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.
