Group Project Proposal - Crestwood Reading Corner: Children’s Book Review Blog

Proposal prepared by: Stephanie Farrar, Angelique Mullen, Lana Fukshima, and Ananya Dattagupta

Introduction 

The Crestwood Public Library staff would like to implement a blog for the library on Blogger.com. Derived from the term “weblog,” which means to keep a log on a website, a blog is a web page consisting of a series of posts or written updates. Displayed as individual entries, the posts are commonly arranged in reverse chronological order. Blogs often have a section below each post where readers can comment on the topic and participate in discussions if the blog owner enables this feature.

The Crestwood Public Library is located in the heart of a medium sized town with a population consisting mainly of families with children. The local elementary school is near the library, and many parents and children visit the library in the afternoons. While the Crestwood Public Library has a strong collection geared for children in elementary school, the library does not provide any service that offers parents guidance in assisting their children with appropriate reading selections.

By implementing a blog designed as a place for parents to read book reviews and suggestions for elementary reading materials, the Crestwood Public Library seeks to provide a large portion of the population with a reliable resource when seeking assistance in finding good books for children between the ages of five and eight. Through comments and discussions that will be enabled on the blog, parents will also be able to form a community and connect with each other on new levels. They will be encouraged to share thoughts and opinions based on the books, stories, themes and personal experiences with reading and with early elementary students. 

This service will primarily help patrons in the book selection process, but it will also benefit library staff, since the blog will raise awareness of reading materials and offer insight a librarian may not be able to include in a face to face encounter.

Examples of Other Library Blogs

The following are examples of library blogs that offer reader’s advisory for children. They offer the best in practice for youth advisory blogs, and are similar to what is proposed for Crestwood Library’s new blog:

Canton Public Library: Kids Blog

http://www.cantonpl.org/kids

One of several blogs by this public library in Canton, Mississippi, the Kids page has many resources for children. There are Reader’s Advisory links, as well as informational posts for parents about topics related to early literacy. Other posts include programming notes, song links, videos, and community information related to kids.

Kalamazoo Public Library: Parenting and Kids Blog

http://www.kpl.gov/kids/blog/

Updated at least once a month but often weekly, this blog features programming notes about events for children at the Kalamazoo Public Library in Michigan. Each post is also tagged with folksonomic terms so that patrons can easily search the blog for books, materials, movies, or other literacy-related topics.

San Mateo County Library: Kids’s Voices

http://kids.smcl.org/en/blog

This fabulous blog has many authors who are all librarians at the various branches of the San Mateo County Library system. Updated every few days, most of the posts are information posts with Reader’s Advisory suggested centered on a particular theme. This reader’s advisory blog is fully integrated with the library’s main kid page, allowing the visitor to access games, books, and information for parents and teachers.

Wake County Public Libraries: The Kids’ Bookshelf

http://wakekidsbookshelf.wordpress.com/

This blog is a fabulous Reader’s Advisory page that is updated several times a week. Together with the main children’s page, the website creates a seamless experience for the visitor, combining community and the library. On the Reader’s Advisory page, there are book suggestions for all ages and in all genres, along with a handy tag cloud to access tagged posts of a certain topic. On the children’s page, there are links to book clubs, book reviews, websites, and other library services.

Possible Roadblocks to Implementation

While the Crestwood Public Library community and staff are open to new technologies being implemented in the library, there are still several roadblocks that could prevent immediate success of the blog.  Most of the staff members are knowledgeable about blogs, but often organizations fail to incorporate the right approach in their entries, and one area of concern involves the possibility of falling short of publishing original, quality content on a consistent and regular basis.  Also, the extended time commitment required of staff may cause difficulties completing all the tasks. This could lead to a failure to value quality readership, which is another serious roadblock often overlooked when measuring the success of organizational blogs. Finally, lack of effective marketing of the blog in the online community in order to draw a continuous flow of dedicated audience members is one of the major factors that could hinder the successful implementation of the blog.

The Crestwood Public Library children’s book review blog will take all these issues as mentioned above into serious consideration and continue in their endeavor to create and maintain a blog that will successfully cater to the information need of the community. The staff responsible for maintaining the blog will conduct an extensive evaluation of all the possible blogging techniques in order to publish interesting and unique material, then they will employ the one that best serves the purpose and needs of the blog. The staff will be aware of the fact that creating unique and original postings while maintaining consistency and regularity is of paramount importance and crucial to the success of the book review blog. Reviews will be regularly posted along with graphics, and each entry will include the age level for the book and publishing information. Also, the Crestwood Public Library children’s book review blog will be an open-comment blog. This will encourage two way communication between the library and parents. It engages and invites people to participate directly by posting in the comment box, thus making the blog a place of happening, giving users a reason to come back for more. Staff members will develop a schedule and set aside time to post and review blog comments so that readership is valued and users receive responses within an appropriate amount of time.

