The OPAC as Blog

In an earlier post I mentioned my local public library's blog as an example of an ineffective use of technology in a library. I wanted to expand a little on that criticism, and then offer an example of a library which is using its blog in innovative and effective ways.

The problems with the local library blog (which I'd rather not identify here since it's negative criticism) are pretty typical pitfalls of blogging in general-- certainly problems I've experienced with my own attempts at blogging.

1) The first is that there's no steady rhythm to posting-- In the past four years there have been some months with fifteen posts, other months have had only one or two. There are times when I'm inundated with information, and there are times that I double check the RSS feed because it's been so long since anything has shown up in my blog reader.

2) Contents of the posts have also been unpredictable-- There's a sort of bipolar character to posts where some are quite thorough and interesting and the others are one-sentence recaps or reminders. It seems like they need to hash out what topics could make for interesting posts for readers at home and which are, say, small matters of policy that would best be communicated by a sign in the library.

3) The blog isn't prominent-- From the library's home page you have to choose "What's New" from the tool bar and then select "What's New @ the PL" before you're linked to the blog. There's two distinct toolbars on the homepage (one horizontal across the top and one vertically down the left side) so there's a lot of choices, none of which are marked "blog".

4) The blog is redundant-- You can get the same information in slightly different forms from the printed newsletter, the library's various social networking sites and updates on the homepage. No one source is the definitive voice of the library. The result is the impression that they're stretching themselves too thin disseminating information in all these various media rather just maintaining one source well.

A good example of a library which has resolved some of these common blogging issues is the Lamson Library at Plymouth State University. The brilliance of the Lamson Library website is that they've merged the functions of a blog and an OPAC into one site. The blog is accessible because it's the first thing you see. The presence of the blog, and particularly its photographs, frees the OPAC from the static and stodgy sterility that is normally its fate at academic libraries. The site provides a lot of information without seeming cluttered or impairing usability. It's a good model for how both online catalogs and library blogs should work.

Of the Five Colleges, only Amherst College has approached this model-- they've added a blog to their OPAC but there's no pictures and site is blandly monochromatic (just a lot of school spirit, I guess). Still, they're headed in the right direction. I suspect other libraries will follow suit. It makes sense from a library's perspective to streamline various web functions into one site, and especially so if it improves the experience of the user.