Richardson Public Library

I decided to take a look at my hometown's (Richardson, Texas) library website: http://www.cor.net/library/

Richardson is a suburb of Dallas of about 90,000 people and only one library branch; visits to the library were a weekly occurrence my entire life, and the library was always doing a very brisk business.

The website is pretty basic (and very old school looking; Web 2.0 has not yet arrived in the Dallas 'burbs), but includes a list of all the upcoming events, like the library's knitting group, audiobooks for download (a new service), free computer classes, and tax assistance. The interface is only available in English, despite Richardson's significant ESL population (primarily Chinese-Americans and Vietnamese-Americans).

There's a definite family bent to the offerings -- they link to the Richardson Independent School District's summer reading list, links for kids.

I really liked their reading list for teens (I naturally gravitate to YA fiction). They divide it by genre, and also have a list of books if you liked Gossip Girl, Twilight, Speak, Eragon, or Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Every title in the list is a hyperlink that takes you to the catalog, so you can see if it's available, look at the metadata, and add it to your list.

The OPAC is pretty basic, including the same things you'd expect from any OPAC. In "Advanced Search," far more languages are offered than I would have guessed -- a search for "Rowling" and "Language: Chinese" turned up seven results (all seven books?), in the juvenile nonfiction section, oddly.

As I said, Web 2.0 hasn't really arrived in Richardson. The closest thing I saw was the RSS feed for the library's BookLetters newsletter, which "an email newsletter service to keep you up to date with what's happening in the library and to inform you about staff recommendations on a variety of subjects such as best sellers, media, fiction, nonfiction, staff favorites, and children's materials."

The OPAC for the Richardson Public Library lacks many of the bells and whistles bigger library programs have, but it's functional, simple, and easy to understand and use.