The Huntington Library

The Huntington Library in San Marino, California is, like the Newberry, a research library founded by a wealthy businessman, in the Huntington’s case Henry E. Huntington in 1919. Unlike the Newberry, most of the Huntington’s extensive collection of over 6 million resources, as its “About” page explains, is accessible only to “qualified scholars” who are registered as “readers” (past readers include Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and Katharine Hepburn). Some of the Huntington’s collection of rare books and manuscripts are, though, on display to the general public. The library is part of a large facility that also houses 120 acres of botanical gardens and an art collection. The library has some pretty serious valuables in its Anglo-American focused collection, such as early editions of Shakespeare’s works, one of 48 Gutenberg Bibles, and the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

The Huntington’s website, unfortunately, could use an overhaul, mostly in the form of a new background color to replace its current pea green state, and bolder font that is easier to read. From the home page, a drop-down menu titled “Interact” provides links to social media: Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Flickr, iTunes and YouTube.  Grouping social media under the term ‘interact’ is more intuitive, I think, than placing them under the About menu, which seems to be a convention. However, the tiny, white text on pale-green background makes reading the drop-down menu difficult, and therefore it takes more work to find the Huntington’s social media than it should. They have the right idea, but I think the execution could be improved. I clicked on their YouTube link and scanned the videos on offer. Most of them feature the late Sam Maloof, a “mid-century craftsman” of furniture, in various stages of building a chair. The connection between the Huntington and a craftsman/carpenter is not immediately apparent until you read the description explaining that the Huntington once presented an exhibition of Maloof’s work. There are also three videos about the botanical garden. These videos could be interesting, but there is not a lot of variety offered here, and I was not compelled to watch past more than one minute of the two that I clicked on. Generally, I don’t think videos are the Hungtington’s strength.

The Huntington’s blog site, on the other hand, is great, in fact better designed than its main site. The Huntington Library blog is one of several offered, with others called Art, Botanical, and Education (this is not about educational resources, like the Newberry’s blog Teacher Programs, but rather a learning blog). Each blog has the same format: a stationary menu, including a link back to the Huntington’s main site, runs across the top of each page, and to the right a column of other social media formats is on display, ie. Flickr (accompanied by colorful thumbnail images) and Twitter. The design is clean and accessible, and looks nothing at all like the website, which is inconsistent branding – but again, I would modify the website, not the blogs.

The posts are displayed very effectively. Their format is simple, practical, but also pleasing to the eye. Medium-sized, well chosen images accompanied by a synopsis of each post in smaller font creates an attractive column of postings. The title of each post is practical, describing what the post is about in a few words – so there is no content ambiguity, as in the case of Newberry’s Book Fair blog. Clicking on a post takes the visitor to a new page with the same image in larger form, along with other large images, and substantial postings that are not too long. Again, the stable frame of the blog shows good online form, because it provides a consistent presence and doesn’t leave the visitor stranded in the middle of nowhere, having to use the back arrow button to navigate. The writing style of the posts is straightforward, with plenty of hyperlinks provided. The content relates to items in the Huntington library collection and to special events around the community, like LitFest Pasadena and the California International Antiquarian Book Fair.

My only (minor) beef relates to a post that was published on April 3rd. From the opening paragraph: “If you’re not taking your kids on a trip over spring break, you are likely starting to make plans for summer vacation. Perhaps you’re sketching out an itinerary for some new destination, or maybe you are returning to a favorite locale that beckons you and your family again and again…” The writer makes some pretty big assumptions about the readers of the blog, which I find a turnoff. Either the Huntington knows its audience and means to address that specific audience, or else the bloggers need to step back and consider their audience(s) more carefully. That said, if I was part of the Huntington community, I would follow this blog because it is informative, offering a wider scope beyond the activities of the Huntington, and well designed.

The Newberry

Established in 1887, the Newberry is a free research library in Chicago that offers a non-circulating collection of books, manuscripts, maps, music, and images, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The Newberry’s first librarian was William Frederick Poole who, unlike Melville Dewey, the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, believed that every resource collection was unique and should have its own catalogue system (this according to Wikipedia). It’s probably a good thing that Poole’s vision didn’t come to pass, but I like his insistence that every collection is unique. The Newberry also hosts an annual used book fair that is very popular. From the sounds of it, this huge book fair would make any book collector salivate: according to Newberry, over 120,000 books were on sale last year, most of which were priced under $2.

