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August/September 2009 vol. 45 / no. 6 ISSN 0024-2586

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Expert Guides to Library Systems and Services

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Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines to Transform Your Website by David Lee King

Library Technology R

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Expert Guides to Library Systems and Services

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website David Lee King

www.alatechsource.org Copyright © 2009 American Library Association All Rights Reserved.

About the Author

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American Library Association 50 East Huron St. Chicago, IL 60611-2795 USA www.alatechsource.org 800-545-2433, ext. 4299 312-944-6780 312-280-5275 (fax)

Advertising Representative Brian Searles, Ad Sales Manager ALA Publishing Dept. [email protected] 312-280-5282 1-800-545-2433, ext. 5282

David Lee King is the Digital Branch and Services Manager at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, where he plans for, implements, and experiments with emerging technology trends. He speaks internationally about emerging trends, website usability and management, digital experience planning, and managing techie staff and has been published in many library-related journals. David was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker for 2008 and recently published his first book, Designing the Digital Experience. David writes the Internet Spotlight column in Public Libraries magazine with Michael Porter and maintains a blog at www. davidleeking.com.

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Abstract Library Technology Reports (ISSN 0024-2586) is published eight times a year (January, March, April, June, July, September, October, and December) by American Library Association, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611. It is managed by ALA TechSource, a unit of the publishing department of ALA. Periodical postage paid at Chicago, Illinois, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Library Technology Reports, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611. Trademarked names appear in the text of this journal. Rather than identify or insert a trademark symbol at the appearance of each name, the authors and the American Library Association state that the names are used for editorial purposes exclusively, to the ultimate benefit of the owners of the trademarks. There is absolutely no intention of infringement on the rights of the trademark owners.

www.alatechsource.org www.alatechsource.org Copyright ©2009 American Library Association All Rights Reserved.

In the past fifteen years, the World Wide Web has become such a major part of the library world that most libraries now have some presence on the Web. This issue of Library Technology Reports explores the idea of the digital branch—a library website that is a vital, functional resource for patrons and enhances the library’s place within its community. The report outlines an efficient process for creating a digital branch, from the initial phases of gathering information and sketching out a design, to winning approval from management, hiring qualified IT staff, and maintaining and upgrading the site once it is built. Throughout the report, the author regularly uses his experience at his own library as an example of how the process can unfold and what pitfalls to avoid.

Subscriptions For more information about subscriptions and individual issues for purchase, call the ALA Customer Service Center at 1-800-545-2433 and press 5 for assistance, or visit www.alatechsource.org.

Table of Contents Chapter 1—What Is a Digital Branch, Anyway? The Purpose of This Report The Digital Branch Defined What’s a Website? Traditional Libraries Building Budget Staff Collection Community What Is a Digital Branch? Real Staff Real Collection Real Building Real Community The Digital Branch Allows a Choice What’s Next? Notes

Chapter 2—Gathering Information

5 5 6 6 6 6 7 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 9 9 9 9

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Hold Discussions Start with the Leaders Ask the Public Services Staff Don’t Forget the Patrons—Your Customers Observing Note

10 10 11 11 12 12

Chapter 3—The Planning Process

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Pull Your Information Together Gather a Committee Go Visit the Managers Again Note

Chapter 4—Building the Branch First Decisions Content Management System What Do You Want Your CMS to Do? CMS Options Windows or Linux? Next Up: Design The Design Process HTML Prototype Seeking Feedback Building: Getting Started Time Deadlines Staff Creating Content Notes

13 15 15 15

16 16 16 17 17 18 19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 21 22

Table of Contents, continued Chapter 5—What to Do Once Your Site Is Built Focus on Staff Continuous Writing Job-Specific Training Training and Coaching on Improvements Touching Base Modeling the Way Creating a Style Guide Continued Focus on Site Improvements

23 23 23 23 24 24 24 25 28

Chapter 6—Creating Community at the Digital Branch 30 What Is Digital Community? Tools That Help Facilitate Digital Community Blogs IM and SMS Messaging Twitter Outposts—Content and Comments Getting Participation at Your Digital Branch Listening First Creating Content Being Real Notes

Chapter 7—Planning for the Next Phase Current Updates Building Outposts Strategic Planning: Next Steps No Dry Rot Teaching/Training

Chapter 8—Resources Books on Building and Improving Websites Blogs and Websites Relevant to this Report Great List of Web Designers to Follow on Twitter Content Management Systems Wikipedia List of Content Management Systems Social Media Tools to Enhance your Digital Branch Must-Have Social Networking Sites—Start with These Other Useful Tools and Services Selected Digital Branches

30 30 30 31 31 32 32 32 32 33 33

34 34 35 35 36 36

37 37 37 38 38 38 38 38 38 38

Chapter X 1

What Is a Digital Branch, Anyway? Abstract In order to build a digital branch, we first need to know what a digital branch is. How does it differ from a website? This chapter of “Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website” gives a brief history of library websites and discusses how library websites and the traditional physical library combine to form the concept of a digital branch.

Library websites have been around for about fifteen years. During that time, library websites and the nature of the Internet itself have changed considerably. These sites started to appear in the mid-nineties. Dan Lester, librarian emeritus at Boise State University, described those early days: “Boise State University Library had a website in the spring of 1994. . . . It ran under Windows 3.1 on my desktop on a 486, 24/7, and was able to easily handle the load in those days.”1 I also started building websites around that time. The list of what has changed in the past fifteen years could fill a library. For starters, coding languages have multiplied. Back then, I learned HTML. Now, Web developers also learn CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Ajax, and Ruby on Rails (and those are just a few). Interaction has also changed. The “old Web” is described in the definition of World Wide Web on Wikipedia as a place where “one can view Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks.”2 The old Web was primarily about finding information and navigating to other webpages. Hence, it was fondly referred to as the Information Superhighway.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

The Purpose of This Report

Today, people driving down that road have discovered communities along the way. With the emergence of Web 2.0, people can not only find information, they can also often interact directly with the person who provided that information. They can add their own thoughts to the content created by that person. They can remix that original content into something else entirely. The superhighway has become more like the old, winding Route 66, with many points of interest. Someone might want to pull off the road and poke around or chat for a while. The new Web allows that type of interaction. That’s where the idea of a digital branch comes into play. A modern library can exist in two places—in a building and online. When this idea is taken to the next step, people can now hold conversations with librarians in the building and online. People can hold meetings in the physical library and in the online library. If you would like your digital branch to become more of a destination, read on—we’ll take that journey together. In this issue of Library Technology Reports, you will find the following: The concept of a digital branch library is defined and explained in this chapter, “What Is a Digital Branch, Anyway?” In chapter 2, “Gathering Information,” I discuss how my library, Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, gathered information from customers and staff about what they thought a digital branch library should do. Next, in the third chapter, we examine “The Planning Process.” The process of building the site is discussed in chapter 4, “Building the Branch.” Chapter 5, “What to Do Once Your Site Is Built,” discusses how to work with staff on content for the digital branch. Your patrons will want to add their voices to the conversation, and that’s the focus of chapter 6, “Creating Community at the Digital Branch.”

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Finally, chapter 7, “Planning for the Next Phase,” focuses on our next steps in Topeka and relates them to potential next steps for your library. You’ll also find a resources section that lists tools in a variety of different media to help you get started.

The Digital Branch Defined In order to build a digital branch, we first need to know what a digital branch is. How does it differ from a website? In this chapter, we’ll discuss library websites and the traditional physical library, then mix the two together to arrive at a description of a digital branch.

not be new to you, it will provide a valuable model when we consider the digital branch. Building In order to have a library, you generally need a permanent building (see figure 3). With that building comes a great deal of maintenance and upkeep. Anyone who has ever owned a house knows that, right? If the roof develops a leak, you have to fix it. If the carpet gets dirty, you have to clean it. A library building of any size is a complex creature. There are few library classes (if any) that teach budding librarians how to install new shelving, how to hire a plumber, how to pick appropriate carpet for a multipurpose room, or how to create useful signage.

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

What’s a Website?

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Traditionally, a library website has been, well, traditional (which is weird to say about a website, isn’t it?). Think about it—many library websites, both visually and structurally, were built last century. Their model was based on what is now a dated, almost “traditional” structural and visual model of website design. Those older model websites focused on providing information about the library rather than on providing actual online services (see figure 1). There wasn’t a lot of interaction on the average website in the nineties. Many library sites had catalog links, pointers to other websites, and information about the library—its history, what services it offered, and when it was open. In fact, most of the tools we currently use to interact online with people and websites were not yet available. Some library websites are still operating under that older, more traditional model of Web design and structure (see figure 2). There’s no online collection on the website. No meetings, chat, or other types of interaction happen online. There is rarely a staff person or staff group whose main job is to oversee the site. There certainly aren’t “digital branch workers,” which we’ll discuss later. The traditional library website exists primarily to guide people to the physical building and to the services that can be found inside the library.

Figure 1 Library website from 1999.

Traditional Libraries Traditionally, the “real stuff” a library does happens at that library’s physical locations—the main buildings and branch libraries. Let’s turn our gaze to the branch library. As you probably know, a traditional physical library consists of at least four things: a building, a staff, a collection, and a community. Bear with me as we briefly touch on each of these aspects. While much of this information will

Figure 2 Library website from 2009.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Figure 3 The author in front of a library building.

Budget Of course, even the smallest library needs some money and a plan for how to spend it in order to function. You need money allocated to acquisitions, utilities, and salaries, to name just a few things. As we’ll discuss later in this report, one of the nice things about a library website is that it can be done inexpensively, even if the library is unable to devote significant financial resources to it.

A traditional library of any size will need a diverse staff (see figure 4), including graduate-degree-holding librarians and maintenance workers who actually know how to keep the building in working order. There are one or more administrators who are responsible for the big picture. A library needs people who can keep collections on the shelves, as well as front-line staffers—people who

can keep patrons happy. These staffers answer questions at a busy reference desk while kids are screaming, the printer’s jammed, and someone just spilled coffee on the Encyclopedia Britannica. Collection Most library collections (see figure 5) are fairly complex. At the public library where I work, we have everything from comic books to price guides about those comic books, novels, great nonfiction books, databases, and magazines. We have a vast array multimedia content, including videos in many formats and music galore. If a public library in a medium-sized American city has this much variety, one can only imagine just how complex a collection can get. Community Many libraries offer meeting facilities, either formally or informally (see figure 6). For example, at Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, you can visit the library café and have a fine latte with a friend. Staff members interact with customers, involving themselves in the local community. Customers interact with us by asking questions or attending an event or program. We’re a major meeting facility in Topeka, so local organizations hold thousands of meetings every year at our facility.

Figure 4 Library staff.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Staff

Figure 5 Library collection.

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But we don’t need to stop with the whole reading thing, do we? After all, this is the Web! These days, our libraries can offer librarian-created content such as blogs, videos, and podcasts. This content is important for four reasons:

Figure 6 Patrons using a meeting room at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

What Is a Digital Branch?

