Jill Stover of Library Marketing - Thinking Outside the Book (a great source of library marketing ideas, by the way), wrote about a handy feature added to the Engineering Village 2 database. Once you're in the database and viewing the abstract of an article, there's a link to "blog this". That link, when clicked, gives you a snippet of code to put into your weblog.
The code EV2 provides gives the title of the article and a graphic for EV2. Clicking on either will bring you through your library's proxy server to the full text. (This example will work if you have access to Tufts University's proxy server, but not for anyone else...):
Jill notes how useful this functionality is for librarians who want to highlight tools available to their patrons. I take this one step further: why not have a link to "blog this" appear on any relevant portion of the library site? From a change in hours to a new exhibit in the library lobby to other news, events, or information of note -- make it easy for your patrons to link to the source of the information when they are blogging.
Comments (4)
I would love to see something like what you propose, Ken! Word-of-mouth isn't just about doing remarkable things, but giving patrons the tools they need to pass along information about great servcies to others. RSS/blogs offer some great marketing opportunities, so thanks for the work you do in pointing out ways we can apply this technology.
Posted by jill | November 27, 2006 1:00 PM
Posted on November 27, 2006 13:00
Maybe some coder out there could write us some generic javascript for doing this?
Posted by Bill Drew | November 27, 2006 2:22 PM
Posted on November 27, 2006 14:22
Jill and Bill,
This should not be difficult to do as a simple utility. A link from a web page that says "blog this", a script somewhere else that generates the HTML code for a blogger to copy and paste. I'll see if I can do a proof of concept tonight.
Ken
Posted by Ken Varnum | November 27, 2006 2:50 PM
Posted on November 27, 2006 14:50
I'm actually surprised more libraries don't make use of viral advertising and marketing techniques. The information sciences lend themselves very well to this method of promotion.
Posted by Lightning Bug | March 10, 2008 7:16 PM
Posted on March 10, 2008 19:16