Newest ALA prez-to-be: Marketing savvy–and even a blog and some QuickTime video
Leslie Burger, director of a New Jersey library with a spiffy, community-oriented Web site, is the 2006-2007 president of ALA. Her election could be good news for the library world. At least from afar, this new blogger seems well equipped to reduce the PR damage from blog-hating Michael Gorman, an anti-ebook Lud. I won’t confuse a library director with a Webmaster, but positively or negatively, library Web sites often reflect the organizations behind them.
The Princeton Public Library’s site isn’t as interactive as the one for the Central Rappahannock Regional Library, perhaps the standard-setter in that area, but appears to connect well with the people it’s serving–no surprise, given Ms. Burger’s past as a market-minded library consultant. Check out her system’s use of a QuickTime video to promote a new library building to a community better wired than most.
To answer one question, yes, the Princeton system does offer e-books, via NetLibrary, although the Web site is not promoting it as energetically as others might. NL is just one offering within the system’s research page. I don’t see that as a reflection on Ms. Burger, just on the shortcomings of commercially available e-books as they exist now. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were put off by the high prices and proprietary formats, and beyond that, I do see helpful links to public domain texts ranging from Bartleby to Project Gutenberg.
Philly-style library palaces vs. the Princeton building: Readers of the TeleBlog know how I feel about giant new buildings that suck the life out of branches. But in this case we’re talking not about Philly but about a well-off town (pop. 14,203) small enough for a main building to be accessible to all–in fact, it’s apparently the only branch. Furthermore, it appears that the Princeton system designed the building with a competitor in mind, Borders. Based on what I’ve read and on seen in the video, this is a book warehouse not.
(Via LISNews.)
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