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Now that we know what a traditional library website is and have a description of a physical branch library, we can ask this question: just what is a digital branch? When I talk about digital branches, I like to remind people that the “digital” part is somewhat arbitrary. A branch is a branch and must have certain properties, whether it is physical or virtual. A digital branch is a branch library, delivered digitally, on the Web. It offers much more than a traditional library website in many ways, because a digital branch has real staff, a real building, a real collection, and real community happening on and around it. Real Staff Obviously, the digital branch needs some type of Web staff. There must be someone to build and maintain the site and public services staff to interact with customers. These people do typical public service librarian jobs, such as answering questions, but they do it using instant messaging, e-mail, and other means of online communication. Someone needs to respond to comments made on a library’s blog or to the library’s Twitter account. Someone also needs to oversee the online library community (much as a branch manager would oversee the physical library community). Real Collection A digital branch also has an actual collection that patrons can interact with. A branch is a branch only if it contains materials for patrons to use. With a digital branch, patrons can go beyond mere reading and can interact with reading materials. For example, they can check out and reserve books from the catalog. They can read e-books online. They can listen to and download audiobooks. They can read, browse, and search for periodical articles.

1. The content is focused on helping patrons find and use our materials in a better way. 2. It allows library staff to display a bit of organizational personality. A video explaining how to use a database, for example, can be made in a fun way that still teaches the skill. 3. The librarian has turned into the author. Traditionally, libraries have housed other authors’ materials and helped patrons navigate through that mound of knowledge. Now, with the advent of user-generated content, we too can write for our patrons. How cool is that? 4. We can even go one step further and allow our patrons to join in the fun—with patron-created content. Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library is doing that by allowing teens to post videos to our YouTube account and book reviews to our teen blog. There are many other ways to allow patron participation. This is really not much different from the way some libraries collect books written by local authors—it’s all patron-created content. Real Building With the digital branch, we also have a very real destination that we need to maintain in order for it to grow and change. This digital destination is the equivalent of the traditional library’s physical building. Think about it this way—when people want to buy a book, they can visit the local bookstore, or they can visit Amazon. When they want to buy a shirt, they can visit the mall, or they can head to Zappos.com. In the same way, when they want to visit your library, they should have options. They should be able to visit you in person, or online at your digital branch. A digital destination has many similarities to a library building. There are clearly laid out places to do things, just as in the library building. For example, your building probably has a children’s section, and your website should also have a children’s section. At your digital branch, patrons can interact with you in a way that is similar to the interactions when they visit your library in person. Just as you might have a suggestion box at a physical branch, patrons can make comments on blog posts at a digital branch, or they can send a question via e-mail, text message, or instant messaging. At a physical branch, patrons can reserve materials and par-

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

ticipate in library programs. At a digital branch, patrons can subscribe to parts and pieces of your content using RSS feeds or attend a virtual book club using a forum you have created. Real Community The concept of community is crucial to any library. Without a community to serve, a library has no reason to exist. In a physical library building, your patrons have many ways to interact with library staff and each other, thus continuously building the reciprocal relationship between the library and the community. At your digital branch, they can do many of those same things:

The coolest thing about a digital branch is that you give your patrons a choice about how they interact with you. For instance, they can go to the library by simply visiting your website. Or, through tools like RSS feeds or outpost sites like Facebook, they can have the library come to them. That’s something a traditional library model really can’t duplicate.

What’s Next? The rest of this issue is devoted to examining how to build a digital branch and how to turn your current website into a digital branch. I plan to touch on quite a few things, including these: • Gathering information—how to collect the background you’ll need before deciding what to build • Planning—how to use the gathered information to figure out what to build • Building—how to build the site, including many details to consider and decisions to make • Preparing for interaction—how to decide what types of content and interactions you digital branch should include

Notes 1. Dan Lester, “Please Help SLJ: Milestones in Library Technology,” Oct. 5, 1999, WEB4LIB, http://lists.web junction.org/wjlists/web4lib/1999-October/028842.html (accessed June 20, 2009). 2. “World Wide Web,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/World_Wide_Web (accessed June 20, 2009).

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

• People can hang out there. Patrons can hang out at the library’s digital branch by frequenting blog comments, by friending and then interacting with the library on social networks, or by attending book clubs and visiting forums. • The digital branch is a real place to attend meetings. You can set up digital-based meeting spaces. You can offer slideshows, share Google documents, or give a LiveMeeting presentation to your local business users and teach them how to use a hot new business resource owned by your library. You can also set up video or screencast tutorials or hold an event in Second Life. • The digital branch is a real place to interact with library staff. This is also a type of community activity. When patrons walk up to the reference desk to ask a question, they are playing an active role in the library’s community. This can happen digitally via blog comments, IM, and text reference services; comments and discussion groups in social networks; and more casual questions via a status update service like Twitter.

The Digital Branch Allows a Choice

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Chapter X 2

Gathering Information

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Abstract

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Once you’ve decided to build a digital branch, the first step in the process is to gather information. You’ll need to document who the websites will be serving, what services those people desire and what you are capable of providing, budgetary concerns, design concerns and much more. This chapter of “Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website” provides guidelines on what initial information you’ll need and how to collect it.

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o you have decided to transform your library’s website into a digital branch. Great! The first thing you need to do is to gather information. It is crucial to understand what your library staff and your customers want in a digital branch. You must gather information from these groups in order to figure out what you should build. Why gather all of this information? After all, you could build things you think are popular, or build things that everyone else is building, and use all the cool tools everyone else is using . . . but that doesn’t always work. To build a digital branch that serves the library’s community, you must try to gauge as accurately as possible how you can build a branch that will fulfill the wants and needs of the community. For example, take podcasting. A library that opts to create a podcast (either audio or video) has a choice. Should the audio or video file be downloadable so that patrons can copy it onto their MP3 or video player? Or should the file be delivered via a Flash-based service like YouTube so that patrons can listen to it or view it but not download it? In a big city like New York or Chicago, or in suburban or rural areas where most people travel to jobs in nearby cities, many of your patrons might have

a one- to two-hour commute every day. In such areas, a downloadable service makes a lot of sense. In Topeka, Kansas, however, I have a whopping ten-minute commute, and I live on the edge of town. So, a Flash-based service might make more sense to serve the patrons of Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. That is just one example of details that need to be examined and decisions that need to be made. Figuring out up front what your customers and staff want to do at a digital branch is a great way to start. Gathering this information will also help you understand the technological comfort level of your customers and your staff. Ask them what types of websites they like, where they go when they’re on the Web, and other questions about the types of technology that they use, enjoy, or desire in their day-to-day lives. Examine their answers thoroughly. This will give you some good insight into what types of services and functionality your patrons and staff are used to and may expect from your digital branch.

Hold Discussions One great way to start gathering information is to hold discussions with different groups of people, including staff, administration, and patrons. Do this to find out what your library wants to build and what types of services each group might be interested in using. Start with the Leaders I suggest that you start by finding out what the library leaders want in a digital branch. I’m not referring only to formal library leadership. There are usually two types of leadership in a library—formal leadership and informal

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

leadership. Formal leadership would be the library director, deputy directors, and managers or supervisors—the administration and management arm of your organization (see figure 7). When you meet with these groups, find out these types of things: what they think a digital branch means, what new services they want to provide with it, and what they have heard from the staff. Use their comments to help you better understand the needs of the community. Find out what the library’s goals or strategic plans are and how the digital branch might fit into those plans and help to meet those goals. For example, if the library wants to attract more teens, there might be some potential for the digital branch to explore blogs, content created by and for teens, and social networks. It is also important to seek out and meet with the informal leaders of the library. Informal leaders are members of the library community who may not be as prominent in title as administrators, but could be equally influential. Informal leaders include nonmanagers who are natural leaders in your organization. This group might include some of your library staff who tend to always get things done—the “can-do” people. It might include influential board members, community leaders, and even extremely active patrons. Ask them the same types of questions. Find out what type of services they’d like to offer in a digital branch setting, then incorporate some of those ideas into your digital branch plans.

Next, you should make sure to talk to the public services staff. They’re the ones who work the desk, who go out and interact with your patrons. They interact with your customers every day, so they may understand patrons’ needs in a way that other staff members do not. This group has an understanding of what patrons do when they use the

Figure 7 Library management council in a strategic planning session.

Don’t Forget the Patrons—Your Customers Let’s not forget the reason why we’re here in the first place—the customers! When building a digital branch— a place on the Web where your customers can visit the library to interact and accomplish tasks—you’ll want to consult with your customers to find out what they expect to find at a digital branch library. You need to find out what types of services they would like to use on your digital branch. There are many ways to do this. At Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, our Web team experimented with a variety of ways to connect with our patrons. For example, we held face-to-face focus groups. Our marketing director gathered enough people to hold a number of meetings of five to ten people each. At those meetings (complete with cookies and coffee), I introduced attendees to our current website and showed them what could be done with it. Then I explained the digital branch concept and gave them a tour of the rough draft of our own fledgling digital branch. I showed them what it would look like and described what types of things they would be able to do at the digital branch. Then I asked what they thought and wrote everything down. Thankfully, the great majority of the focus groups loved the concept we had created. They also had some ideas for improvements, and some had questions about parts of the new site that we hadn’t thought about and needed to improve. We also set up a Web survey, linking from the main page of our website, that asked a series of questions about what our online customers would want in a digital branch. We received a variety of responses from that, as well. Here’s a snippet of what our customers said during our focus groups on their first impressions of the main page of the new website:1 • “It’s simpler—but miss seeing the contact info at the top of the page.” • “Questions about how the top tabs differ from the side.” • “Blogs: What are we going to do to keep the inap-

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Ask the Public Services Staff

Web, how they interact with a Web browser, and what questions they typically ask about using websites. Ask your public services staff the same types of questions you asked the library leaders. They should have ideas of how they want to connect with patrons. For example, when I started working at Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, I met with every public service department and asked what they thought a digital branch was, what they wanted to do in a digital branch, and how they thought their department could be represented on a digital branch. I also asked what their patrons needed in a digital branch. I definitely got an earful of great ideas.

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Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

propriate comments controlled?” • “My account: What will happen when you click on it?” • “Kids: What will the new site have for them?” • “This site looks very similar to Barnes & Noble’s Web site.” • “Catalog search—Like that we don’t have to click two times and that it is coupled with My Account information.” • “Like the rotation of the features section so I can see it fast.” • “What makes this my unique branch? I would like something that is unique to me—like something on where I live, like a map of Lake Shawnee or North Topeka.” • “It’s pleasing to look at—pleasing colors.” • “Well organized—can look across the tabs instead of boxes.” • “Less cluttered.” • “Like dark background.” • “Visually you don’t have to read everything.” • “RSS button—What will that do for you?” • “Will RSS features be incorporated into the catalog?”

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• “Request material? Does that mean ILL or libraryowned or we will order it?” • “Today’s events need to be higher up on the page because we need to verify what time the event is we are planning to attend.” • “It’s a little big—extended for a home page.” • “I like the accessibility to staff—we can recognize and contact them.” • “It does look easier to use.” • “I like it.” • “It’s more intuitive.” • “Would like to create a ‘my library page’ similar to My Yahoo.” • “Easy to read quickly.” • “I like it, but the research tab—does that mean online access to what?”