In addition to publishing original material and valuing readership, the staff will also put in considerable effort to market the blog effectively and make it well known in the community. Marketing efforts will be geared both in-house and in online settings. In-house efforts will include incorporating the blog address on general brochures and fliers provided by the youth services department. The youth services department librarians will also promote the blog through word of mouth during story time, reference interviews, and reader advisory interactions with parents and caretakers. Online efforts include posting links to the blog through the library’s existing online presence which consists of their website, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.  Also, adding highly searched keywords to the book reviews will increase the traffic flow in the blog. Crestwood Public Library staff responsible for the blog will meticulously choose the popular keywords that will make the blog visible to the searchers looking for quality reviews of children’s books.    

Software Implementation Suggestions

There are many options to choose from in terms of blogging software.  The Crestwood Public Library chose to make use of Google’s Blogger for the blog software simply because it is not only free, but also popular, easily accessible, and just as easily utilized.  Some other popular free blogging sites include Wordpress and Tumblr.

Maintenance Plan

In terms of maintenance, the Crestwood Public Library youth services librarian staff will be writing and posting content into the blog.  Each youth services librarian staff will be on a set rotation, taking turns at least once a week to post a book review on the blog site.  The librarians will have the option for their blog postings to be reviewed amongst themselves for feedback before being officially posted to the public online.  Whenever new youth services librarian staff are hired, blog training will be included with the other types of general training provided to new hires.  Although the actual content of each blog post will be at the discretion of the librarian writing the entry, some general guidelines will be established to encourage a cohesive voice as an institution.  The overall style of writing will be kept professional but casual, friendly, and inviting.  Each posting will be a maximum of  approximately 300 words in length, include short bibliographic information and a small image of the book cover, be tagged with the category or genre of the book, and titled with the name of the book being reviewed.  The librarian on duty for writing a blog posting for the week will also be held responsible for responding to any questions or comments made through the site during that time frame.

Assessment

To make sure the blog has the desired impact on children and their families, the Crestwood library staff will use several measures of assessment. First, staff members will view statistics available in Blogger to see how many visitors the blog gets every week and to track the number of unique visitors to the site. This could possibly be a measure of interest in the site. Staff will also review the open-ended comments, and they may even quantify them if there is a large number.

Other assessment measures will include tracking the circulation records of the materials suggested on the site to see if there are any increases. Attendance at programming events will also be monitored, to see if there is any increase in numbers resulting from the influence of the blog.

A final measure wil be an annual user survey and needs assessment that patrons are given. There, questions will be asked about the blog and feedback will be provided from regular library users. Librarians and staff will also get verbal feedback from patrons and visitors on an informal basis.

Prototype: http://crestwoodpubliclibrary.blogspot.com/

Screencast: Entering the World of Twitter

For exercise 6 I created a screencast about entering the world of Twitter. 

In case the embedded link does not work, the direct url is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeGeBMLO80Y

Anonymous Users in Online Communities

In online communities, I think that anonymous users and lurkers should be allowed to participate and be a part of the digital environment. Having many of these types of users may not be ideal, but they play an important role in the survival and health of online communities.

In most online communities, the user group is built of people who were once anonymous participants or lurkers on the site. People want to see what a community is all about before joining, and they often want to explore and understand what happens once they decide to become a part of the new environment. In order to allow participants to gain a sense of comfort before joining, it is necessary that they are able to lurk for a period of time.

If a community wants to raise the chance that lurkers will become members, it is the designer’s responsibility to create a welcoming environment with various levels and types of interaction occurring on a regular basis. The interest of new users needs to be captured, and once they realize how the site can benefit them, they are more likely to join. There is a need for lurkers if a community is going to grow, but the key is a successful transition to encourage the anonymous users to become vital members.

