Hennepin County Library steps up

The Hennepin County Library uses the flickr photostream differently than the Library of Congress or the NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center do. (See my previous post on the NCSU for more on what I think of their use of flickr). Once again, after searching through various areas of the entire Library website, I can find no mention of the flickr photostream and no link to the photostream itself. I find this very frustrating. I only know about the flickr project because Susie gave a link to it in her WebCT module for Web 2.0. Otherwise, I’d never find it. It makes me wonder what other interesting, interactive tools that the Hennepin County Library is using that I can’t find from their site.

Even though I never would have found the flickr collection without outside information, I’m intrigued by the way the library is using this tool. Rather than uploading photos from the library’s collection of images (assuming that there even is one), it has uploaded photos of events that involve the Hennepin County Library in some way. There are photos of various officials associated with the library and its parent associations, photos of events supported by the library in the community, photos of author visits, and many more.

Looking through the photostream, it seems that the purpose of it is to compile photos that the library might use for the media in one organized place that is accessible to multiple staff members whenever it’s needed. The purpose does not seem to be to make this photostream available to all library users. This explains why there are no links to (and no mention of) flickr on the library site. Click on the screenshot for a link to the page and take a look at some of the photos that the HCL has made available.

It is interesting to see the library staff using flickr internally as a way to organize promotional materials. I think that some of the photos here would be of interest to the users. Perhaps the library could put a link to the flickr photostream in the “Events” area of the site, making only those photos that it wishes to share in that way public. I think it would be a benefit to the library community to have an accessible record of the events that its library has contributed to.

The HCL Bookspace is an interesting collaborative space for library staff and users. The Bookspace is accessed from the homepage through a prominent link in the top-of-page tabs. The homepage for the Bookspace boasts a lot of information about books in the library, featured booklists, book clubs, author information, and more. What I find interesting on the social software front are the readers’ lists.

Similarly to the reviews at the EPL (as discussed in a previous post), these are lists created and updated by users. According to the HCL eNews page, only one year after the inception of the personal profiles feature for readers’ lists, the feature boasted, “more than 400 reader-contributed book lists, 12,000 comments and 90 profiles.” It is clearly a popular tool on the site. Each book on the lists is linked to its catalog entry, but there is no link available to other readers’ lists that contain that same book. I would use this service of the library for book selection. I’m impressed that there is a separate teen readers’ list area, although I wonder if there would be more crossover of books on these and the adult lists than warrants the separation. I think a reviewing, or book selection tool like this one fits right in with any library website that has an OPAC and a significant online presence. If users are commonly using the library from the web, these library community services should exist there as much as they do in the physical library itself.

The readers’ lists could be improved by (once again, I plug the use of tags in the library) adding a tagging feature. The users could tag the books in their lists and then these tags could be used to link the different lists of different users. Links connecting all users who have added a given book to their lists would also improve the service.

For users who are new to the service, very little computer literacy would be necessary to understand the user-friendly navigation. The format is in a list that can be easily understood. The creation of one’s own list requires no more than a library login.

In their article, “Library 2.0: Service for the next generation library,” in Library Journal (9/1/2006), Michael E. Casey and Laura C. Savastinuk mention how libraries area already changing, and how we can change libraries to improve services and keep up with the changing technology. From their article:

To increase both your library’s appeal and value to users, consider implementing customizable and participatory services. The Library 2.0 model seeks to harness our customer’s knowledge to supplement and improve library services. User comments, tags, and ratings feed user-created content back into these web sites. Ultimately, this creates a more informative product for subsequent users. Your library customers have favorite titles, authors, and genres. Allowing them to comment, write reviews, create their own tags and ratings, and share them with others through a more versatile OPAC interface will enhance your catalog. Customers want to know what their neighbors are reading, listening to, and watching. Hennepin County Library, MN, has taken this step by allowing users to comment in the catalog.

I couldn’t agree more. I think that the HCL is on its way to fully integrating “Web 2.0″ and “Library 2.0″ applications into its existing interface. Overall, I like the ways that the Hennepin County Library is using technology to make the online library experience richer for its users. However, I’m always excited to see a library catalog that is integrating tagging, and on this point, I was disappointed once again.

Homegrown “Web 2.0″ at the EPL

I like the idea of finding libraries in Canada that are doing interesting things with technology in the realm of social software. The Edmonton Public Library (EPL) is not (yet) making use of some of the social bookmarking or tagging sites that are already out there, but it is doing something interesting by way of collaborative, social reviewing on its very own reviews page.

In the BlogJunction post, “10 Ways to Make Your LIbrary Great in 2008: Resolution #1″ (which, by the way is “Use Technology”), Ed Rossman suggests the use of LibraryThing. He links to the Shaker Heights Public Library and its use of LibraryThing for local history and authors collections. I think that the EPL is doing something smaller (but similar) on its own site.

The Book Reviews page can be found from the homepage of the EPL by clicking on “Books” under the “Find more”, or by clicking the “Find more” tab and choosing “Books & Readers”. I think it would be helpful to have a “Book Reviews” link displayed prominently on the homepage without having to take these avenues, but I still found the reviews pretty easily. It’s hard to know how easily I would have found them, however if I didn’t already know they were there, and know what I was looking for. It seems to make sense that there would be something like the “Book Reviews” since the site has an entire set of pages dedicated to services for and about books and readers.

I looked under “Book Reviews by EPL Customers” and “Science Fiction“. (Interesting use of terminology, by the way. Not library patrons, but customers – very bookstore.) There is a thumbnail of each book reviewed (if available), a list of links to reviews on Chapters and Amazon, and the reviews. Each review includes the username of the reviewer, a rating, audience, and the review itself. If you click on the username, it brings up all reviews by that user. This function seems to be similar (if more primitive and without the tags) to the idea of keeping personal/publicized lists of favourites, like in del.icio.us or LibraryThing. I like the idea that the reviews are associated with the patron record. Something about it seems more personal. Like the reviews would mostly be coming from members of your own library community.

I’m tempted to suggest that the EPL check out LibraryThing and get on board with that, but something about the homegrown approach appeals to me. The EPL review system seems to be very well used. It’s unique to the EPL and its users. If I wanted to get the LibraryThing, or Amazon for that matter, experience, I could go there. I’m not sure I would regularly write reviews, but I would definitely read them when choosing books at the EPL.

One of the other advantages of doing a reviews service like this in-house, is that it is in a technical format that would be familiar to even novice computer users. The service is easy to understand for new users and it doesn’t require registering for a new account, or leaving the site and navigating a (possibly new) outside site. This would make this service easier for new users to grasp than something like LibraryThing or del.icio.us.

A major improvement to the reviews would be to add a tagging function. I’d like to be able to browse by tags rather than just by categories set by the library, and users’ selections. That addition would take this service from “pretty cool” to “yes! that’s it, this is really useful”.