A number of Newberry Library blogs are available via the library’s website. A box that invites people to “follow the Newberry” is located to the left and below the announcements of upcoming public events. Links to the blogs are not additionally offered through the drop down menus on the Newberry’s home page, though, which could improve navigability, especially for people reading on laptops with short screens. When you get to its social media page, the blogs are way down the page, after the Newberry’s other offerings: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Chicago Amplified, which are recordings of Newberry programs (unfortunately, this is a dead link). The positioning of blogs after all other social media may have something to do with their general popularity vs. other forms of social media – it’s hard to compete with YouTube and Facebook, I’m sure, for sheer number of hits per day.

There are several blogs on offer, each with a specialized focus. The Book Fair blog is a potentially great way to build not only buzz for an event, but a continued presence and community around an event. The blog is self-described as offering “the behind-the-scenes scoop” on the fair. The entries are short, with an option to read more if so desired, which is good because it makes for quick scanning while allowing for further reading at will. The blog is written by Dan Crawford, the book fair manager, who comes across as a local personality. It’s hard to tell how popular this blog is, because Crawford’s posts don’t receive any comments, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that people aren’t reading them. The formatting is awkward (posts start with indented paragraphs) and the content could use some editing. Some of the post teasers are somewhat incomprehensible until you click on them, and realize that the information therein is actually either practical or pretty neat (one of the posts suggests buying books as decoration, for example romance books for Valentine’s Day decorations). This blog could use a “blog master” to clean it up visually, and to present posts in a way that makes their relevance more obvious to the reader.

Newberry's Everywhere West blog

The Book Fair blog does not provide links to the other blogs offered by Newberry, although it is easy to navigate back to the library main page. Newberry has a number of specialized blogs that relate to its collection, including a Genealogy blog, Renaissance Studies blog and two project blogs (French Pamphlet Collection and Everywhere West, a blog about the archives of a railway company), among other offerings. If libraries have the resources, providing several specialized blogs instead of one general interest blog can help to build connections with different communities. The Newberry blogs highlight specific strengths of the collection, and so reflect the uniqueness of the library’s holdings. One of its blogs, called Teacher Programs, offers resources for teachers, something I haven’t seen before, and is a fantastic idea. I imagine it has appeal for a wide variety of people. I think the Newberry has the right idea with the number and types of blogs it offers, and it also has some innovative takes on the blogging form.

MOMA Library tumblr

A social media form that I have been curious about but have never used is tumblr. A friend recently suggested that I look into it. The basic format of a tumblr feed looks intriguingly simple and eye-catching. “Tumblr makes blogging blissfully easy” (NYT); “…microblogging done right” (cnet); and “Obama’s top 5 tech tools” (PC World) are among the variety of approving quotes displayed on Tumblr’s “About” page. These are nested below images of young, contented-looking tumblr staff eating lunch together and working on desks beside large bay windows in exposed brick offices. On the other hand, mono.blog dismisses tumblr as: “…[rarely] even remotely interesting – often they’re just mood boards full of more things to buy”.

Tumblr hasn’t seemed to catch on much within organizations, but in December 2011, it caught on at MOMA Library, when a tumblr page was launched by David Senior, house librarian and bibliographer. Unless I’m missing something, a visit to either MOMA’s main website or the Library page located within the main site yields no links to the Library’s tumblr site, surprising given the plethora of other media that it connects to. These can be found from a menu running along the bottom of MOMA’s home page, under Explore, then Online Communities. Besides the usual suspects, MOMA uses Foursquare, iTunes U, something called Art Babble, RSS feeds, several iPhone and iPad apps, and a Multimedia page dedicated to videos and podcasts. On the top righthand corner, visitors can ‘share’ the site using more social media: Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Google Bookmarks, and old fashioned email (have we entered an era in which email now seems old fashioned?). MOMA also has a blog, designed after the website and in tone and style very MOMA-like: bold, colorful and accessible in its attempt to project mass appeal to broad audiences.