Patron Wiki Additions

In some libraries patrons are not allowed to add information to library wikis, and a contributing factor to this trend may be an inability or a lack of willingness on the part of librarians to monitor the content patrons could add to a wiki.  Users can add almost anything to a wiki, and it is easy for someone to include the wrong information, forget to double check facts, or even spam a page on purpose. It takes effort to make sure the information added by the public is accurate, and different factors such as budget issues, staff shortages, or lack of time could determine if a librarian is able to stay current with edits that are being made to the site.

Another possible reason for libraries not allowing patrons to edit wikis is a simple lack of trust. Since the public can put up nearly anything they want on a wiki, the librarians may think it is easier to do it themselves than to constantly monitor and edit the content patrons add.

Finally, even if they are aware they can add information to a wiki, many people will never try to edit a page. In the library setting, it takes time to organize and implement a wiki. If it is a public wiki and no one ever edits it or adds information, the site may not be successful. Some librarians might feel it is better to complete a wiki themselves and then have access to a reliable resource instead of dealing with the issues that come with allowing patrons to edit a wiki. 

Exercise 5: Delicious Bookmarking

Until the completion of this exercise, I had never really used social bookmarking sites to search for resources on different subjects.  I enjoy bookmarking items for personal use, but I was never compelled to use the site like a search engine. This project provided me with the opportunity to explore past my normal comfort zone and gain a broader understanding of the capabilities of a bookmarking site like Delicious.

As I worked through the exercise it was interesting to discover the different tags people use for a resource. While many of the key ideas overlap or are tagged in the same way, a number of the labels cover a wide range of terms and topics. Everyone expresses thoughts or ideas differently, and through the tags it is obvious how many interpretations are present for one source.  It is also interesting to note the number of tags a person includes for an item. Some users post two or three basic tags, while others include every possible idea the article covers.

Another aspect I find noteworthy is the variety of bookmarks certain people post. When looking through one user’s bookmarks for additional resources on this week’s topic, it was a challenge to find someone who had actually posted more than one source about social bookmarking or tagging. The first couple of users’ lists that I browsed did not have more than one applicable link, but I finally found someone who did. Browsing by user does not appear to be a successful way to find resources on one topic, unless the person definitely focuses his bookmarks on a certain area. Even though searching through tags can be unorganized as well, this method provides more thorough results than hunting for articles by a user’s listings.  

Finally, I was able to browse the bookmarks my classmates had selected, and I found that we have bookmarked some of the same links. It was also interesting to view the different topics and subjects of interest that emerged as I compared chosen tags and sites.

While searching a bookmarking site like Delicious seems unorganized at first, I am beginning to see the benefits of using it as a search tool. It acts similar to a search engine, and in addition to just bringing up search results, extra information such as how many users have bookmarked the site is also provided. Knowing the popularity of an item that is bookmarked allows users to gain a sense of quality for the site. Many people seem comfortable searching in this manner because it gives them a sense of camaraderie with individuals who are on the same level they are.  

Knowledge Sharing and Organizational Culture

In today’s society, I think that the culture within a group or organization impacts the success of knowledge-sharing through social media interaction. There are many factors that affect the accomplishment of digital knowledge-sharing, and some of the core elements are the existence of a collaborative culture in an organization, technologically intelligent people, transparency, and a willingness to be flexible and use social software at home and at work. Without a foundation where members already work together to share thoughts and ideas, it is going to be difficult to create an environment where knowledge sharing thrives.

I think that effective knowledge-sharing requires a certain bond between group members, and the people need to be comfortable interacting and sharing information with each other in different environments. If workers are independent and desire to retain their “knowledge archipelagos” (Kelly, 2009), the collaborative culture does not exist and very few workers are going to participate in a digital knowledge-sharing effort.

I currently work in an environment where employees are constantly sharing experiences and openly interacting with one another. As of now we do not share knowledge digitally, but after reflecting on the work environment, I think it would be successful if the social software tools were implemented.  The culture of the organization contains many of the elements required to maintain collaboration and succeed in sharing knowledge. Workers are primarily open, interactive, transparent, and technologically savvy, and it seems like this would be a good base for successfully sharing knowledge digitally.  

Marketing Critique: Contra Costa County Library

          In today’s society, the use of online social media in the library setting is a growing trend. While the library world is still in the first stages of building a solid online presence, many libraries and library systems are taking the plunge into new areas of technology and marketing themselves in unique ways. What started out as hosting basic websites for libraries has expanded into the use of numerous social media tools which encourage interaction with patrons on a new level. One of the library systems actively utilizing social media tools to expand its online presence is the Contra Costa County Library System. Containing twenty-seven branches spread throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, the Contra Costa County Library System has developed a strong online presence through the use of Facebook, Myspace, RSS feeds, a blog, and a Flickr photo stream, but they could still improve their outreach techniques by updating sites more frequently and by expanding their social media usage.