Observing OK—it isn’t really espionage with Sherlock Holmes hats and a big magnifying glass, but watching what your patrons actually DO when they use the Web can be very eye-opening to libraries and Web teams. How do you do this? Simply walk around your library sometime and look. Observe what websites library patrons are visiting. I make sure to walk around in the public areas of the library every day or so. When I do, I make sure to actually look at what patrons are doing on our public PCs. Yes, this might sound a bit voyeuristic, or a bit like invasion of privacy, but let me clarify exactly what I mean. I am not advocating going up to a patron’s PC, glaring at the monitor, and taking notes on their browsing history. Rather, I’m urging simple observation—taking a quick glance at your computer lab or public workstation or noting when a patron asks you a question about a certain website. This is a fantastic way to see what websites your patrons actually visit when they’re online. What have I discovered? Our Topeka customers do LOTS of online things. They play games (some amazingly cool ones, too). They send e-mail, primarily in Gmail and Yahoo. They IM using Meebo. They have Facebook and MySpace pages, and they send messages and status updates through these services. They watch YouTube videos and play Runescape. Are those patrons ready for an interactive digital branch? Yes, most definitely. Those patrons are already interacting with each other digitally—sending messages, leaving comments, holding conversations, using digital content, and watching videos. What happens if the library makes those same types of content and services available to patrons? My guess, which so far has proved accurate, is that our patrons would interact with us in those new media, just as they interact with nonlibrary online services.

Note 1. Quotes taken from focus groups conducted by the author at Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library during the summer of 2007.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Chapter 3

The Planning Process

Abstract

I

n the last chapter, we discussed ways to gather information from managers, library staff, and patrons about what they expect to find at a digital branch. Now we have to start the planning process and then create a tangible product from all of the information we gathered. In this chapter, we will discuss how to turn the information gleaned from staff and patrons into a plan of action, how to gather people to help with the work, and how to present your plan to your library’s management team.

Pull Your Information Together First things first: you need to take all the information you gathered—the patron observations, the popular websites patrons use, the focus group content, results from any online surveys that you conducted, and the meetings you held with staff—and condense it into a cohesive plan for your digital branch. Let’s figure out how to do that by answering some “what,” “why,” and “how” questions. First the “what” question. What exactly is this document’s purpose? The document you’re going to create

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

This chapter of “Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website” discusses how to turn the information gleaned from staff and patrons into a plan of action, how to gather people to help with the work, and how to present your plan to your library’s management team. The chapter includes guidelines for organizing the information you’ve gathered and working with a committee or administrators to help secure approval for your plan.

from all your research and information gathering isn’t so much a cohesive, detailed, step-by-step plan. It’s more of an outline, backed up with organizational information and customer wants and needs. The outline should be as short as possible. No one wants to read a twelve-page document on how to structure a website (well, I might read it . . . but your average deputy director probably has better things to do). This document should not give details about implementation. Instead, it should give overviews of what you discovered and possible next steps. The best documents are short, concise, and simple. How about the “why”? Why make this document? Well, you don’t always have to. If you have sole responsibility for the website, and your boss says, “Just go build it” (I’ve had that directive in past jobs), you might not need it. If your library is small enough that this type of detail might be overkill, you also might not need it. I would suggest creating this planning document anyway. First of all, careful planning and documentation of your work is never a bad thing. Second, whether or not you need the document now, you might need it in the future. For example, let’s say your library is creating its first blog. When you’re at the point where writing assignments are being handed out to staff, they are going to have some burning questions, like “Why do I have to write for the blog?” or “What’s in it for me?” and might even suggest, “Our patrons don’t want this type of stuff!” If you did the legwork and created a document showing what staff and patrons expect in a new website, you can whip out your handy-dandy document and show them your reasoning and the statistics and quotes behind the reasoning. This type of concrete information is much better than getting into a subjective argument about whether or not your patrons are using MySpace. If you

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Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

can back up what you’re doing with solid information that you gathered from your own library users, your future arguments about why you’re going in this direction are much stronger. Finally, the “how.” How do you take all that great information you gathered and mash it up into a cohesive document? There are many ways to do this. I used MindJet’s MindManager program. It’s a mind-mapping application (see figure 8). Mind mapping, according to a “define mind mapping” search in Google, is “a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea.”1 To begin, I went through my first document from the information-gathering phase, arranging the information in points underneath a heading like “wants to create a new books blog.” As I went through my document, I synthesized my findings in an outline-like order. Then I tackled the next document, and so on, until all my meetings and findings were displayed in a mind map with headings and subheadings. That gave me a rough draft outline with talking points. You don’t need to hone this document further

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into a ten-page white paper complete with multiple appendices. Save that for your article about redesigning your website in a library-related journal. Your outline is good enough for your next step, which is to start talking. Take your talking points to your manager, or to your next managers’ meeting, or to whoever gets to approve your next steps, and discuss. Do a presentation. Hold a meeting. Hand out copies. You have a few goals to achieve during this meeting: • Get people talking. You want them interested and excited enough about the ideas to start talking about the digital branch and what it could do for the library and for your library’s patrons. That excitement can spill over into action and approval. • Provide information. You want to succinctly describe the goals for this redesigned digital branch and your next steps. • Get the go-ahead. Of course, your big goal is to get your next step approved. That next step probably needs to be to start building—or better yet, to gather a committee that can discuss and decide the details of your digital branch plan.

Figure 8 A mindmap. Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Gather a Committee

Go Visit the Managers Again

Your digital branch idea was approved! My recommended next step? Form a committee to work out the details. This is an important step because it gets other staff members involved in the project. In addition to the obvious advantages of spreading out the workload and bringing in additional perspectives, it also strengthens the case for your project. If you don’t get others involved and if someone doesn’t like what you created, it’s your fault. You did it, it was your plan, and the rest of the library might not want to follow along—you will have resistance. But if you have a committee planning the details and the direction, you will already have a built-in groundswell of support, because more people will “own” the project. What should this group do? For starters, you need to present your findings to the group: not just the overview that you presented to managers, but the whole enchilada. Go over all the details with them. Then, as a group, figure out how to hash through your findings and ideas and create an action plan. That’s what we did at Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. We formed the Digital Branch Committee, and I presented my findings (most of this group also participated in some of my fact-finding meetings, so there weren’t any surprises for them). We went through my notes and picked out the good stuff. Then we discussed if anything was missing—if there was anything we needed to add to the mix. Next we discussed lots of details: details like what navigation scheme to use on the website (e.g., left side, right side, top of every page), what the wording for major links should be, and what pages we needed to emphasize on the main page of the site. Another large set of details involved the visual design of the website. Our webmaster started building mock-up designs, and we discussed, refined, and handed them back for a redesign.

This is an important step. Once you have the details fleshed out, you need to touch base with your managers and administration again. Briefly describe what your group has done, and show them your final mock-up. We explained which major services we’d be highlighting, what our navigation scheme would be like, and our concept of blog-based subject guides to be used on the site. If you can, do some quick HTML and CSS coding to make a working mock-up of the site so that they can click through it and explore your idea. Your goal in this meeting is to make sure this group approves your progress. Important side point—don’t take too much ownership of the work you’ve done to this point. Share what you created, be proud of your work (because you have done a smashing job, I’m sure), and then let your management group decide if it’s the right way to go. Instead of arguing our group’s points, I described then, gave our committee’s reasoning for what we did, and then let the group decide. This provides even more buy-in for the digital branch.

Note 1. “Mind Map,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Mind_map (accessed June 20, 2009).

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

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Chapter X 4

Building the Branch

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Abstract

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Thus far, this issue has discussed how to plan your digital branch. This chapter of “Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website” examines the process of building the site, and provides guidelines and resources. The author discusses how to select a content management system, how to determine what type of server setup might work best and best practices for site design.

S

o far, we have gathered information and planned what to build from that information. This chapter discusses more some of the “hows”—how we built Topeka’s digital branch and what the process can teach us. We’ll look closely at what to consider during the building phase of your digital branch project.

First Decisions Before you start building, you have to make a few decisions about the tools you plan to use. By tools, I mean the software and coding languages that are going to hold your digital branch together. Some of these include what content management system you will use and what type of server you will use to host your digital branch. Also assess whether or not your IT department has the skills in-house to handle hosting and supporting the software, servers, and tools you decide to use. Ultimately, you want to make your decisions based on the goals for your library’s digital branch, not on the skills of your staff. Remember, you can always train staff

to support a new server. These days, it’s also easy and can be quite cost-effective to outsource that part of your website. You can certainly change this type of infrastructure after the fact, but it will be a lot of work. Get it right up front, and you will potentially save yourself and your library years of time and work. Content Management System Let’s talk a little about content management systems (CMS). Your library’s CMS will be the heart of your new digital branch. Your Web team will take whatever CMS you pick and will design the digital branch on top of it. They will base all future decisions on and around the CMS. Anything they add later on will need to be based on the functionality, features, and expandability of this CMS. So it really behooves you to get this decision right very early on. The CMS is the control center of your digital branch. It allows you to administer content within the branch: how it is organized, displayed, and accessed; who can access it; and how it can be accessed. According to one definition, a CMS is “a tool that enables a variety of (centralized) technical and (de-centralized) non technical staff to create, edit, manage and finally publish (in a number of formats) a variety of content (such as text, graphics, video, documents etc), whilst being constrained by a centralized set of rules, process and workflows that ensure coherent, validated electronic content.”1 A CMS will make your library’s Web life much easier. Most of your library’s staff will be adding content to the digital branch, but they probably won’t have advanced HTML or CSS skills, and they probably don’t have a web-

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

site editing software package like Dreamweaver installed on their work PCs. With a CMS installed, all those staff members need to add or edit content for their digital branch is a Web browser. In fact, adding content will be similar to creating an e-mail using a Web-based e-mail solution like Yahoo or Gmail. Most CMSs use automated, built-in templates. Once these templates are set, your staff has to worry only about content—the “look and feel” is already created. Since a CMS is Web-based, it will be much easier for your techie staff to deploy. All they have to do is train library staff to use the new tool (which will be easy—it will be the “Go here, click this button, start typing, press Publish” type of training). Once you have a CMS in place, anyone who can type in a box and press a button will be able to add content to your digital branch. Adding new content is easy and can be done through a Web-based form. This page will look very similar to e-mail or Microsoft Word. The user basically types in a box, then presses the Publish button. The CMS will have many of the normal features that you find in other boxes you type in—bold, italic, underlined text, a way to add a Web link, etc. Once content is published, if you need to go back and edit it some more, a CMS makes this easy as well. A very important point for libraries—there’s really no reason to spend lots of your library’s money and purchase a CMS. Many of the popular CMSs used today, even by large corporations, are free, open source, well-supported and welldocumented software, so no up-front costs are attached.

• Categories—It is useful to be able to assign one or more categories to an article. • An easy way to edit pages—You’ll want this on the back end. You don’t want to force nontechnical staff to learn advanced XHTML and CSS (though it’s helpful if they DO know these things). Instead, it’s much better to have them log in, click the New Post button, and start typing. • Multiple logins at different levels—Nontechnical staff should be able to log in easily to their part of the website to post content, but not have access to back-end settings. The feature of different user accounts (e.g., user, editor, and administrator) is handy. CMS Options There are many CMSs to choose from. Here are a couple of the more popular ones, plus the one my library is using at the moment. Drupal Drupal is a free, open source CMS written in PHP (see figure 9). Many types of websites use Drupal, from small personal blogs to large corporate websites. Drupal’s features include the ability to register and maintain individual user accounts, administration menus, RSS feeds, customizable layout, flexible account privileges, logging, a blogging system, and an Internet forum.