The absence of a visible link to MOMA Library’s tumblr page may be explained by its relative newness at MOMA, but even so, it has been about four months, so I wonder if there is some other reason for the clandestine treatment of the tumblr connection. Are staff very busy, bogged down by bureaucracy, or does tumblr as a social media disseminate differently than other forms of social media? Nor is MOMA Library’s tumblr page easy to find through a Google search. In fact, if you don’t know the form (momalibrary.tumblr.com), and if others had not posted about it, the tumblr page is near impossible to find, especially given the numerous false-alarm search results that turn up from others tumblr-ing about MOMA and its library.

Once found, the simplicity of MOMA Library’s tumblr site is appealing, particularly when compared to the somewhat in-your-face MOMA main site. Librarian David Senior and others post about catalogues, magazines and additions to the library collection, which makes for great visuals and interesting coverage of ‘topics’. The posts typically consist of large images in the middle of a white screen, captioned by one or two sentences. One has to scroll down a ways to get to the end of the page, but large images are much easier to “read” this way than words, so it doesn’t end up being prohibitive. What I find interesting is the number of “notes” many of the posts receive, from people who ‘like’ the posts or re-blog them. The post above, an image of a work by artist John Rieben from Graphis Annual ’68/69, elicited 68 responses! Another post received 45 notes, and others have a decent showing (between 2-9 notes). So, maybe the reason MOMA’s tumblr doesn’t show up on its website is because it doesn’t need to. The library’s tumblr seems to have a specific community of followers – the tumblr community, in fact – which seems to suit MOMA Library just fine without the additional exposure.

One thing I would change on MOMA’s tumblr page, which I am not sure is possible with the tumblr format, is to make the “Museum of Modern Art” title at the top, and the menu below, stationary, so they don’t disappear when you scroll down the page. Otherwise, I think there is great potential for tumblr to be used in effective ways by libraries. The brevity, flexibility and informality of this format make it an interesting tool for experimentation.

The Morgan Library

Pierpont Morgan was a legendary American banker who once bought out Andrew Carnegie to establish one of the world’s earliest mega-conglomerates in 1901. But that’s not what he is known for. He is more generally known for building a financial empire that included banks, railroads and the aforementioned conglomerates, and for wielding a lot of power as a result. His gene pool likely didn’t hurt his chances for success either: he is a descendant of one of the founders of Yale, and of Jonathan Edwards, one of “America’s greatest theologians” according to Wikipedia.

J.P. Morgan

Morgan left behind an impressive collection of rare books, manuscripts, drawings and ancient artifacts, which his son bestowed to the public trust a decade after the senior Morgan passed away. This became the Morgan Library & Museum, housed in a building next to the late Morgan’s former New York residence (“I want a gem,” he is reported to have said to the architect), now renovated with several extensions to the original building. The library is indeed a gem. Incidentally, in 1905 Morgan hired a 20-year old librarian from Princeton University, Bella da Costa Greene, who was instrumental in helping him build his extraordinary collection.

The Morgan’s website is a lesson in good design. Not only does the color scheme and general aesthetic of the website reflect the sensibility of the organization, which is what a website should do, but the site scores high on navigability. The pages are kept reasonably short, instead featuring hyperlinks that are used to direct visitors to more information on different pages. An excellent example of this is the History of the Morgan page. The menu and image frames remain stationary, while the content of the story progresses as the reader navigates between seven shorter pages, making for easier and less intimidating reading (ie. one is not scared away by long rows of text).

The Morgan’s blog is easily locatable from the home page of drop-down menus, under “About,” just after Social Media. I clicked on their YouTube link because something told me it was going to be good, and I was not disappointed. Their YouTube page is quite pleasing to look at (and you don’t expect YouTube to be pretty). The videos themselves are great. There are only 17 altogether, but there is an interesting range of videos: a conservation video about de-silking A Christmas Carol; a fast-forward time-lapse video of a renovation of the Library; a series of reflections on Jane Austen, including Cornel West on Austen. Considering that the Morgan Library & Museum houses a collection of ancient objects and rare books in a turn-of-the-century building,  you wouldn’t necessarily expect it to be the most media savvy of organizations. But you’d be wrong. Then again, I’m guessing the Morgan has a budget that could happily accommodate more than one public library, and they haven’t squandered their resources.

