Investigative Exercise 10 - Reccomendations

You have been given an individual library service to investigate. Write a substantial post about the recommendations you would make about the use of 2.0 technologies in your individual library service. Give specific examples from other best practice libraries worldwide. Provide links to all these examples. Again use the following 5 categories to discuss in your response - Local Studies, Children’s, Teenage/Youth, Adult Fiction, Information/Reference. Make certain you label your post, this post will require multiple labels

Again the library service in question is Northern Regional Library Service.

As discussed before there are no web 2.0 technolgies implimented for this service. And as the Liberty 3 catalogue for this service just times out every time it is pretty difficult to acertain what items they have for each collection. As such I do not think that if it were working that there would be any web 2.0 through out it.

Despite this I have a few suggestions for this service in the way of implimenting web 2.0 technology into their website.

1. Social Networking Sites; Following the examples of other succesful 2.0 libraries, having a Twitter, Facebook or Myspace page would not go amiss. Not only is it free to set these accounts up but it involves predominantly the younger generation and would help create awareness for all of these libraries involved.
Take for example, Gwinnett County Public library, on their homepage there is a link for both their facebook and their twitter. The facebook they use to broadcast events for the library and for basic details, hours of openning etc. They also have photo albums which would update to a persons feed when they are published and thus capture the attention of the viewer.

Their twitter also reminds those subscribed to their feed of upcoming events, if the library will be closed for a holiday and generally keeps them updated.

The Northern Regional Library Service could utilize these sites to create further awareness for their libraries. This would either involve correspondance between the libraries (I would suggest an email group or sharing the one facebook at allotted times) but essentially would advise patrons and keep them up to date.

2. An RSS feed.
This function would be benificial for The Northern Regional Library service as they could update their page with events, new items etc. and a subscribed user would be able to see it from whatever feed reader they were using; they would not have to keep checking back for updates.

Flinders University Library is an excellent (if not some-what over excessive) example of RSS feeds. They service a large population of students and clientelle and as such offering feeds in different dewey areas for the different subjects covered prooves useful.

Even though The Northern Regional Library does not cover a large population in comparison to other areas, they could still utilize feeds to update their clients on upcoming news and events, and perhaps new items brought in (e.g. Local Studies, Children’s and young adults fiction and non fiction, Adult Fiction, etc.)

3. Social Bookmarking. Another way for this Northern Library to keep patrons interactive would be to add a user review function on their catalogue (when they got it working, that is) I don't know if that could be implimented using Liberty3 technology but they could always consider other systems, hopefully within their budget.

The State Library Of Tasmania's catalogue (which I have discussed in a previous post) allows each user to write their own personal reviews of items within the catalogue and rate the item. This is useful as it gives others a peer review to go by when deciding whether to borrow the item or not.

Northern Library could impliment this to involve their patrons more as currently there is literally NO web interactivity between the client and the library. It may be a small rural service but keeping up with the times would perhaps help put them on the map, so to speak.

Also in reference to their Aboriginal external site, The Northern Regional Indigenous Unit, they could impliment feeds and perhaps a chat box or forum to help encourage interaction within the Aboriginal community over the large area it spans. Events could be RSS feeded or Twittered. They could even utilize Flickr for photos (this includes the whole service too)

4. Flickr. Lots of Libraries are utilizing Flickr to display, and more importantly share, past events and generic photos taken within the library.

This post within a Flickr group is a great example of how many libraries are sharing on Flickr.

In conclusion any of these web 2.0 technologies will help Northern Regional Library Service boost it's reputation and clientelle usage. Mostly everything I mentioned is free too! And not hard to maintain either, you let the clients do most of the work.

It's time to step into the future, Northern Regional Library. Do not be afraid.

-Toni

Investigative Exercise 9 - Community Profiles

The Northern Regional Library service has no web 2.0 technologies that I can see. Add to this the factor that their web catalogue does not function at all for me to search their items and I would say that the Northern Regional Library service definately needs a revamp.

Now, there are number of reasons behind this "library fail."

1. The library service is covering a number of small rural town areas and as such I believe that only basic services are provided to cover a small population over such a large area. (Northern Regional Library service covers 68,905 square kilometers yet serves 28,729 people. Compare this to Blacktown city council which covers only 47 square kilometers and had a population of 271,000 as of 2006!)

2. Collaboration. Northern Regional Library Service isn't a 'library' in itself but a network that comprises of different rural libraries. I can imagine it would be difficult for any of the librarians to actually get together and discuss the introduction of web 2.0 technologies due to the amount of travel and time outside of their working hours. Of course this could be done online too but I am also unsure what kind of resources they actually have for this. Rather narrow minded of me to say but smaller libraries and smaller councils = smaller budgets. This brings me to our next reason;

3. Cost. Whilst we're on the topic of councils; there isn't one councils but 4 different councils covering the span of these libraries and from experience it is usually people working for or in the council that end up making their own websites with a sub-section for their libraries. The fact that this service exists is a testimony that the councils themselves decided not to maintain their own libraries and pay for online searching programs to be integrated tells me that this is both costly and time consuming for them. Much easier to band together like so.

Investigative Exercise 8 - Community Profile for Northern Regional Library

[Image taken from Northern Regional Libraries website]

The Norther Regional Library groups together services for 7 different libraries within the Northern area of New South Wales. Altogether it serves some 28, 729 people over an area span of 68,905 square kilometres. The libraries included in this service are Bingara, Brewarrina, Lightning Ridge, Moree, Mungindi, Walgett, and Warialda.

The councils that support these libraries are as follows:
Lightning Ridge & Walgett: http://www.walgett.nsw.gov.au/library/1644.html
Bingara & Warialda: http://www.gwydirshire.com/libraries.html
Brewarrina: http://www.brewarrina.nsw.gov.au/
Moree & Mungindi: http://www.mpsc.nsw.gov.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1

There is an emphasis on Aboriginal Heritage, for which the library service has created a whole seperate webpage for.

-Toni