The functionality of different CMSs varies. If you are building a digital branch, these functions are essential: • RSS—You will want your CMS to have RSS feeds built in. • Articles or blog posts—Most likely, you will want a CMS that can post articles just like a blog does. In fact, multiple blogs with multiple RSS feeds can give you even more options for content. These can also act as stand-alone webpages. • Comments—You’ll probably want a CMS that can handle comments. Create comment boxes on the front end that match up with content on your site and have a way to moderate, edit, release, and delete comments on the back end. Even better is a “naughty word” blocker so you don’t have to constantly search for those seven bad words your board or administrators really don’t want to see on your digital branch. • Ratings—It might be nice to rate each article, event, etc. A one- to five-star rating system does this nicely and is found on many a CMS.

Drupal www.drupal.org

Figure 9 Drupal homepage.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

What Do You Want Your CMS to Do?

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Drupal was designed to allow new features and custom behavior to be added by third parties. Although Drupal offers a sophisticated programming interface for developers, no programming skills are required for basic website installation and administration.2 Joomla! Joomla! is another free, open source CMS (see figure 10). Joomla’s features include page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization. MTV, Citibank, and Harvard University are among some larger sites using Joomla.3

Joomla! www.joomla.org

Figure 11 ExpressionEngine homepage.

Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library uses ExpressionEngine, as does the Sundance Film Festival 2009 website and Roy Rogers Restaurants, as did President Obama’s Change.gov site, which was his transitional site as President-elect.5

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

CMS Resources

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Wikipedia’s “List of Content Management Systems”* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_ management_systems

OpenSourceCMS Figure 10 Joomla! homepage.

(Web-based service that allows visitors to test a variety of CMS products online) www.opensourcecms.com

ExpressionEngine ExpressionEngine is a commercial CMS designed by EllisLab (see figure 11). ExpressionEngine is similar to other CMSs in terms of features—RSS, blogs, commenting, different types of tracking and logs, and the ability to build membership-only communities are a few of its features. It’s not an open source product, so it does cost— but not much. Currently, a personal license is $99.95, and a commercial license is $249.95.4

ExpressionEngine www.expressionengine.com

*(includes both open source and proprietary CMSs)

Windows or Linux? As you look through a large list of CMSs, you’ll notice something—they’re written for different types of servers. Some are written primarily to be installed and run on a Microsoft Windows–based server; others are written to be installed and run on a Linux-based server; and some work on both platforms. You now have a lot of options and an important choice to make.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

One crucial consideration is your IT staff, or whatever IT resources you may have on your staff. Can they handle the CMS you choose? Will they be able to learn it? As you are picking a CMS for your website, think about these things: • What does your data center look like? What are your servers? Are they primarily Windows-based servers? Will a different type of server fit into your maintenance and backup and storage plan? • Are your IT system administrators able and willing to learn new things? Many libraries are set up with Microsoft products primarily on the back end, and the system administrators have little or no training in a Linux-based system. If you choose Linux, they will have to learn how to manage a different type of server. • What different coding languages does your CMS use? Does your IT/Web staff know that language? If the CMS runs in PHP and stores things in a MySQL database, can your staff deal with that? For the most part, the modern Web—even large sites like search engines and stores—runs on a mix of open source, JavaScript, and PHP. This generally means using a flavor of Linux-based servers is best. I suggest going with that, and, if necessary, training your technical staff to use and maintain a new type of server. Of course, like most aspects of building a digital branch, much depends on your circumstances and individual preferences.

You may be tempted to start working next on programming your site, but I’ve found that doing things this way can put you at a disadvantage. Your next step should be design. Here’s what the group 37signals has to say about building Web applications, and these comments apply to creating your digital branch: Too many ideas for websites start with a programfirst mentality. That’s a bad idea. Programming is the heaviest component of building an app, meaning it’s the most expensive and hardest to change. Instead, start by designing first. Design is relatively light. A paper sketch is cheap and easy to change. Html designs are still relatively simple to modify (or throw out). That’s not true of programming. Designing first keeps you flexible. Programming first fences you in and sets you up for additional costs. Another reason to design first is that the interface is your product. What people see is what you’re selling. If you just slap an interface on at the end, the gaps will show.6

The Design Process When designing any website, it’s best to start with the site’s main page. Start by figuring out what content you need on the page and where you need that page to link. What services are important enough to be mentioned on that main page? Do you have a logo? Where should it be positioned on your page? Next, you should get a piece of paper and start sketching ideas. It might be helpful to take a peek at other websites. Make sure to look at a few library websites that you respect, and see what they’ve displayed on their main page. But more important, get out your list of websites that your customers are using and examine those websites. Visit some universally visited websites, like Amazon, eBay, and CNN.com. Incorporate elements of those websites into your paper prototype. Then start sharing your design ideas. If you have a Web committee tasked with redesigning your site, meet with them. Sketch design ideas together and share, then finalize the paper design by combining the best overall features and design ideas of each. HTML Prototype Once you have decided on your design, the next step is to do a mock-up that can reside on the Web. While the mockup doesn’t have to be fully functional, it should have some of the functions so you can get an idea of what it is like to click through the design. At this point, you’re not really coding for functionality or using a CMS. Instead, you are making HTML representations of your paper sketches. Get this functioning at a very minimal level, then start showing it and gathering feedback. Seeking Feedback You should seek feedback from people who are going to interact with the site. I’d start with administrators and managers, as they are the staff members whose approval will be so important to launching the site, and in most cases they get ultimate veto power. You want to make sure they are on board from the beginning. Make sure this group likes the design and the direction you’re taking.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Next Up: Design

Your product is not the CMS, and your product is not the back-end custom coding that you will do to make it work—it is the front end of your site that users interact with. In your customers’ eyes, your product is the interface they see when they visit the digital branch. Obviously, design is all about what makes your site unique. There are limitless possibilities, but it is crucial that your design is attractive, well-organized, clear, and easy to use. By starting your branch through design and sketching, you can organize yourself and be better prepared for programming.

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Also check with staff, since they work directly with patrons. If you plan on doing usability testing, this is the time to do it! During this process, expect a variety of comments. Don’t take them all to heart, but rather listen for trends. For example, if one to three people say, “Those colors are ugly,” but others like the colors, let those comments slide. On the other hand, if you hear that comment from half of the people that you talk to, you may want to consider selecting new colors. I’d also suggest getting some feedback from customers. Library managers need to like the new design, and front-line staff need to help patrons with the new site. Ultimately, however, your patrons are your most important group. They are your library’s community and will be the digital branch’s most important customers. Ask them if they like the design, what they would change about it, and what they are expecting from a digital branch. Once you have a good amount of feedback, start winnowing it. If certain things keep popping out at you, fix those issues. Add any requests that make good sense or new thoughts that came from the feedback. Show the revised version of the website around one more time, and do the same process again. Once that’s done, you can start building.

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Building: Getting Started

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Now that you have the design roughed out, and you have buy-in from a number of people—both staff and customers—you are ready to start putting your site together. The most important things you’ll need to get it built are time, staff, deadlines, and content. Time Time is first on this list for a reason. You have to set aside a lot of time to build a website. A simple blog can be built pretty easily—set up a free account, pick a name for it (the hardest part about blogging, besides the content creation), and choose a skin (or design) for your fledgling blog. Presto! You’ve built a blog. A fully functioning library website is a different animal. A library website tends to be a fairly large and somewhat complex site that consists of many pages and a lot of content. There’s the main page to design, but there will be other page templates to design and build, plus potentially thousands of individual pages that need to be copied over from the previous website to the new digital branch. Library websites are complicated and time-consuming to build. It’s important that you are realistic about the time it is going to take to build the site and the time that staff members will have to work on it. The day-to-day functions

of the library need to continue while you are building your digital branch, and building can be a complex process. By using conservative estimates, you can avoid making promises that you can’t deliver on quickly or giving out launch dates that need to be pushed back. Deadlines You will need to set some firm deadlines. No one ever builds the perfect website, but at some point, you have to release it, or go live with what you have. Remember, since this is a digital building, you can knock it down and start over, or add a room, relatively easily. It doesn’t cost any actual money to do that unless you have hired a Web design firm to build your site, which is out of reach financially for many libraries. Here’s what Tom Mochal, President of TenStep, Inc. and columnist at TechRepublic.com, says about deadlines: I’m convinced that a project team without a firm deadline will be unfocused and will ultimately take much longer to deliver than necessary. It sounds like you have a similar concern. So, when I see projects that are like this, I work with the project team to have them set a reasonable deadline, and then I hold them accountable for that date. This allows the team to work with purpose and focus. It’s also a way of making sure that the projects don’t continue indefinitely. Even if the client doesn’t have a sense of urgency on when the project is completed, I want to make sure that the project team doesn’t have this same attitude.7

In order to keep your project on track, you’ll want to set deadlines, even if the library board or other governing body hasn’t set one for you. Otherwise, the staff building the project will be unfocused, might tend towards perfectionism, and won’t be able to give time to other important tasks and projects. How do you set deadlines and manage time? Easy. Ask your Web-building staff how much time they will need, and then add some extra “wiggle room” time to that estimate. Here’s what Merlin Mann of 43 Folders suggests: In my days as a project manager (and in another life as a freelance designer), I got into a habit that has served me well to this day: get the best estimate of both job requirements and time-to-completion that you can find. Then add 20%. Then, when nobody is looking, add another 20%. Then pray.8

Staff Of course, you have to consider the time of the people who will actually be building the site. You have basically two options here: use the Web staff you already have, or hire a freelance designer or Web design firm to build your site.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

• If you ever have an IT staff member leave, ask the person who is moving on to update his or her job description before leaving, paying special attention to job requirements. This way, you’ll at least get someone who has the skills to do what the previous person did. • Ask another library to look over the job description. Someone recently had me look over their job description for an open Web staff position. What I described above pretty much held true. They had an outdated description that didn’t include the skills they actually needed. With an update, they got applicants (they hadn’t gotten any with the old job ad).

• Look at other job ads and the requirements they list. Don’t look only at library job descriptions. Instead, go to places like the 37signals Job Board (see figure 12) or CrunchBoard Job Board and look at the job descriptions for Web developer positions. You can find helpful wording and job titles from those job sites. • Talk to other people in your community who have hired IT staff. If you have friends or know of local businesses that hired people, talk to them. They can help you understand the process and might even be able to give you some contacts.

37signals Job Board http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs

CrunchBoard Job Board www.crunchboard.com/jobs

Figure 12 The 37signals Job Board.