The Morgan Blog, in keeping with the general program, is excellent. The people running the Morgan definitely deserve credit for consistency. The blog is actually five sub-blogs: three related to previous exhibitions (Secrets from the Vault, The Diary Exhibition, and A Letter from Charles Dickens), one called New at the Morgan, and the last is simply Morgan Blog Home, which brings all the blogs together in one place. The blogs are easy to navigate between from a stationary menu of links to the right. Well-written and accessible entries highlight objects in the Morgan’s collection, and discuss interesting historical themes from different perspectives. The Morgan’s exhibition programme and blog are two sides of the same coin: both reflect the organization’s ability to present historical objects and topics in a way that is relevant to contemporary audiences. Guest writers also contribute to the mix, keeping the blog well varied. The entries are accompanied by nice colour images. I would definitely visit the Morgan’s website, blog, Twitter feed, YouTube, etc., on a regular basis, and am filing this whole enterprise under “media to steal ideas from”.

Surrey Libraries

I have yet to visit Surrey’s new City Centre Library, formerly Whalley PL, a branch of Surrey Libraries that re-opened last September, but I will very soon. From what I’ve seen in photos, the new building most definitely falls into the category of contemporary monuments, and looks appropriately glamorous. I’m looking forward to seeing what architect Bing Thom, who also designed Aberdeen Centre in Richmond, among other local landmarks, has done with lighting this new space.

Surrey Libraries has a well-designed website that is clearly oriented to a public community, with a leaning towards families and children. It manages to display a remarkable amount of images and information while still appearing relatively uncluttered, although some of the font is pretty tiny and may not be user-friendly for everyone. The design of Surrey Libraries’ website is consistent with that of the City of Surrey, which underscores the libraries’ connection as a service under the umbrella of the city. This is not a bad thing at all, but it means that Surrey Libraries has less control over website design, and is branded with the municipality in which it operates.

I think one of the best things about this site is one of its simplest features: the prominent use of Google translate at the top-center of the page, a nod to the diversity of the city. A drop-down menu offers translations in an impressive number of languages, from Afrikaans down to Yiddish. Importantly, Google translates all the pages, not just a very general section of the website (VPL, take note). The two blogs associated with Surrey Libraries, the general Book Blog and City Centre branch’s blog, do not jump out from the front page, but are hidden in places that would be difficult to stumble upon if you are not already looking for them. This narrows down serendipitous traffic to the blogs. The book blog appears in the drop-down menu under “Reading,” as well as under “About Us.” The City Centre blog appears under “About Us.” Both blogs are linkable from the bottom of the page, under “Find Surrey On,” a listing of social media that Surrey Libraries uses, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Placing their social media directly on the front page, rather than hiding them within menus or at the bottom of the site, could increase web traffic to Surrey Libraries’ other media.

Surrey Libraries’ Book Blog, is, like Seattle Public Library’s Shelf Talk, basic in both design and content. In contrast to Shelf Talk, the readers’ advisory entries focus on one book at a time, rather than being presented by theme with many books per theme. For people who prefer their web pages simple and tidy, this could be a good thing. The selected books represent a mix of topics, genres and reading levels, from cookbooks to classics, non-fiction to graphic novels. This general interest format, while great for variety, can be at the same time limiting because of the need to appeal to everyone and strike a balance. Offering more specialized subject-related blogs alongside a general blog can allow for more freedom, although a library of course has to have the human and financial resources to maintain several blogs. One feature I like about this blog is the “Get this book now!” link in blue, which takes you to the item’s record in the public library catalogue. This is a great way to promote the use of the catalogue while making it easy for the visitor to find books.

City Centre branch has its own blog that is not simply a readers’ advisory blog, but a general blog about events and branch-related news. In theory this is a good idea for community-building among visitors to a particular branch library. City Centre’s blog looks different from both the Book Blog and Surrey Libraries website, and the design is somewhat indifferent, meaning that it is neither remarkably appealing nor remarkably off-putting. The major problem with this blog is that it needs to be updated more regularly. There are only 10 entries between September 2011 and April 2012, with the last entry posted on March 12th, about a month ago. For a public library blog, that level of static is pretty remarkable – and not in a good way.

