Okay, today was the official launch of the new community site that I've been working on for the Public Library Association: PLAspace.org
The announcement reads:
Today marks another milestone in the rollout of PLAspace. We officially open the doors to new CoPs and new participants.
We created PLAspace to give Public Library Association members a place where they could share ideas and work together on common interests. Today, the first official day for the site, we already have several dozen members and a half-dozen CoPs.
I'm still kind of knocked out -- been working 24/7 on this for several weeks. That said, I'm pleased to announce the availability online of DebbieHalvorson.com.
Debbie's running for Congress in the 11th CD of Illinois.
The site is fully automated using Drupal for content management. Campaign staff can add images to any content type (eg. press release, blog post, etc.) They can also designate any post as "spotlight" for the 'In Focus' section on the front page.
Even the main slideshow which is meant to present broad campaign themes, can be changed simply by uploading new images to the site. Resizing is done automatically.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with the results.
Here's a preview of something I've been working on. It's called the "Chicago Documentation Center" and it's going to be the home for various exhibits and digitization projects that I'll be doing.
The full name is "Chicago Documentation Center: Documenting the Life and Times of Chicago and the American Midwest".
The scope is pretty wide -- basically anything of historical or cultural value in the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois or the U.S. as a whole.
I'll be working on at least one project over the next few months. The "official" launch won't be for a while yet.
LibSite.org : A Recommendation Service for Library-related Websites: Just a sneak peek of LibSite.org -- a recommendation service for library related websites. I've been working on it for a while and will probably be announcing it "officially" at some point early next week.
It's built around the premise that library-related projects need and deserve a higher profile, that the technology allows us to engage this material in any number of ways.
So of course, the site features a blog, a wiki, RSS feeds and email alerts (the last two being configurable down to the individual tag). Users can rate sites and add them to a "favorites" page. There's even a LibSite Widget that people can put on their own sites (see the side navigation here for an example).
Of course, the key is user-involvement. It's not going to be much of a site if I'm the only one contributing to it. Everyone can recommend sites and even when people don't feel like doing that, they can leave constructive comments or otherwise take advantage of libSite's features.
So have a look and tell me what you think: http://libSite.org
The Queens Borough Library Website is so good that it made me want to do this review. It practically cried out for it. The developers have done a fantastic job. They've taken features we routinely find on other sites -- features like creating accounts, specifying preferences and grouping information -- and applied them to a library context.
In so doing, they've upped the standard of what a library website can do -- and what the public can expect from one. They've also provided a good model for other libraries to follow.
(more after the jump...)