Creating Content Finally, you need to start thinking about content. You can’t actually go live with the site if there’s no content on it! That would be like opening a new branch library without ever thinking about what collection would be housed in the building. One way to create content is to start adding content to the new site one to two months before the digital branch is ready to go live, even if no one sees it. Think of this as buying and shelving the books in preparation of a new branch library opening, only digital! What types of content do you need? That depends on the goals you have for your digital branch. Here are some of the usual components:

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Obviously, we are all subject to financial constraints when it comes to IT staff. That being said, if you really want your digital branch to be an important part of your library, the best work will usually come from hiring a developer or dedicated staff member to build and maintain the site. If this is not possible, it is best to centralize these responsibilities as much as possible and keep them in the hands of a small number of staff members. Once your site is built or redesigned, you will still need that Web staff onsite—there will always be a lot of work to be done. They will need to run analytics reports (and actually understand what those numbers mean). They’ll need to fix things that go wrong. They need to train staff on how to post to the site and how to hack up a bit of HTML to make their posts better, and, of course, they will continue building new projects. Staff should be able to test the site, answer customer e-mails, help customers find information, listen to the hang-ups people are having with the site, and do usability testing. Once your site is “done” and has gone live, staff can have a sip or two of coffee and relax—for a week or so. Then they need to start planning the next release. You want to continually redesign, rather than doing it once every three years. If you are hiring Web staff, make sure to hire people who know what they’re doing! Yes, this sounds a bit obvious—of course you would hire someone who knows how to build a website for the webmaster job, right? Well, lots of libraries don’t actually do this, believe it or not. For instance, imagine a library hasn’t hired a webmaster for nine or ten years. Now that person has moved on, and it’s time to hire again. So what do some libraries do? They dust off that webmaster job description from 1998 and send it out again—not the best strategy when Web technology changes as fast as it does. Most likely, that job description mentions HTML and maybe (if you’re lucky) CSS. It’s old and outdated, and the only person who realizes that has left the building, so to speak! So what can you do if you’re in that situation, or one similar to it?

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• Traditional content—Think of this as being like an About Us page, a history of the library, policies, information on the library board, addresses, directions, and hours. • Catalog—You’re a library. You need to have your library catalog online and linked from your site. Believe it or not, not all libraries have these yet, and some don’t have their catalog linked on their website yet. • Databases—You pay an arm and a leg for these things, so you need to link them, describe them, have online tutorials about them, and get them in front of people’s faces! • Links—You will most likely have a reference department or a public services staff member who is good at finding things online and wants to remember where some of those things live, so he or she can point them out to customers when needed. You’ll need to have a place for those useful Web links.

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Then, there’s all the 2.0 stuff. Web 2.0 has brought libraries and websites a very long way. We’ll talk more about the whole digital community aspect in a later chapter. But for now, what types of Web 2.0 things should you be thinking about? Here are some ideas:

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Notes 1. “What Is a Content Management System, or CMS?” Enterprise Content Management, www.contentmanager .eu.com/history.htm (accessed Feb. 2, 2009). 2. “Drupal,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal (accessed Feb. 6, 2009). 3. Joomla! Community Showcase, http://community.joomla .org/showcase (accessed June 20, 2009). 4. “ExpressionEngine Products and Services,” Expression Engine Store, https://secure.expressionengine.com/index .php?ACT=EE (accessed June 13, 2009). 5. “Showcase,” ExpressionEngine website, http://expression engine.com/showcase (accessed June 13, 2009). 6. 37signals, “Interface First,” Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application (Chicago: 37 signals, 2006), http://gettingreal.37signals .com/ch09_Interface_First.php (accessed Feb. 6, 2009). 7. Tom Mochal, “Projects without Firm Deadlines Can Lack Focus,” TechRepublic, June 25, 2003, http://articles .techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5035134.html (accessed Feb. 7, 2009). 8. Merlin Mann, “Task Times, the Planning Fallacy, and a Magical 20%,” 43 Folders, Aug. 13, 2008, www.43folders .com/2008/08/13/estimating-time (accessed April 29, 2009).

• Blogs—You will want a blog—at least one, with comments. Make sure the blog talks about what’s new at the library—new books, upcoming events, and anything exciting going on at your library. • Flickr—You should be taking pictures at your library—pictures of your library, pictures of cool people doing cool things at your library. Put those pictures in Flickr! Flickr allows you to store photos and include them on your website, and it allows people to comment on the photos. You can also subscribe to a photo feed. Photos are a great way to convey the visual aspect of your library. • Videos—Flickr, YouTube, blip.tv, Vimeo—all are great places to upload videos and then to embed them on your website. Take video snippets of events and use them as visual moving ads for the next similar event. Or use them as a “this is what happened” video, to keep people’s interest after the event happened. You could also use videos to do an online book review. If I summed this chapter up in one sentence, it would be this: think, plan, and do. First, think about what it is you want to achieve with your website. Then do a lot of planning to meet those goals you dreamed up. And finally, do it—build the site you planned! And then do it all over again.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Chapter X 5

What to Do Once Your Site Is Built

Abstract

Y

ou have worked hard to transform your traditional library website into a digital branch. You’ve done careful planning, gotten approval, built your site, and launched it. It has all the features you planned, your library hoped for, and your community approved. Now that your website is transformed, are you finished? Not even close. At this point in your work, your focus can shift to three things: staff, the site, and your community.

Focus on Staff Now that you already have the digital branch running, library staff are trained in the basics like how to post to the site, and you’ve given them some ideas for starting out. Now you need to work with staff to maintain the digital branch. Continuous Writing Staff can’t just upload some content onto the site one time and then move on to the next project. Adding content is similar to buying materials for your library—you

Job-Specific Training Since your digital branch needs to incorporate multimedia as well, you might need to teach your staff how to

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

When maintaining a digital branch, your work is never done. This chapter of “Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website” provides guidelines for what steps to take once your site is built and launched. It includes how to train your staff to help maintain the site, how to continue to work with your community to ensure their needs are met, and a sample style guide for staff who create site content.

never really stop doing it. If you do, your content will get old and outdated and people will stop reading it or clicking through it. How are you supposed to continually develop new content for a digital branch? Here are a couple of ideas: One is to be a lifelong learner in your area of the library. Are you a reference librarian? I’ll bet that you find a new tool every week or so or discover a new resource that would be useful to share with patrons. There’s your blog post for the week! Teen librarian? Just read Rolling Stone or Paste magazine (or some other much cooler magazine or Web-based entertainment site). Whenever you get in something new that fits with that content, blog about it—provide a direct link, and any locally flavored info (e.g., That cool band? The singer’s mother-in-law lives in Kansas!). The goal here is to share relevant information. Some staff members will easily be able to write new content. On the other hand, if you’re not that type of person, you might need to schedule some weekly writing time. For example, you could set a reminder that every Tuesday at 3 p.m. you’ll write for thirty minutes. Half an hour isn’t too long, and you should be able to pump out at least one short blog post in that amount of time. If you write more, so much the better—you’re ahead of schedule! The point is that you have to make writing and posting a priority. With a digital branch, one of your goals should be to connect with your online community. You can’t do that if it’s not a priority.

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do things like take photos and post videos to the Web. For videos, if your organization has a little money in the budget, go buy either a consumer-level digital camera or a Flip video camera (see figure 13). The digital camera will most likely have a video setting—this works great for starting down the video path. If you don’t have the resources to purchase a camera, see if you can borrow one from a staff member or community organization. Librarians at my library who started making videos used their own cameras at first, and they created some nice videos that way. The Flip camera is even better because it is an extremely simple video camera. There’s one big red button that you push to start recording, and that’s it. Plug the Flip camera into a PC, and it has entry-level editing software built in. When you’re ready to upload a video to the Web, you can post your video to YouTube automatically (assuming you set up your YouTube account first). It can’t get simpler than that! If you buy one of these two cameras, then you should set up some hands-on training sessions for staff to learn how to use them. Have your class take pictures and upload them to Flickr. Have them make a simple video and upload it to YouTube. Teach them how easy the process really is, and help get them familiar with it. Do this, and they’ll be more willing to actually post pictures and videos.

Training and Coaching on Improvements Next, you should work on improving the skills of library staff that are actively creating content for the digital branch. For example, you can regularly read blog posts that staff write and make suggestions for improvements. This task can be yours as the digital branch manager, or it can be a blog team leader’s job. I have scheduled regular times to read blog posts on our digital branch. When I read them, I critique them and suggest improvements if needed (librarians at my library tend to be above-average writers, so not much is needed) and also pass along positive feedback. When I do suggest improvements, they might include structure suggestions (e.g., “Please link to the article you’re quoting”), reminders to point to our content via a direct link (e.g., “Make sure to include a link to something in our collection that relates to your blog post”), or a how-to-write-for-the-Web type of suggestion (e.g., “Your paragraph is way too long. Please use shorter paragraphs, and more people will read your article”). With video, you can make the same types of suggestions. Most likely, when someone starts out making videos, they will forget to add some finishing touches, like music beds, a fade-in and a fade-out, or credits at the end pointing to your digital branch (and listing the URL). Kindly point these types of improvements out to staff. This is a great way to improve content on your digital branch.

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Touching Base

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At Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, we have about twenty different blogs. Each one has a team of bloggers assigned to it, and those bloggers hold regular meetings to touch base with each other and come up with new ideas. This is a great way to keep everyone on the same page. I hold occasional meetings with the blog team leaders, and I meet with the blog teams on occasion as well. I also will meet with a variety of staff interested in doing things on the website. This allows me to stay on top of what’s happening of what’s happening in our digital branch and to stay connected with people interested in participating. I have an overall, system-side, long-range view of where the site is going and what our goals are for the digital branch, so I can share that knowledge with staff to help give them ideas of where we’re headed. Modeling the Way

Figure 13 The Flip video camera.

As a manager, one of your tasks for the digital branch is what my library calls modeling the way. Modeling the way, simply stated, is to do a task as an example for others in the library. For example, modeling the way might mean a manager posting to a blog. This doesn’t necessarily mean that every manager has to take on leading the

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Web push for their library’s digital branch. After all, in many libraries, the head of reference doesn’t always work the same number of hours at the desk as everyone else, right? Managers have different jobs than nonmanagerial staff. However, for the digital branch, modeling the way by actually doing some of the work of the digital branch can be a great example to set for staff. As a manager, you might have a good directional idea for a blog, so if you can provide examples of blog posts, you can point staff to those posts and content and then ask for more of the same. For example, as digital branch manager, I will sometimes find a blog that needs more content and add some to the mix. Sometimes I will pick up one of our video cameras and make a video post to show how I want videos to be done and also to show how much time should be needed to do both.

Creating a Style Guide You will also need a style guide. Just as a magazine has a style guide to stay consistent, your website needs a style guide for consistency. If your library is big enough to have a marketing department, you might need to match your Web style guide with their print style guide. When I created our style guide in Topeka, I worked with our marketing director to create a style guide that works both on the Web and in print format. A style guide should always be changing, just as style on the Web is always changing. The sidebar will give you a good idea of what’s needed in one. I went much further and added other nonstyle information to help guide staff in writing.

Sample Digital Branch Style Guide General Guidelines for Blog Posts

Internal Post Structure

Post Frequency/Length

• “Please use bulleted lists whenever possible. • Please use subheadings whenever possible.

• Frequency

— Two posts per week for each Subject Guide.



— Posts in the Services section as needed.



