, but found out that I couldn’t get a Flickr Badge to work properly there.  I switched over to Blogger.com and the badge seems to work fine.  Between the Flickr Badge and a slideshow button created through BigHugeLabs.com, we decided to have photos of the staff of the library posing with their favorite books, both adult and children’s books.  Not only does this give our patrons a view of our staff they don’t usually get, but it helps with the staff “buy-in” into the project.  We’ve already taken the staff pictures and they are all anxious to see the blog to check out the slideshows.  There has already been discussion by the director that we should pose with our current favorites on a monthly basis!

The only cost for this project is staff time in designing and maintaining the blog and staff time in taking photos on a regular basis.  Up front, there would be several hours of time to get the blog organized, but beyond that there would be a minor investment of time because the other youthroom librarian and I are the ones who do the purchasing of materials, and it would be a very small matter to create a Word file to hold suggestions for the current month’s “Promising New Items” list.  We have already divided up the purchasing work by item type and we’d each be responsible for blog suggestions for the particular collections we already initiate purchasing for.  We could easily list items in the Word document as we are reading review journals to decide on what to purchase each month, and include a blurb from the reviewer or publisher to annotate the items.  There would be another minor investment of time in checking the site for “comment spam,” i.e., inappropriate commenting, off-topic commenting, etc.  A few minutes on a daily basis would be enough. 

We already have an e-mail address list begun for patrons that want to be notified of new happenings in the youthroom.  We could publicize the blog through the e-mail list, in signage around the library, via bookmarks, in our quarterly newsletter, with a link on our website and in flyers advertising programming. 

Steps to developing the WSPL New Materials Blog:

·         Discuss with Assistant Children’s Librarian as to feasibility

·         Get permission from Director

·         List targeted areas of collection for blog entries

·         Register with blogging host

·         Design blog

·         Staff pictures

·         Enter information in blog and plan for regular entries

·         Publicize and maintain blog

There is the possibility of some negative consequences coming from having a blog where the content of comments is not under our control.  We don’t want the blog to end up as place where visitors can give their opinions on anything they want.  Should that begin to happen, the first thing we would have to do is remove inappropriate comments and add a caution notice to each blog entry indicating that only “appropriate, on-subject comments are welcome.”  This would be an issue that needs continual monitoring.  The extreme response, if no warning worked in preventing comment spam, would be to prevent commenting altogether.  In that case, we may just want to create a new webpage instead of the blog. 

The other negative consequence would be that no one visits the blog and we are using the staff time for no apparent gain.  We would have to monitor feedback from kids and parents as to the usefulness of the blog, but even if we determined the blog to be only marginally used, it still would be  considered another way the library is working toward providing enhanced service to our patrons.  There are many services we offer to our patrons, some which are used by only a small percentage of people.  Still, to the individual, at the time he/she uses the service, it is quite valuable and therefore, a valid service.

 

 

Meebo/IM assignment

Chat–it’s very neat, although I had a hard time keeping up, especially when there was more than one person in the chatroom.  Obviously, one would need to have a great deal of familiarity with using a keyboard in order not to feel completely behind in the conversation.  I am a pretty fast typist, but I met two other students in the chatroom and had all I could do to keep up with the conversation.  It was VERY nice chatting with someone from class one-on-one (or two, as the case may be).  It was interesting trying to maintain two conversations, although I felt bad if, in the course of responding to one person’s question, I appeared to give a nonsense answer to another question that popped in in the meantime.  I’d like to find out what kind of cognitive development areas are enabled by the juggling of several conversations at once.  It must be good practice for something that we can use.  I’d like to see one of those brain scan images of someone who is chatting with multiple partners and see what areas of the brain light up.

