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.
biblioposts 