Missoula Public Library is Plugged In!
Besides an official website, it’s own blog, and a Twitter feed, Missoula Public Library has two main web presences and one secondary. The blog, Twitter feed, Missoula Public Library MySpace page, and Facebook fan page are all linked directly from the library’s official homepage and are easy to find. First, I’ll be covering MySpace.
The Missoula Public Library MySpace page is pretty classy-looking in muted purple, grey, and light green with mostly white text. Unfortunately, it also uses some dark green text, which is difficult to read against the rest of the color scheme. It describes the library as a 99-year-old single female (Zodiac sign Aries) librarian interested in making friends with all of Missoula’s readers and connects to the library catalog, library card sign-up, some recommended reading lists, and film showings. While it appears to update its internal MySpace blog only infrequently, it does have over 1100 friends listed, ranging from “Missoula” to local artists, writers to the American Library Association to everyday people. They give the physical address of the library as well as opening hours and photos of library events and changes.
While I am not a MySpace user, I believe that MPL’s site is simple enough that anyone who uses a computer regularly should be able to navigate it. Since they have opted to keep the layout uncluttered and fairly direct, there are not too many flashy distractions to make things confusing. There are three additions besides the main page – a blog, a photo album with pictures of librarians and library activities, and one outside application. That is a cute little widget that it has enabled called “Shelfari,” with some of the library’s newer acquisitions displayed on a virtual book shelf. The book cover images link to reviews and synopses of the books. The blog, as I mentioned before, is only rarely updated (about once or twice a month, usually), as the library’s Blogspot.com blog is used much more frequently. Unfortunately, the Blogspot blog does not appear to be linked to the MySpace page, though the links are listed together on the library homepage. To fill in that gap, their Twitter feed runs through the MySpace page to keep it active.
In addition to their main MySpace page, Missoula Public Library has a sort of partner profile for “Cheap Date Night,” one of their monthly film showings. Cheap Date Night, a 29-year-old male is a Gemini with over 100 friends. It’s the library’s popular movies showing, which happens on the third Friday of every month and offers free popcorn as well as free entrance to the movies. The site is minimal and of simple design, with a blog post for each month’s movie appearing shortly after the previous month’s show. While it does provide a way to follow the Cheap Date showings, I don’t know how much that is utilized.
TheInfoBabe offers an interesting opinion piece on why libraries should get and use web 2.0 tools and keep them up to date at Ridiculously Digitally Ubiquitous!
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