The blog entries also need to go beyond news about the new building, fantastic as the building is. Despite the occasional entry about other topics, the majority of blog entries are basically all about the building. This can probably be related back to the problem of infrequent updates, and again, is not a good thing. I would be surprised if this blog is visited much by City Centre users and the general public, because it does not offer current news about events, programs and services. The Surrey Libraries website is much more effective than the City Centre blog, and more up-to-date. Another major oversight is that clicking on the Surrey Libraries icon on the blog does not bring the visitor back to the Surrey Libraries website, nor does it open the site in a different window. This is baffling because providing a pathway back to the home library page is a basic requirement of any satellite blog, I think, and not hard to do either. I am guessing that staff have their hands full with a huge new building and a large population to serve, so I suggest either dismantling the blog until it can be properly maintained and re-designed, or hiring some keen SLAIS student to perform emergency resuscitation.

Seattle Public Library

One of my favorite libraries is Seattle Public Library. Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the building is stunning from both outside and inside; it is a memorable space to experience. Seattle Public Library’s blog, Shelf Talk, while not exactly spectacular, is none too shabby. While very basic, it is usable and accomplishes what it needs to. From the library’s home page, visitors can navigate to the blog via an orange box to the right of the screen. The blog is also linkable from the Quick Links box on the front page, making it easy to find. Upon entering the site, the visitor is greeted with a standard image of shelves lined with books, and in front of the books, a cute if rather sad-looking cat. The books are colorful enough to balance out the sadness though, so overall, a positive first impression is made. A side note: while many libraries are trying to dispel the idea that they are only about books, many of the images they use are still all about books (see also: the banner for this blog), very possibly because a row or pile of books is just that appealing.

Shelf Talk's sad cat

The Seattle Public Library’s logo sits below the banner image on the blog, which when clicked on takes the visitor back to the library main page. This is good because navigability is just as important as content, and visitors will appreciate both not being abandoned and not having their time wasted. The clearly visible connection between a library and its blog is key. Below the library logo is a Facebook invitation, showing a thumbnail image of the library and the number of Seattle Public Library ‘fans’: 14,048 at the time of this writing. This shows that SPL is well connected and has a community of followers. It also gives visitors an option to increase their engagement with the library.

A bright yellow icon, Push To Talk, announces SPL’s blog for teens. Teen blogs are a great idea, but I wonder how blogs compare as a form in popularity with other social media, such as Twitter or Facebook for teens. There are several effective features in this teen blog: 1) Giant light-blue tags above the title of each entry are an innovative use of tagging. Above an entry inviting teens to complete a survey and enter a contest, for example, the tags “free stuff,” “homework” (the survey is about the Homework Help program) and “opinions” appear in big font. Clicking on “free stuff” brings you to a feed with other posts relating to free stuff. This is offered with more common tag formats: a tag cloud, a Categories widget with a drop-down menu, and a search box. Combined, these features improve navigability and encourage further exploration of the site – thumbs up! 2) The posts are a mix of short book reviews and extracts from longer posts accompanied by colorful images. The shorter entries keep the page visually interesting, and if teens want to read a full post, they can click on “Read the rest of this entry.” 3) A paragraph explaining that the blog is written by teens and librarians, with a promise that it will be entertaining and interesting, shows savvy and openness on the part of the blog hosts. The email address of the blog is also provided. This makes me wonder: how much hand-holding is there? From a quick perusal of three pages of entries, slightly more entries seem to be written by librarians, but the balance is pretty evenly distributed between teens and librarians. The posts are interesting: for example, one about teen zines written by a librarian, and two by teen bloggers about Salvador Dali and Jon Stewart. Overall, this is a good collaborative effort. 4) A blogroll of YA author blogs is also provided, which is an excellent way to connect teens with authors.

The adult blog is a readers’ advisory blog. Each entry has a theme and is broken up into paragraphs with lots of hyperlinks and images of book covers. The entries are written by different librarians, which makes for a variety of writing styles and voices. This multiplicity of styles seems appropriate to a public library sensibility. I like the use of themes as a conceit to discuss several items from the library catalogue. One downside of the blog is that you have to scroll down pretty far to get to the “older posts” link, so I would suggest making the pages shorter. Overall, Seattle Public Library does a good job of representing the “general interest” genre of public library blogs.