Overview
This week was dedicated to putting content from the VRC's cataloging manual into a staff wiki and to learning about the creation and implementation of The University of Texas Fine Arts Library Marketing and Outreach Plan created by Beth Hallmark as her Capstone project.
Staff Wiki Site
Later this spring the VRC will launch a new image database, and in preparation for the launch of this database, I am creating a staff wiki site that contains the VRC's cataloging manual for the staff to access when cataloging questions arise. The staff wiki also contains other pertinent information for the staff, such as scanning information and checkout procedures for books from the Architecture and Planning Library, and it will function as a collaborative tool that contains information which can be easily updated and shared amongst all members of staff.
Meeting with Laura Schwartz
I met with Laura Schwartz, the Head Librarian at the University of Texas Fine Arts Library (FAL), on Friday to discuss their marketing plan. My discussion with Laura was very helpful. Even though the FAL's plan focuses on increasing on-site visits by faculty and students, Laura made several suggestions, such as working with UT's office for Measurement and Evaluation to design a user survey and implementing a web tracking tool to measure how many hits the VRC's website receives. One tool that is currently used by the UT General Libraries is called Urchin. I'm not sure that the VRC would be able to use this tool, and next week I would like to investigate web traffic tools that could be implemented by the VRC to measure how many hits its site is getting.
Ideas
The FAL's Marketing and Outreach Plan mentioned that several things that I think would be helpful to include in the Marketing Plan that I am creating. These ideas include:
- Creating a VRC brand and developing a logo, message, and tagline to be included on the Web 2.0 tools that are implemented.
- Working with the School of Architecture's (SOA) communications office to publicize some of the technologies that we implement.
- Creating an e-Newsletter. I'm not sure that the VRC would have enough content for an e-Newsletter, but we could send a weekly email with an "Image of the Week" or something similar to generate traffic to the VRC's website and create interest in the collection as well as educate users about the diverse images in the collection.
- Creating a website wiki for users to discuss projects they are working on or resources they have found to be helpful.
- Investigating search engine optimizations and the use of descriptive metatags to direct people to the VRC's website.
- Creating an online survey to gather ongoing feedback from users of the site.
Web 2.0 ideas from this week include:
- Creating an Flickr (Flickr-like) site for architecture students to post their portfolios or share images with others.
- Allowing image groups to be shared on DASe
- Allowing images to be emailed to other users.
- Adding a citation creator to the image database that would provide citations for each image in the collection.
Conclusion
This week I received the strategic plan and the demographics about the School of Architecture from Elizabeth Schaub. I will review those next week and begin to formulate ideas about how to incorporate this information into the Marketing Plan. I would also like to review WebJunction's (an online community for library staff) site for information about creating collaborative communities. This resource was suggested in the FAL's Marketing and Outreach Plan. Finally, I would like to investigate web tracking tools and to begin compiling my sources for a bibliography.
