What Other Libraries Are Doing

On Friday, October 13, I attended a "WebsitePalooza" at NSLS system headquarters. Representatives of five NSLS public libraries of varying sizes, demographics, and budgets (Gail Borden, McHenry, Round Lake Area, Vernon Area, and Zion Benton; Barrington was also scheduled but bowed out) discussed what they are doing with their web sites. Because the meeting was sponsored by NSLS's Public Relations Networking Group, the focus of the talk was more on web site usage and usability than on technology (although the conversation did get rather "techie" at times). The overall trend seems to be to have multiple people in the organization contribute to the library's web site through the use of "bloggy" (blog-like) content management systems such as Mambo and Joomla. Mambo and Joomla (more properly written "Joomla!", but I don't like using exclamation points with prduct names) are both free, open source products. Mambo runs on Linux and Joomla runs on (I think) Windows.

Another interesting idea is to include homemade videos on the web site, specifically of library staff doing brief "book talks" (I think this was on Gail Borden's new site, which has not been officially launched yet). Vernon Area has a classical music library on it's site--just click a link and the site will stream music. Round Lake has had good results with using interactive polls and quizzes to get people (especially teens) to come back to their site again and again.

The participant from McHenry Public Library mentioned that E-vents 4.0 allows pictures and surveys to become part of the patron's program-signup experience. McHenry also uses a color code in E-Vents to distinguish adult programs, teen programs, and children's programs (the colors are rather garish on the McHenry site, but I bet other colors could be chosen).

Vernon and Zion Benton are both using Illinois E-Pay for the online collection of fines.

One participant mentioned a new Illinois law that requires public entities like libraries to post their board meeting agendas and minutes online.

All in all, a most productive and interesting meeting!