Of all the library websites I have reviewed this semester, the website for the Lamson Library and Learning Commons at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire, integrates the most Web 2.0/Library 2.0 features. The entire website is powered by Scriblio, which is an “award winning, free, open source CMS and OPAC with faceted searching and browsing features based on WordPress.” The combination of these features results in a website that at first glance looks like the web-based library sites users have grown accustomed to seeing at most academic institutions. However, a closer look reveals a library website that behaves like a blog with several social networking characteristics.
The homepage of the library’s website contains blog-like features that are undoubtedly familiar to many of its student users. The homepage prominently displays time-and-date stamped postings about recent library news. Each posting invites readers to post comments. The homepage also contains a link for “Bookmark & Feeds,” which takes students to an impressive list of potential social software and bookmarking applications, including del.icio.us, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, reddit, BlinkList, Newsvine, Furl, Tailrank, Ma.gnolia, Netscape, Yahoo! My Web, Google Bookmarks, Technorati, and Windows Live.
The site also provides students with the opportunity to email a page to a friend or subscribe to RSS feeds of all posts and comments on the library’s website. With a single click, visitors to the website can even automatically translate the entire website into a host of languages, including French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), and Russian. And, if students still have questions, they can chat with a librarian by IM, email, telephone, or by visiting the Reference Desk. If students just need a break, the library’s website contains information on “The Commons Cafe,” a coffee shop in the Lamson Learning Commons that “proudly brews StarbucksTM coffee.”
What I find impressive about the Lamson Library’s website is its ability to integrate such a host of Web 2.0 features without losing its professional appearance and ability to interface with the Library’s OPAC. The Library’s homepage contains a search box that allows students to search the OPAC directly from the website. It also contains helpful links that one often sees in other libraries’ websites, such as “Resources by Subject,” “Databases,” “Journal List,” “Reserves.” The distinguishing feature, of course, is that students can provide comments on these listed resources, as well. Students can also access their accounts and renew books online through the website.
The innovation and willingness to experiment one sees in the library’s website are also present in the Library’s OPAC. The search box on the library’s website suggests subject, author, and title searches in a drop-down menu with each keystroke. Users can remove terms or choose from an array of facets that the OPAC recommends based on the original search. Users can choose to apply their search to the library’s blog pages, the OPAC, or the entire website. Each catalog entry provides a Library of Congress call number, ISBN and LCCN numbers, physical location, and notice of the item’s current status, but it also provides much more: summaries from Amazon.com, tags for the item (that appear to be library-generated, not user-generated), the option to browse on Google Books for the item, the ability to post comments about the item, and the ability to text information about the item to a cell phone. The individual catalog record even provides a list of “related items” for users to consider. If users wish to view the catalog item in a more traditional format, such users can choose to display the item in “LOLA,” the traditional Lamson Library Catalog, which gives users the option to see the MARC record and the physical description of the book.
Lamson Library’s website and OPAC not only meet the generally accepted standards for library catalogs, but they far exceed them in terms of integrating Web 2.0 features that assist users in finding, identifying, selecting, and viewing information in new and exciting ways.
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