Back to the first part of the assignment: I used the link to libraries that use IM and tried to IM two libraries in Massachusetts, the Metrowest Regional Library System and the Springfield College librarian.  I contacted the librarian at Metrowest on Monday, and finally got a call today, Friday.  (I haven’t heard back yet from the librarian at Springfield College)  She was concerned that I sent the offline message a couple of weeks ago, but I assured her it was just this week.  We arranged to chat and I signed back on to her Meebo.  I’m not sure what kept interrupting her, but I know i kept getting interrupted by kids wanting to register for summer reading.  After arranging to chat, I think we were able to just get a few sentences off to each other and I was in the process of asking her about how she uses the chat when she left, never to return.  I’m not sure if she had to leave or this was a glitch in the system.  She wanted to know how I found her chat and I told her about Rebecca’s link.  She asked me to pass it on to her, which I did, but I’m not sure if she ever got it–while I was typing and pasting, she went offline.  She was able to tell me that she doesn’t use the chat for reference, but more for keeping in touch (with staff or patrons I’m not sure because that’s when we lost contact the first time.) 

I put a Meebo box on my Blog, but didn’t know how to activate it so that the message read that I was online.  I clicked on everything that seemed likely with no luck.  I’ll have to go to the website and take a tutorial or something, I guess. 

 

Flickr Assignment Week 3

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/slideshow.php?id=50566

This is a link to the slideshow I made showing a patron how to request an item.  I used Snag It to capture the screen shots and uploaded them to my Flickr account.  I think I could use this link on a library blog as well as on the library webpage.

 

A Bit Lost

Well, it’s Week 3 and I’m working on my assignments for this week and feeling more lost than ever.  The pace of this class is running beyond my ability to keep up, what with preparing for Summer Reading at the library and trying to spend down all of our funds for this fiscal year, I’ve precious little time to be trying to understand all this new social web stuff, get it posted in the right places (not sure if I’m even doing that right), etc, etc,…    How do people find the time to be so social on the internet when they’re working and having families and doing other things like having a life, anyway?  Not that I’m opposed to it, mind you, I just don’t know where they find the time!!

 

Terri’s Class Blog

 http://burbanklibrary.blogspot.com/

I visited a few library weblogs and I see the advantages of them but also some disadvantages.  It looks like Burbank began their blog pretty recently, September 07.  There has been alot of work done to it, stuff posted and multiple categories developed.  It appears that several people contribute to it, one person seems to post everything on a given page so they must have their areas of responsibility.  The main blog page is a listing of upcoming community events that have been posted by many different people–maybe the event holders?

This blog is aimed at the general public, library users, adults and children.  It has been kept up well, it is up to date and has been posted to pretty regularly, although the pictures in the Flickr picture link are from Summer 07–time to update those, I think. 

I like the fact that the blog is informative and people can respond to it.  At this time, however, I could find only one comment made to any of the postings.  Blogging’s draw seems to be that it is a website designed to be interactive, which is great.  I guess the question is how long should the time and energy be spent inputting information if there are no comments being made.  In that case, should the librarians just stick with the website?  As to that, I was disappointed that there was no clear link to the blog from the Burbank Public Library website, I found it by accident under the heading “news and reviews.”  If they really want the blog to take off, I’d suggest a clear direct link from the website. 

 

Finally Made It!

Well, after several days of trying with edublog, I finally chose an alternative blogging source.  It was rated as the GOLD medal winner of blog source choices.  Yea!!

I’m Terri Mitus, and this is my next to last course.  Hopefully, I’ll be graduating in January and finally be done with school—for a while, at least.  I am currently Acting Youth Services Librarian in the Massachusetts library that I’ve been working in since 2000.  Prior to this past January, I had been Assistant Youth Services Librarian.  My boss left and I was lucky enough to slip into the position, provided I sped up my degree and finished up by December.  So I’ve doubled up on classes–three more to go, this one and another I’m taking this summer and Eval. and Research this fall.

I’m looking forward to this course, although I must admit, even though I am comfortable with technology, I haven’t taken it as far as blogging before and this is all new to me. 

See you all around the blogosphere…(did I use that in the right way??)