Build a Network, Not a Website
Discovered this article on the latest Neat New Stuff on the Net and had to share it! The article focuses on newspaper websites, but his points about making those websites into a network rather than a destination could not be more true for library sites as well.
The article offers several tips on how to do this. Here are the ones that I see working best for libraries:
1. Link, link, link: Link out to content, link to blogs and link to your own related content. So when we do a list of bestsellers or new books on our site or our staff blogs, we link to our catalog. If it is a piece on a new hot author, we link to the books in our catalog, link to the author's website, and link to any news articles that explain more about the author and his/her books. This makes the library a place to head to to discover information already nicely packaged together. There are probably even more ways to do that.
Unlike newspaper websites, library sites also have to realize that it's time to start creating our own content. We have to offer unique information ourselves. It can be done by blogging, creating podcasts, making videos, etc. To be a real vivid part of the online landscape we have to be more than a hub for links, we have to be linkable ourselves.
2. Cultivate conversations. We are still working on this at our library. We have open comments all over the site and one of our long range goals is to have several hundred comments in the next few years. We want our website to be a place people come to talk together and also a place people talk to one another about. We are still searching for the element that will get people talking and contributing, but we are far from giving up! If you have had successful comments on your site, please let me know. I get them on my blogs, but not on the library site itself.
3. Build shortcuts to information. Offer RSS feeds on your website. Feeds can be added to websites fairly easily and aren't just for blogs anymore. Nicely, if you go with Drupal or Joomla for your website RSS feeds are already present for the entire site. And comments are available with little effort too.
I know that all of this takes time, but I think it's worth it. You want to be a place people come to for information, a hub. We are the information experts and it's time our websites demonstrate that!