A somewhat similar question lies behind seemingly unrelated issues. When are billboards too much? How about neon lights on business signs? How about the design and location of public buildings like museums, schools, and libraries? How about directional signs and the like?
I noted directional signs pointing to local public libraries in a couple of last week's posts (see Personal verification and purely personal). York does not have comparable directional signs for our library.
And within the library -- What is the overall visual impression? What gets the most prominent place? What do we do to call attention to segments of the collection? How does the design & layout of the building impact? What do we "show off" and why?
Kilgore Memorial Library is fortunate to have staff with the skills and inclination to gather library materials and put them into seasonal and topical displays. This year we are fortunate to have a staff member with artistic skill to produce striking temporary signs. Hooray Bridget! We are fortunate to have Ken Bedient working in Friends of the Library to assemble displays for the Hall Gallery and the Elmer Baker Memorial Display Case. We are fortunate to have sufficient space to allow for these things.
See these snapshots for some recent images from Kilgore Memorial Library.
The remainder of this blog entry documents stages of a learning process to accomplish a goal for today -- illustrate a post.
(Nov. 5, 2008) P.S.1 Reflecting on the lessons in L2NE -- this post is supposed to include snapshots of the images cited, rather than a link to the FLICKR set containing them. I have not found the right combination of shortcuts and html to make it work -- yet.
(Nov. 5, 2008) P.S.2 In keeping with the spirit of L2NE, IM'd with Allana to see what I was doing wrong. I was trying to copy the wrong FLICKR "permalink" I guess. So some snapshots appear below. I'm also experimenting with imbedding .html in blog postings.
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(Nov. 5, 2008) P.S. 3. Attached a "snapshot of self in a mirror" photo to the blog.
(Nov. 6, 2008) P.S. 4. Generated a more "feature rich" "snapshot of self in a mirror" for the photo in "who writes this".
1 comment:
First off, I just want to say I love the photo you added to your profile.
Also, I was really glad to read that you contacted one of us (and by IM, no less!) when you had a question. That's what we are here for!
My main comment, however, is that I think you raise some really interesting issues in this post. Where is the line between showing off and presenting yourself well?
As a whole, I think librarians tend to be uncomfortable tooting their own horn (or rather, the horn of their library). But getting the word out to your public about the wonderful services you offer is so important.
One reason I think some of the 2.0 tools we are exploring are so valuable is that they give us so many creative and FREE options for promoting libraries. Not every tool will work for every library/librarian, but hopefully there are one or two things that will strike a chord with each of us.
I know some folks who hate to write, so blogging wouln't be high on their list of tools to use. It seems to come easily to you, however. Is this something you plan to continue after the L2NE is over?
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