— Length should be sufficient to cover the topic— a short paragraph will not give readers the proper context. However, it is best to keep posts as short as possible while still covering all necessary information.

Formatting • One space between sentences—not two! • Avoid ALL CAPS.

Specific Words—Be Consistent with These Terms • e-mail (with a hyphen, all lowercase) • website (all one word, all lowercase) • webpage (all one word, all lowercase) • Web (uppercase W) • Internet (uppercase I) • our library—first reference is “Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.” Second reference is “the library.” • Our website is “the Digital Branch.”

• Use a spell checker. • Break a post into small paragraphs rather than one large chunk of text.

Post Titles

• Refer to our ‘Neighborhoods’—the different sections of our page—by their full title (e.g., the Travel Neighborhood, the Health Information Neighborhood)

Summary of Post

• Keep them short, snappy, and descriptive. • Capitalize every word except articles and conjunctions (e.g., a, and, the—like a book title).

• Each post should have a summary. There are two ways to do this:

— Create a summary paragraph in the summary box.



— Leave the summary blank. The beginning of the post will automatically be used as the summary.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

• Length

• Whenever possible, use images that compliment the article, as these attract more readers.

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Tags • Tags are usually keywords that are descriptive of the content of a post. • Use two or three descriptive tags for each post. • Tags should be different from a category. For example, a post could be in the Books subject guide with a category of Sci-Fi and have tags like Steampunk, Robots, and Mars.

Topeka Capital Journal).” Lovely article links to the specific article, and Topeka Capital Journal links to the newspaper’s main site. • Images

— If using an image from Flickr, Photobucket, or some other photo-sharing service, include some type of attribution or pointer back to the original photo at the end of the article (e.g., “Photo courtesy of JimBob.” JimBob would link back to the original photo).



— Use photos with a Creative Commons license when possible.

Links • For book titles

— Make the book title the link text.



— Don’t include the URL with the book title. • Do this: The Hobbit (where The Hobbit is the text used for the link). • Don’t do this: The Hobbit–http://catalog. tscpl.org/asdfhasdf/etc.htm (where The Hobbit is NOT the link text, but the URL is also used as the link text).

• Videos

• How much of a quote can I use?

— The U.S. Copyright Office FAQ on fair use (www .copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html) says this: “It is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work.”



— Don’t quote the whole thing!

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

• For Other Links

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— When linking to webpages or blog posts, make the webpage title or the blog article title the link text.



— Refer to the link within a sentence, like this: “Topeka has a great library that everyone should visit.” (In this sentence, great library would be the link text used for our library’s URL.)



— Another example: Don’t write, “You can read the full report here.” Using words like here or click here is generally bad practice. Instead, say, “The charity released a report, which said . . .” (The phrase a report is the link text and is incorporated within the sentence.) This type of internal link reads better.

Citing/Attribution It’s important to give proper attribution to sources, even online. Here’s how to do it: • Blog posts, newspaper articles, other websites

— See the Links section above for linking.



— When you quote someone else’s text, make sure to link to the original source.



— With the link to the original source, reference the site. For example, say “Here’s a lovely article on the Topeka Avenue bridge project (from the

— Include some type of link, attribution, or pointer back to the original video (e.g., If you use a video from YouTube, link back to the YouTube video )

Featured Section First Feature Box • The first feature box is called “Featured,” and links to big programs, events and special features of the library. The box will be populated by PR and event resources.

Other Feature Boxes • The other feature boxes include Books, Research, Movies & Music, Gallery, Kids, and Teens. • These sections usually focus on content (although Gallery, Kids, and Teens boxes can post about a program). • Handouts, booklists, and links should be part of that post. No programs with registration and limits should be posted here.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Comments—What to Do with Them? • Respond.

— Thank them for their comment.



— Add something if possible. Point to another similar book, a link on our site, etc.



— If it’s a question, answer it.



— If it’s a criticism, answer it—or refer it to someone who can respond appropriately.



— If the comment is negative, don’t repeat it! Respond without repeating the negative question or comment.



— In general, don’t edit the comment. Usually, it’s better to correct in another comment.

• Edit the comment only if it

— has “inappropriate” words (that our automatic naughty word filter didn’t catch).



— is derogatory.



— has an unrelated link.



— uses poor grammar (sounds like they don’t really know the language).

• Delete

• Write in present tense when possible. For example,

— Don’t write, “The book signing will be held next Tuesday”



— Instead, write, “The book signing is next Tuesday”

How Can I Get a Conversation Started? Here are a couple of ideas on getting conversations started on your blog. • Take part in the conversation.

— Read blogs and area newspapers that allow comments.



— Read blogs in your area of expertise.



— Leave comments on those blogs, linking to your post in the comment.



— Also link to those blogs in your post.

• Focus your posts on goals.

— Before you write, answer this: ”What do you want the reader to do?”



— Provide a call to action (i.e., tell them what you want them to do).



— Ask for a response.



— Point them to other content (like books in our catalog).

• If you don’t know what to do, ask the web team to read the comment.

I Have a Suggestion or Problem. What Do I Do with It?

Creating a “Voice”

Problems

• Write in a conversational tone.

• E-mail the Web team.



— Goal is to start conversations.

• Tell us what could be improved.



— If you wouldn’t say it in conversation, don’t write it.

• Include links or descriptive text if possible.



— Write in a “friendly” tone, just like you do at the reference desk.

Ideas for the Site

• Use active voice. For example, don’t write “The tree was struck by lightning.” Instead, write, “Lightning struck the tree.” • Use inverted pyramid writing style (explanation at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted _pyramid).

• E-mail the Web team and Digital Branch Manager:

— Include a description of the idea.



— The Digital Branch Manager will set up a meeting if needed and share the idea with the Web team, managers, etc.



— Remember—all ideas are great, but not all ideas will be implemented on the site

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

— spam comments. For example, this is a spam comment: “I have checked that really there was great information regarding that. There was another also–http://healthbeautyproduct .blogspot.com.” Usually spam comments include links to unrelated websites.

• The first couple of sentences of your post display as the summary and appear in various places on our site as teasers to the whole article—so make them snappy!

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• Hold regular meetings

• Big picture development of branch:



— Discuss ideas.



— Strategic planning



— Make suggestions to the Web team.



— Trend watching

Staff Responsibilities Blog Moderator • Make sure there are two posts per week. • Encourage writers.

• Talking to internal groups. • Talking to external groups. • Mentoring digital branch staff. • Developing new content areas and unique services and tools.

• Check in with the Digital Branch Manager periodically.

Web Team

• Accomplish each item listed below under Blog Authors.

• Webmaster/designer and Web developer

Blog Authors • Write posts. • Check links. • Respond to comments. • Delete spam.

• Design new pages. • Keep design fresh. • Handle day-to-day operations. • Do maintenance and upgrades. • Build new features.

• Periodically touch base with blog moderator.

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Digital Branch Manager

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Continued Focus on Site Improvements Once you’ve designed your digital branch, you’re not done with it by any means; in fact, you have just started. Feel free to rest for a week or so after a major site overhaul, but the very next week, start looking for ways to improve it, change it, and update it. Here are some ideas on how to do that: • Do usability testing. Once you have the site live, make sure your users know how the site works. Look for ways to improve their experience. One good way to do this is through a usability test. This doesn’t have to be a big, formal test. You can run a number of small tests. For example, do a quick usability test for finding the database page. You can test where a link is and if people can find it, if they know what your wording for the link really means, and if they can navigate the page adequately to find an appropriate database. • Let’s not stop there. How about doing some journey mapping? Journey mapping doesn’t so much test usability—instead, it helps map each step a user takes to get from point A to point B or C and is a way to discover each interaction the customer has

with your site. Journey mapping also helps you discover whether patrons get confused at those steps. Once you have found those confusion points, your job is to improve the overall experience of each of those interactions. For example, let’s look at getting to that database page. You would map out each touch point, or interaction—basically each time the customer has to do something, like click a link, make a decision, or interact with staff or the website—and then you can work on improving these points. It might look like this: — Starting at the main page, where’s the database link? Make sure the database link is easily findable. This might mean making the link larger and placing it towards the upper left-hand side of the page. — What is the name? Make sure the words used for the text link make sense to your patrons. — When I click, where do I go? Is the next page a long page of links to oddly named databases (e.g., EBSCOHost), or does your database page have helpful “what

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

do I do next” instructions? Would this page make sense to someone with no experience mining article databases? — If I get confused, is there an easy way to ask for help? Does this page have a link to your library’s Ask a Librarian service? Is there an e-mail address or a phone number within easy reach?

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

• Use focus groups. You can set up a monthly meeting with customers who are interested in the digital branch. Ask them to focus on certain areas of the site so that you can get improvement suggestions. You can also create a Web survey and ask for likes and dislikes. These types of things don’t take much time to create but will give you good feedback—and ideas to improve the site. • You also need to be monitoring the online world and learning new tools as they appear. I don’t know how many library Web managers I’ve met who don’t do this! I would suggest that all library Web managers read blogs about emerging Web trends. Find some blogs written by people you respect, whether it’s a library blog or not, and start reading and learning. When something interests you, start playing with it. Try it out, test it, figure out how it works. Figure out if it can be incorporated into your website. If so, test it as a pilot project. This is how you test and add things like Twitter or YouTube to your library’s digital branch. Your job is to play with toys, in a way. Test new technology, and incorporate the worthwhile.

Innovation on the Web is not going to slow down any time soon. You need to speed up and be there, waiting for the changes. Even better—start making your own changes. • Finally, always promote your site and always explore new ways to do it. You should consider having accounts for your library in all the major social networking sites out there today. Right now, that might mean Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter. It really depends on your audience. If, for example, you know that a lot of your patrons frequent Facebook but not MySpace, you can probably focus on Facebook and ignore MySpace. Make sure that the keywords you use to describe yourself can be used to find you. For example, in Flickr and YouTube, we use Topeka Library to name ourselves and try to always put those two words as tags in every post. This way, people searching for Topeka and library or even just topeka will find us, our page, and our content. Make sure your library is discoverable in all major search engines, and make sure you’re first for specific keywords. For example, when you search for Topeka in Google, we’re in the first ten hits (on the first page), which is great. Also, you can check keywords people are using to find you. If there are any inconsistencies, make sure to have some good, solid content for that keyword.

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Chapter X 6

Creating Community at the Digital Branch

Abstract

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

This chapter of “Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website” discusses the relationships and interactions that occur in a digital branch and how they parallel those at a physical library. Topics include both in-person interactions for users of the site like focus groups and online interaction through tools like Twitter, blogs and news groups.

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I

have spent most of this LTR describing content and the process of building a digital branch. Let’s spend this chapter discussing what types of interactions might occur at your digital branch.

What Is Digital Community? At your library’s digital branch, one big goal should be participation—holding conversations with patrons and interacting with the community. While this may seem like a simple goal, remember that a digital branch should be similar to your physical library in this way. In your physical library, library staff hold conversations of all types with patrons, and the same service principles should apply at your digital branch. What types of interactions happen in your physical library? When a patron appears at the reference desk and asks a question, that’s an interaction. When patrons show up to an event held by the library, that’s an interaction. When they sign up for a training class, that’s an interaction. These interactions can also happen inside the walls of your digital branch.