           

            The social media tool that the Contra Costa County Library System uses most actively is Facebook. A thumbnail link to the Facebook page is clearly displayed on the library’s website to provide for easy access. With about 1,450 users who “like” the page, the library is successfully connecting with people in this social networking environment. Updates about activities, interesting articles, information about new phone applications and more are posted on the wall every few days, and the posts often receive several comments from users. If a comment contains a question, the library responds quickly, sometimes within two hours. The Facebook page also maintains a note section where entries are posted several times a month. The notes often reflect information included in the updates, but they go into more depth. In addition, the location tab lists the branches in the library system and then links to additional information on the main library website.  This is one area where the Contra Costa County library is not taking full advantage of the impact Facebook can have in marketing because it requires an extra step to find the hours and contact information for the individual libraries.  Listing this information under the location tab would allow people who are not likely to click the link to see information that might be useful to them.

            In contrast to an active Facebook page, the library system’s Myspace site is not providing users with a successful, current connection to the library. The last update was nearly a year ago in April 2010. The page is titled “OurLibrary,” and the name “Contra Costa County Library” is not present until a user scrolls about half way down the page.

The page indicates only 186 friends, and the last wall comment was two years ago.

Some interesting videos and slide shows are incorporated into the page, and this could be a good marketing technique for young people, but several of the links are dead. A thumbnail to the page is not located on the library’s main website, showing this is not one of their primary marketing tools. The site either needs to be revived or the use of video and slide shows should be incorporated into another social media tool that would be more useful in building the library’s online brand.

            The online brand of the Contra Costa County Library may not be reinforced by the Myspace page, but the numerous RSS feeds the library provides show the incorporation of solid social media outreach tools. A section of the library’s website clearly lists all the feeds a user can access, including individual feeds for different genres of new books, programs and events at specific libraries, library news, and podcasts. The feeds are updated regularly and remind patrons about library happenings. Maintaining RSS feeds goes a long way in developing a positive brand in the online environment.

            Another way reaching out in the online world can be successful is through blogs. The Contra Costa County Library maintains a Wordpress blog started in May 2008 that features short entries about different books or chapters of books, and sometimes it even links to audio versions of the story. This is a fun idea, but it is hard to tell how successful the blog is since few comments are left on the entries. Also the last post is from November 2010, so it appears the blog has not been updated for several months. With more in-depth posts and more successful marketing of the site, this could be a great start to a readers’ discussion blog. While it is not currently active, there is significant potential to draw users through an updated blog with a more visually appealing design.

                        

            Since visual appeal draws the attention of users, the library has begun a Flickr photostream, posting pictures and images from different library events, activities, books, and more. This brings library happenings to life and gives users an idea of what goes on at events. This is a great start to adding visual images to the library, however if these pictures were also incorporated in different library online social media tools it would create a more meaningful experience for patrons.

           

            The Contra Costa County Library has created a fairly strong online brand with the success of the Facebook page, RSS feeds and Flickr, but there is room for improvement in several areas. The library is making a significant effort to interact with people through social media tools, and the overall response shows that customers are willing to connect. However, if the library hired me as a social media marketing consultant I would make several major suggestions to boost their online presence. First, the current social media tools that are unsuccessful should be refined. The Myspace page needs updating and a more obvious connection to the Contra Costa County Library. While this may not be a prime area for marketing since it is less popular than other social media tools, keeping it current, including basic information, posting activities that pertain to teens, and then promoting it in the library or on the website could benefit the library system and give younger patrons an opportunity to interact with the library virtually. In addition, updating the blog would be an area that I would recommend.  Posting regularly and writing more in-depth entries about books, asking readers opinions, promoting it as a book discussion blog, and creating a more appealing visual design could improve the interest of viewers and encourage them to participate in a lively environment. Finally, a major step the library should take is to make a Twitter account and use it to engage users on a new and more personal level. There is no sign that the library currently uses Twitter, and this is one area where librarians could connect with young people and all types of users in their own environment. Instituting these improvements would help the library develop a presence in patrons’ lives on a daily basis, and they would build on the library’s strong social media foundation and take its online presence to a new level.