The second interview in our ongoing series with libraries with blogs has been completed. I had the opportunity to send questions to Lynn Dennis of the Roselle Public Library in Roselle, Illinois. A few years ago, Jenny Levine introduced me to their Blogger Book Club and I have been a fan ever since. On with the interview:
PLA Blog: What gave you the idea to start a book club blog for YAs?
Lynn Davis: “The idea actually came up in one of those “good morning” conversations between co-workers. Amy Cawley, the Youth Services Department Head, was taking a class on Internet Fundamentals and Web Design as part of her MLS degree program at Dominican University. As a final assignment, she had to produce something that “gave back to the web.” I, as the web-person at our Library, am always looking for ways to make our website more interactive. The Book Club was just a great solution for both of us. We knew nothing about blogs at the time, but Amy’s instructor, Bill Erbes, Assistant Director of the Bensenville (IL) Public Library, was very excited about Blogger.com, so we set up an account and proceeded to “learn by doing.”
PLA Blog: What type of admin procedures did you have to face for the YA Book Club Blog? Parental permission, etc?
LD: Amy was especially concerned about the childrens’ safety on the Internet and parents’ perception of their childrens’ safety, so originally our administrative procedures, rules and restrictions were very tight: children in 4th - 6th grade only (9-11 year olds - not YA); Roselle Library card-holders only; in-person registration only, with parent or caregiver signing a permission form in front of the librarian. We selected one book a month to discuss, mostly from the current nominees for the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award (the Illinois Children’s Book award).”
“On the technical side, I reinforced the feeling of safety by using the familiar look of the Library’s website as a template for the blog. I made it easy for the kids to join by setting up Blogger accounts for them from their registration information, adding them as team members to the blog, then sending them a “Welcome to the Blogger Book Club” email with their username and password and instructions for participating. I also incorporated a link to Blogger’s “Blog this!” applet on the Book Club pages. The applet opens a text box so members can post their thoughts and publish to the discussion without ever visiting Blogger.com.”
“As we became more comfortable with the whole process, and in an effort to increase our membership, we gradually relaxed our restrictions and procedures. We recently opened the membership to anyone who is interested in childrens literature, the only restriction being that they have an active library card somewhere. For everyone’s safety, we do call the prospective member’s home library to verify their status. When we opened the membership we also changed our focus from discussing a single book each month to posting reviews. Library staff talks about new material at the Library and old favorites. Members are encouraged to sign in and talk about “…the books you love, the books you hate, the books you can’t wait to tell your friends about.” We also enabled commenting…we’ll see how that goes.”
PLA Blog: What has been the reaction from the parents? From the YAs? The librarians?
LD: “The reaction from parents, teachers, fellow librarians, adults of all kinds, has been incredibly enthusiastic. Amy and I presented a poster session at the Illinois Library Association (ILA) annual meeting two years ago; last year we were invited to speak at ILA as part of a presentation on asynchronous programming for children; and just recently we were part of a presentation on “The Art of Blogging” at Reaching Forward, the annual conference for Library support staff sponsored by ILA. The Blogger Book Club has been mentioned in numerous articles and even books about blogging. We were and are just amazed at the buzz it has created.”
“The reaction from kids has been enthusiastic, as well. We have members from all over the country, from Seattle, WA to Orlando, FL and from Lawrenceville, GA to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan! We have been a bit disappointed in the participation of the members, but we have lots of lurkers. The Blogger Book Club page is always among the top ten pages on our website in number of visitors.”
PLA Blog: “Do your patrons use the RSS feed on your homepage? Do they ever ask what it is?
LD: We have three RSS feeds on our website…actually, they are “atom” feeds. The one on the homepage is for our What’s New page. The headlines on the home page are generated from Feed2JS, a service on the Maricopa Community College website. (I used Feedroll.com until they started charging) There is a news feed for the Blogger Book Club; and there is a feed for “News From Technical Services“, a blog intended for staff.”
“No one has asked me what the orange “XML” means. I recently added a “What’s This?” link to Amy Gahran’s explanation of webfeeds, in an attempt to educate our users, but I really don’t know if anyone has ever clicked over. Your question did prompt me to look at the number of subscribers to each of our feeds in Bloglines. I was surprised to see more than just myself! Each of these three blogs is powered by Blogger.com…because it is just so easy…and free!”
PLA Blog: Have you considered adding blogs to other parts of your library web page? Where?
“Well, the What’s New page was just a natural! I hope to encourage the other department heads to contribute to this page to keep it current and promote programs and events in the Library. Everyone, except Amy, cringes a little when I mention “blog” or “RSS.” They just don’t believe me, when I tell them how easy it is. I have tried several times to convince the Adult Services staff to continue our on-site Adult book discussion group with a blog, so animated discussions can continue online.”
“I have also approached the YA Librarian to start a teen blog. We are a small staff; everyone wears a lot of hats. Neither Adult Services nor YA want to take on what they assume will be more work. I am still looking for ways to make our website more interactive. I could see many applications for blogging on the Library’s Intranet; “News From Technical Services” is just one example of communication made easy via blogging.. Interdepartmental communication within the Intranet or free-standing is another natural application.”
“Although it is not one of your questions, I have to reiterate that I would not know anything about any of this without Jenny Levine, primarily, and you, and Aaron Schmidt, and Michael Stephens and the many other librarians whose blogs I subscribe to. Reading their blogs has turned me on to technical trends I would never know about otherwise. Although a lot of the information goes way over my head, at least I have a passing familiarity with Skype and Flickr and Wikis and more. Where else could I learn so much!”
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