Ten Laws of web services for underfunded libraries presentation by Sarah Houghton-Jan, Librarian in Black. Slides available here.
1. Talk to your customers
Email, IM, Chat, VOIP (Skype), Texting, Video Chat
Doing it right? UNLV’s IM service
Hint: Add the chat widget to your no results found page or wherever people get mad when visiting your webpage; if not chat, then at least add your contact info.
Text (SMS)- Cell phones and SMS very popular; offer circulation and reference via SMS; use pay option, not hack options (see Mosio)
2. Interact with customers
Welcome comments on everything
Respond like a human being
Hint: offer online bookclubs with a mix of staff and customers; use Google groups or Library Thing
Use blogs for recommended materials
One post = one review
Encourage full staff participation
Offer a template with tags and categories
Enable comments
Doing it right? AADL (effective use of tags) and MADReads
3. Be engaged
Engagedpatrons.org offers free and low cost 2.0 options for libraries. Run by Glenn Peterson of HCL. They provide events calendars, Google mashups, etc.
Example: Monterey PL
4. Be social
Be present where users are
Be real
Be reliable and continuously new
Don’t be fake, don’t speak institutional, be genuine
Example: Hennepin’s Facebook page
Facebook Adverts: According to presenter, $10 = 5,000 ads in your geographic area.
5. Use multimedia
Photos, images, podcasts, videocasts, games
Example: Westmont PL used Flickr for marketing faceouts and links to catalog
Example: San Jose PL’s TeensReach (contest voting via comments)
Exploit image generators like generator blog, image generator, or image chef.
Podcasting—needs: people who can talk/sing (free), digital mic (cheap), Audacity (free), blog (free)
Videocasting—needs: people who aren’t camera shy (free), digital video camera, Avidemux, blog (free)
6. Offer treatsies
People like shiny objects, ask them what they want, then find them some
Example: catalogs that allow adjusting size of text, link to comments, subject links, etc.
Teen staff at Nashville PL created avatars (scroll down) and answered Who are we? questions.
7. Exploit the free
TinyPic, Wordpress, Bravenet, OpenPhoto, GIMP, SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, Webmonkey, PollDaddy, Dzone, StatCounter, ImageAfter, Google (groups, docs, calendar, translate)
...and the almost free...like Techsoup who offer public libraries access to software at very discounted rates.
8. Respect customers
You never know when you’re lunch.
Expect the best, not the worst (don’t make rule for one person who curses in the comments).
Treat customers with respect--regardless of age.
9. Offer users choices
Choices for contacting us.
Choices for how we can contact them.
Choices for how they find things online.
Choices for what they find online. (content and format)
Mashups = choices. People are mashing up your library’s content, why not advertise that? see LibraryElf and LibX
Good catalog = choices
Can’t change ILS? Use an overlay.
Several pay options like Library Thing for libraries, etc.
An open source option is VuFind.
10. Keep going!
Try new things.
Push administrators (stress the 24/7 nature of web services, minimal staffing and cheap costs, highest return on investment in the library)
Rejoice in failures...it means you’re pushing boundaries!
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