Tools That Help Facilitate Digital Community Right now, there is a great variety of popular, emerging Web-based tools that help connect people to people in a digital medium. Let me describe some of the more popular tools to use for facilitating digital community and conversations and show how they connect people to you and to each other. Blogs Blogs have been around for at least twelve years now. Those who aren’t familiar with the term blog have probably come across some nonetheless. They have seen the editorials on an online newspaper or the frequently updated What’s New page at their favorite website. Many people are also familiar with leaving comments on websites. Again, take a peek at your local newspaper’s comments at the end of each article online. People in your community know how to do this, and do it quite frequently. Blogs and blog comments are great because they are a built-in way for patrons to leave feedback for you and to interact with the library. People can also talk to each other via blog comment boxes. For example, Topeka’s library has a webpage devoted to contacting the library to start a book club. In the comments section of that post, a couple of patrons planned their own book group. Here’s their discussion: •

•

Randi: “Is anyone out there interested in a book club devoted to Anne Perry? I would be willing to set one up if you do. Please let me know.” Adrienne: “I’d be interested in a book club devoted to Anne Perry! I know she’s popular in

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

•

some circles . . . but not many people know about her. How do I find out more?” Randi: “You are the first one to respond. I figure we should get together when others come and decide on a time and day that will be right for all of us. We will go through one book a month (there’s a lot to cover). There are two Anne Perry series, Monk and Pitt. We will alternate them. We will start with the first one of each series and finish at the most current in each series. Let me know what you think. I am open to suggestions.”1

instance, Zappos.com has used Twitter to connect with their customers (see figure 14). They have over 837,000 people subscribed to their CEO’s Twitter feed.4 On their customer service feed, on any given day, they send out announcements, sales that are going on, and more importantly, answer their customers’ questions. Here are some example of customer service in action, taken from their customer service feed:5 • •

Topeka’s “Join a Book Group” page www.tscpl.org/bgib/comments/join_a_book_group

As the conversation continued, they contacted library staff and worked out scheduling problems. Those patrons wanted to talk—patrons want to talk to you as the librarian and to each other. Both can be accomplished through the simplest of means, even the comment box in a blog post.

•

•

@makkura What’s the order number and I’ll see if I can help you out. @BradDitzell We do love our customers. If you are ever in Las Vegas, come take a tour of our building :) @FriendlessinSD If you could send your inquiry to [email protected]. We would be glad to assist you in anyway we can. @throk - Would you like assistance in finding a shoe in your size? I’m happy to help!

Zappos Twitter Feeds CEO

IM and SMS Messaging

twitter.com/zappos

Customer Service twitter.com/Zappos_Service

Twitter Twitter, one of the hottest phenomena on the Web today, combines elements of blogging, instant messaging, and e-mail. At first, it seems similar to the combination of a comment box and IM. You type anything you want into a text box that’s limited to 140 characters or less and send it out—to anyone who has subscribed to your Twitter feed. As simple as that concept seems, the possibilities of what can be done with Twitter seem limitless. For

Figure 14 Twitters from Zappos employees on May 22, 2009.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Let’s go to something even older than blogs for a second— instant messaging (or IM for short) has been around for a long time. Wikipedia says “Modern, Internet-wide, GUIbased messaging clients, as they are known today, began to take off in the mid 1990s with PowWow, then ICQ, followed by AOL Instant Messenger.”2 SMS, or text messaging, dates back to at least 1993.3 The concept of IM and SMS is easy—you are presented with a text box that you type into, and once you’re done, hit Send. Whoever you are sending to gets your message, and she can respond back just as easily. This simple communication method becomes extremely powerful when combined in a library setting with virtual reference services. Forget about costly, clunky, detailed “virtual reference solutions.” Instead, download a free IM client (or use any number of Web-based versions that need no download) and sign up for an account (also free). Advertise your account name everywhere—you should quickly get people asking questions and using the service.

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What is Zappos doing? It is connecting with customers online, and you can do this too. Set up a Twitter account and start finding local Twitter users. Subscribe to their feeds (they will possibly subscribe to you as well). Then start using it to answer questions and provide information about your library. Outposts—Content and Comments Some of these tools, like an embedded Meebo widget or a blog, reside on your library’s website. But there are other tools and services, like Twitter or Facebook, that reside outside your library’s website. These types of sites are called outposts. Chris Brogan of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, says this about outposts:

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Social networks are great places to meet new people, to build new business relationships, and to learn about information from non-traditional sources. But another great way to use social networking sites is as an outpost. What do I mean by this? It turns out that people getting to know you on social networks might also find your content for the first time, and/ or something you post to those networks might bring you an opportunity that wouldn’t immediately come to you in other ways.6

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Outposts are more than just placeholder sites. They serve a function within the social network or service. They are also your library’s representation within those social networks. Facebook is one such outpost (see figure 15), and you can do quite a lot with it. Let me show you the range of things my library has done with Facebook: • Facebook Page: A page that represents the library.

• Facebook Account: A personal account that’s modeled specifically for the library and to impart libraryrelated information.. • Facebook Group: A group for our Big Read program. • Facebook App: A catalog-search Facebook app. All of these Facebook services allow Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library to interact with users and allow our patrons to leave comments, start discussions, and even search the catalog without having to leave Facebook. Other examples of outpost sites include, but are not limited to, these: • YouTube: A place to put videos. • Blip.tv: Another friendly place for videos—better embedding tools, you own your content, longer videos are allowed. • Flickr: A place for digital photos • Delicious.com: A place to reference websites as they’re found • MySpace: People still use it. We have more than five hundred friends there.

Getting Participation at Your Digital Branch Want people to use your digital branch? Here are some suggestions to get that attention and interaction. Listening First Before you start talking to people, it’s best to listen first. How do you do that? Set up a number of search alerts using Google Alerts and Twitter search. Then subscribe to the RSS feeds (or e-mail alerts) for each search. Every time your library is mentioned on the Web, you will be notified of that mention. This gives you a chance to respond. But listening is the first step. If you’re a big library in a busy urban area, do the same thing with Flickr and YouTube. Do this by searching your name in each service, then subscribing to the RSS feed for each search. You’ll be surprised at what you see! Are you a business librarian? Set up alerts for business pushes in the city or for grants. The point is to find out what people are saying about you, your city, the people, and the problems that occur. Creating Content

Figure 15 Facebook page of the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.

Once you’ve been listening for a while, your next goal should be to start creating content. This is easy if you have set up services like blogs, YouTube, or Flickr. People

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

will consume your content and will sometimes want to respond or comment. Go ahead and let people respond. Do not moderate. Give your patrons the freedom to say what they want, and then deal with the few times someone says something inappropriate. Your goal is real-time conversation; it’s not a real-time conversation if one person says something, then has to wait for someone else to approve it. That said, also make sure to follow whatever “patron behavior guidelines” your library has created. You don’t really need separate behavior policies for the physical building and the website—bad behavior is bad behavior, and you already have guidelines in place for dealing with it. Now you need to respond. Do they have a question? Answer it. Do they have a comment? Thank them for the comment, clarify any confusion, gently correct incorrect information. Do they have a criticism? Respond kindly, clearly, and in a nonconfrontational manner. Criticism on your blog is great. It shows that the person cares enough about your content and your organization to take the time to say something. Your content has moved that commenter to action, which is important. Good job—you got a response! Plus, the criticism and the response can be controlled, since both are happening within the confines of your website. Being Real

Notes 1. Randi Anderson and Adrienne O, online postings to Join a Book Group page, Aug. 25 & 27, 2008, Topeka & Shawnee Public Library website, http://www.tscpl.org/bgib/comments/ join_a_book_group (accessed June 20, 2009). 2. “Instant Messaging,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Instant_messaging (accessed June 20, 2009). 3. “Text Messaging,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Text_messaging (accessed June 20, 2009). 4. Zappos Twitter page, http://twitter.com/zappos (accessed June 26, 2009). 5. Zappos_Service, online postings to Twitter in reply to makkura, BradDitzell, FriendlessinSD, and throk, April 8, 2009, http://twitter.com/Zappos_Service (accessed April 8, 2009). 6. Chris Brogan, “Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy,” chrisbrogan.com, Sept. 29, 2008, www.chrisbrogan.com/ using-outposts-in-your-media-strategy (accessed June 20, 2009).

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Above all, be a real person. Have you ever known someone who had two voices—the “This is my real self” voice and the “I’m putting on my professional hat” voice? You shouldn’t put that professional voice on when holding conversations on your digital branch. It’s inauthentic and tends to sound forced, especially on the Web. Instead, be real. Be authentic. People want to hear from the real YOU. People like to know that an organization is made up of individuals that can help, rather than a cold organization with a professional, sterile voice.

Make sure when you’re holding conversations online that you are actually holding conversations. Make sure to ask questions, leave room for others to add their own thoughts, and be respectful of others and their beliefs and opinions. This is sometimes harder to do on the Web for some reason, so if it’s hard for you, be aware of it. There are so many places to start with interaction on your library’s website! Where should you begin? I’d suggest starting with a “what’s new at my library” blog. Post regularly, share the URL of the blog with your community, and try to get some media (new or old) coverage for it. Then work on creating compelling content that people want to respond to. But that’s just one suggestion—really, any place you start is just that—a start. So pick a place to begin, and start an online conversation with your community.

33

Chapter X 7

Planning for the Next Phase Abstract

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

This concluding chapter of “Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website” discusses strategies for keeping your site current with upgrades and changes. Using his own library as an example to guide others, the author discusses principals for keeping the dialogue between community, staff and patrons going strong as the site progresses.

34

N

ow that you have a functional digital branch, what are your next steps? That question is a bit hard to answer, and the answer will largely depend on your library’s goals, future changes on the Web, and your patrons’ changing needs. This year, Topeka is deep in the strategic planning process. Some of the goals that come out of this process will directly impact our digital branch. I can explain what Topeka’s next steps are, as well as some possible ways to relate those steps to your own situation. Our goals include • • • • •

Current updates to the site Building outposts Strategic plan No “dry rot” Teaching and training Each of these goals is explained in more detail below.

Current Updates In many ways, building our digital branch at Topeka was the easy part. Now we have to update all the content

streams we have created for our patrons. Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library plans to constantly make improvements to the site, just like a small business that continues to upgrade its physical setting. One of the first steps we have planned in our process is to run some usability tests. We’ll run small tests to figure out if people can successfully find our databases. We also want to look at the site with these three questions in mind: Why should I care? Why should I click? What do I get from this? We want to answer those questions in a positive way to encourage patrons to use our website. We are currently in the process of redesigning our main page. The first version of our page is too long, and has that “There’s a database under here” look. We don’t want our “database undies” showing, so we’re redesigning to improve that front page experience. We also want to look at each service or touch point on our site and improve those touch points. In general, we need to meet with the group in charge of that area—like meeting with the Youth Services staff to talk about the kids’ and teens’ pages and work on improving those pages. We’ll also want to talk to kids and teens and find out what they want to do at our digital branch. What would they like to do on our site that they can’t currently do? What types of sites do they like to visit? We need to find out this information, then rework those parts of our site to provide better service to those kids and teens. We want to improve our library catalog. We have started meeting with a catalog committee to think through these questions: What do we like about the front and back ends of our ILS system? What’s missing that we want to include? What are our dreams for the catalog, both on the back end and for our patrons? We plan to summarize this

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

information in a document and then start meeting with ILS vendors with our list of features in mind. We have also been talking about using an open source overlay for our catalog. At this point, it seems like we won’t be upgrading our ILS system for at least two to five years, given the current economic climate. But an open source overlay would improve a very important part of our catalog (at least to the digital branch)—our patrons’ experience using the catalog. The general concept behind our updates should be applied to any library website—keep upgrading your site. Nothing should be off-limits in this effort—as I mentioned above, we are redesigning our main page. If a part of your digital branch can be improved, improve it. Additionally, it’s always good to be thinking about usability. Just as we are working constantly to make our site at Topeka as userfriendly as possible, you should always be thinking about how users perceive your web page.

