Gina

I’m very excited because some people are starting to cooperate on contributing to the library blog!  Karen (one of the pages) wrote a book review on it, and also allowed me to take her picture for a trading card to put on flickr.  And I got a picture of Frank (the director), and he is going to write some reviews. 

The only negative consequence I anticipated was the hesitancy of staff members to participate.  But I feel that even if I get 4-5 people contributing consistently, the blog could be a great success.  I have already shown Karen how to get started (an easy task since she is very tech-savvy and a willing participant).  For some of the others, if they are willing to write some reviews, I will offer to type up their posts for them.  I feel that over time, though, more and more people will be contributing on their own.  This is not complicated technology to learn; it’s mainly a matter of willingness on staff members’ parts.

As far as dealing with patron contributions and “spamming,” I think I will have the blog set up so that comments will need to be approved.  I will state somewhere on the blog that anything inappropriate will be deleted.

The blog is coming along well.  I’m trying to get staff members to contribute book reviews so that we have a good mix when we’re ready to publicize it.  I am also planning to take pictures of the contributors so that I can create trading cards to link to on flickr.

At this point, I should probably describe the library and the patrons we serve.  Kent is a town with a population of about 15,000.  It’s a mixed socio-economic community, and our patrons reflect that.  In addition, our patrons run the gamut when it comes to computer literacy.  I feel there are a lot of people who are very unaware of what the library has to offer, especially when it comes to online services (databases, etc.).  I’m hoping this project will encourage people to visit our website more often, and perhaps increase circulation, as we plan to review mostly books in our own collection.

The staffing needed to keep the blog up and running is minimal.  Initially, I will be adding all of the reviews on my own time since it is technically a school project at this point.  We’re hoping that staff members will eventually contribute their posts on their own, and this can be done in any downtime during work hours.  I do anticipate a little bit of hesitancy with some of the less “tech-savvy” employees at first, but hopefully, when they’re shown how easy it is, they will be on board.

For my final project, I am setting up a book review blog for the library where I work.  It’s a work in progress, but I figured I’d write as I go, rather than trying to sum it all up at the end.  I thought it would be much better to actually implement my project rather than doing a hypothetical one, and when I approached my director on the subject, he was all for it.  In fact, he had decided to start a blog in May, but never did anything with it.  This seemed like the perfect way to introduce Web 2.0 services to our library. 

I have begun the initial set-up procedures, but I am not ready to unveil the blog to the world yet.  Stay tuned for more updates!

Now that “that big project” is out of the way, I am really enjoying playing with all these Web 2.0 tools.  I think my favorite so far is Flickr.  I’m having a blast uploading my photos and will probably use this a lot in the future.