I think allowing comments on blogs is a great idea. For libraries, it is probably simpler to allow anyone (not necessarily just a registered user) to comment on the blog and assign a staff member to moderate the comments.
A challenge for libraries is giving patrons a reason to comment on the blog. With the entertainment blogs I read, they receive a lot of responses when asking the audience for input. (For example, they'll ask people to name their top 5 sci fi films.) They also get a lot of comments on their summaries of television shows, especially complex or cliffhanger episodes which are open to interpretation. Popular books with unique or open-ended endings might inspire some postings. (Two possible examples: Life of Pi and Oryx and Crake.)
Surveys could also be a useful tool, but I think they would need to be targeted to the correct audience. You would also have to keep in mind that the non-web users might not have a voice unless you take extra measures. Here's one idea: if your library sends out an email newsletter, you could survey those subscribers to see what information they find useful and if there is anything else they would like to see in the newsletter. You might have a better response rate since they are already computer users.
What do you think? Will patrons be interested in commenting on books and movies? Is there a real future for this in libraries, or will something even better come along?
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
RSS Feeds and the Library
Neenah Public Library has an email notification list, "First in Line," which notifies patrons when a book by their favorite author is placed on order in the system so that they can place a hold on it right away. I wonder if there is a way to use blogs to do this?
A library could set up blogs for various genres (fiction, mystery, nonfiction, etc.) and encourage patrons to subscribe to these feeds. On the plus side it would make the announcement public, since anyone who explored the library's website might find it. It also would give patrons the opportunity to only subscribe to genres of interest.
The one obvious negative is that you would need to teach patrons how to subscribe to the feeds.
This is not something that is feasible for my library since we don't currently add short records to the catalog when we place books on order and I've noticed that there aren't necessarily always records available for the popular items at the time I'm ordering (especially in large print).
I've also noticed that unless the book is by a blockbuster author (Patterson, Sparks, Roberts, etc.) my patrons seem to prefer to browse rather than placing a hold, so I don't think we would get as much use of this service as a bigger library might.
A library could set up blogs for various genres (fiction, mystery, nonfiction, etc.) and encourage patrons to subscribe to these feeds. On the plus side it would make the announcement public, since anyone who explored the library's website might find it. It also would give patrons the opportunity to only subscribe to genres of interest.
The one obvious negative is that you would need to teach patrons how to subscribe to the feeds.
This is not something that is feasible for my library since we don't currently add short records to the catalog when we place books on order and I've noticed that there aren't necessarily always records available for the popular items at the time I'm ordering (especially in large print).
I've also noticed that unless the book is by a blockbuster author (Patterson, Sparks, Roberts, etc.) my patrons seem to prefer to browse rather than placing a hold, so I don't think we would get as much use of this service as a bigger library might.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)