Building Outposts

As I previously mentioned, Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library is in the midst of strategic planning (see figure 16). We have done a GIS study and worked with a company to help us develop some marketing ideas. How do the website and the digital branch fit into all this? We’re still figuring that out, so these are only my best guesses at this point. Here are some general directions we plan to take in regards to the digital branch within the strategic planning process. We need to sell ourselves more. We have lots of products, like books, magazines, and databases, but our biggest asset is our librarians, and we really don’t promote them much, if at all. Our staff make the library run, answer questions, and make our materials easier to find. We are realizing that we can promote that more. One way to do this with the digital branch is to work on making our library staff more authentic online. There are many ways to accomplish this. For example, we already include headshots of blog post authors, with their names beside each article they write. We could also include more video in blog posts. People like watching online video, hence the growth of video sites like YouTube. As I mentioned, video is easy to create, especially with a simpleto-use video camera like a Flip. Library staff can easily supplement their blog post with video. Seeing the actual librarian in a video within the blog post can help make us more authentic and help users understand that they are talking to a real person. Twitter can also help. Twitter is a great way to connect with customers. Setting up a forum is similar. With both, we can follow business owners in Topeka and interact with them as a professional business owner resource. In the forum, we can let business owners interact with each other, monitor the conversations, and supply needed

Figure 16 Topeka librarians in a strategic planning session.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

At Topeka, our next priority is going to be building and nurturing our outposts. We also want other local websites, like those by our local businesses, agencies and news media, to link back to us. Other options we might pursue include the local university library website or Wi-Fi start pages in local coffee shops. When people get their coffee, we want them to see our link and maybe one or two of our most used services. We can even make that reciprocal— we may give a Friends of the Library membership to the businesses that provide us with a link. This would help the library to be seen by people, even if they’re outside of the building. We are also looking to increase the role of widgets in our digital branch. For example, we can embed an IM widget in various places on our website. We have done this in our library catalog, so when no hits are found for a search, instead of a blank page staring at the customer, there’s an instant messaging “Ask Us Now” widget that patrons can use. In effect, we put a smiling reference librarian at what used to be a dead end. Inside the digital branch, we are also building what I’d call internal outposts. For example, we have an art gallery in the library that’s quite popular. To push it a bit more, we might build some unobtrusive ad placements. For example, we could include images of gallery artwork on our Fun in Topeka blog and make those images linkable to the current art show in the gallery. Finally, we have just created an e-mail newsletter that points to cool stuff we do at the library. We already have a ton of patron e-mail addresses in our patron database. Why not use those connections to share information about the library (assuming you have already asked for permission to use the e-mail addresses)?

Strategic Planning: Next Steps

35

input whenever we can, like links to relevant sites or relevant materials in the library.

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

No Dry Rot

36

Now for something I called the “no dry rot” plan. I need to establish a committee whose goal is to keep the digital branch innovative and moving forward. This group will look at where we’ve been, what’s working, and what’s not, and figure out next steps for the digital branch. In other words, they help to prevent dry rot at your digital branch. There are different ways to do this. One is to invite a mix of patrons and staff to the table and set up the committee in that way. This will work great if you have engaged staff and patrons who understand your direction and are willing to help. At this point, my library has established what we call the Creative Group to do this. The Creative Group is composed of our marketing department, our Web team, and our program events manager. We look at all aspects of communication—from print to digital—and try to improve, cutting down on duplication and other redundancies. This group sometimes looks at emerging trends to see what works and what doesn’t. Part of this process is also measurement. We need to figure out how to measure the digital branch’s success. Analytics programs help measure total Web visits, time on site (which shows engagement with our content), time spent on blogs or even articles, and total views of a video. Those are all great numbers to track to show growth and use. We can also track other interesting trends, like the number of conversations taking place in the comments of our blogs, Flickr photos, and YouTube videos.

Teaching/Training Finally, I come to teaching and training. We have created a very cool digital branch that uses lots of interesting new-fangled tools. Guess what? We probably need to teach our customers what we’re doing, how we’re using these tools, and what they can do with it and give our staff a refresher. When building websites, every day can be a journey. That journey will take you down roads you’ve never travelled, using new modes of transportation. And that’s OK—that’s what makes building and working in a digital branch so interesting. I can’t tell you what route your road will follow, since it’s always under construction. But I can tell you the destination. Sharing the content of your library is one part of the destination. As long as your patrons can read, watch, or listen, it really doesn’t matter what type of transportation they used. Participation is another part of the destination. Libraries will continue to connect with their communities in big and small ways and will continue to help connect individuals in the local community to each other.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Chapter 8

Resources

Books on Building and Improving Websites Ash, Tim. Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions. Hoboken, NJ: Sybex, 2008. Budd, Andy, with Cameron Moll and Simon Collison. CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions. Berkeley, CA: Apress, 2006.

Cederholm, Dan. Bulletproof Web Design: Improving Flexibility and Protecting against Worst-Case Scenarios with XHTML and CSS. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Press, 2007. Garrett, Jesse James. The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 2002. Kalbach, James. Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2007. Kaushik, Avinash. Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. Hoboken, NJ: Sybex, 2007.

Morville, Peter. Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2005. Nielsen, Jakob, and Hoa Loranger. Prioritizing Web Usability. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Press, 2006. Porter, Joshua. Designing for the Social Web. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Press, 2008. Redish, Janice (Ginny). Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content That Works. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 2007. Rosenfeld, Louis, and Peter Morville. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2009. 37signals. Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application. Chicago: 37signals, 2006. http:// gettingreal.37signals.com. Zeldman, Jeffrey. Designing with Web Standards. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press. 2006.

King, David Lee. Designing the Digital Experience: How to Use Experience Design Tools and Techniques to Build Websites Customers Love. Medford, NJ: CyberAge Books, 2008.

Blogs and Websites Relevant to this Report

Krug, Steve. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Press, 2005.

Molly.com (Molly E. Holzschlag). http://molly.com.

A List Apart. www.alistapart.com.

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Buxton, Bill. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 2007.

Meyer, Eric. CSS: The Definitive Guide, 3rd ed. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2006.

SimpleBits. http://simplebits.com.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

37

Smashing Magazine. www.smashingmagazine.com. Think Vitamin. http://thinkvitamin.com. useit.com: Jakob Nielsen’s Website. http://useit.com. Web Designer Wall. www.webdesignerwall.com. Webmonkey. www.webmonkey.com. Great List of Web Designers to Follow on Twitter Brkan, Ivan Brezak. “100 Awesome Designers and Developers to Follow on Twitter.” ShoutEm, June 7, 2009, http://blog.shoutem.com/2009/06/07/100awesome-designers-and-developers-to-follow-on-twitter.

Content Management Systems concrete5. www.concrete5.org. dotCMS. www.dotcms.org. Drupal. www.drupal.org. ExpressionEngine. http://expressionengine.com.

Twitter. http://twitter.com. Broadcast library happenings and mingle with your community at the same time. YouTube. www.youtube.com. Host videos here, then embed them in your digital branch. Other Useful Tools and Services blip.tv. www.blip.tv. Video. Google Analytics. http://analytics.google.com. Free website analytics. Google FeedBurner. http://feedburner.google.com. Enhanced RSS feed that includes basic tracking and analytics. Also allows e-mail subscriptions. PBworks. www.pbworks.com. Free, hosted wiki. SurveyMonkey.com. www.surveymonkey.com. Easy-to-create Web-based surveys. Vimeo. www.vimeo.com. Video.

Joomla! www.joomla.org. Magnolia. www.magnolia-cms.com. Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Mambo. http://mambo-foundation.org.

38

OpenCms. www.opencms.org/en. Plone. http://plone.org. Wikipedia List of Content Management Systems “List of Content Management Systems,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_ management_systems.

Selected Digital Branches Ann Arbor District Library. www.aadl.org. This is one of the first blog-based library websites and still a great example of using a library website for more than information only. Darien Library. www.darienlibrary.org. This site is a great example of Drupal and SOPAC2 in action. District of Columbia Public Library. www.dclibrary.org. This site features iPhone apps and iPhone’s text message notification service.

Social Media Tools to Enhance your Digital Branch

Lester Public Library. www.tworivers.lib.wi.us. This site is a great example of what a small public library can do. Includes links to the library’s Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

Must-Have Social Networking Sites— Start with These

New York Public Library. www.nypl.org. NYPL is a great example of a large, traditional library opening up, both physically and digitally, to new ideas.

Facebook. www.facebook.com. Connect with your community through this social network. Flickr. www.flickr.com. Host photos of your library here, then share them in your digital branch.

Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. www.tscpl. org. The primary example used in this report, and a great model of a digital branch in action.

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

Notes

Library Technology Reports  www.alatechsource.org  August/September 2009

Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines for Transforming Your Library Website   David Lee King

39

Library Technology Reports Respond to Your Library’s Digital Dilemmas Eight times per year, Library Technology Reports (LTR) provides library professionals with insightful elucidation, covering the technology and technological issues the library world grapples with on a daily basis in the information age. Library Technology Reports 2009, Vol. 45 January 45:1 February/ March 45:2 April 45:3

“The State of Funding for Library Technology In Today’s Economy” by Larra Clark and Denise Davis, Office for Research and Statistics, American Library Association, Chicago, IL “Implementing Second Life: Ideas, Challenges, and Innovations” by Joe Sanchez, School of Information, University of Texas, Austin, TX “Open Source Public Workstations in Libraries” by John Houser, Senior Technology Consultant, PALINET, Philadelphia, PA

May/June 45:4

“Collaboration 2.0” by Robin Hastings, Information Technology Manager, Missouri River Regional Library, Jefferson City, Missouri.

July 45:5

“Gaming and Libraries” by Jenny Levine, Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide, American Library Association, Chicago, IL

August/ September 45:6 October 45:7 November/ December 45:8

“Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines to Transform Your Website for the 21st Century.” by David Lee King, Digital Branch & Services Manager at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, Topeka, KS “Digital Storytelling in Practice” by Kelly Czarnecki, Technology Education Librarian at ImaginOn for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, Charlotte, NC “New Horizons in Open-Source Library Technology” by Marshall Breeding, Director for Innovative Technologies and Research, Vanderbilt University Library, Nashville, TN

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Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines to Transform Your Website by David Lee King