Library Teen Talk Blog

RGPL Teen Blog is part of the River Grove Public Library District. Surprisingly, the RGPL Teen Blog is nowhere to be found on the library’s website main page. I had to use the search engine Google Search in order to find this teen blog. I am curious as to how the public is expected to find this blog by use of the library’s home page. I would most definitely recommend that the library update the website to include information and a navigational link to this blog as means of improving the ease and accessibility in retrieving this informative blog page.

Unlike the library’s website, the teen blog appears to be kept up to date, as the last posting to date was made April 16th, 2009, and is highly informative in regards to current events, book reviews and relative useful links, such as journals and news feed. The young adult librarian responsible for the teen blog also lists the social network (as described by Wikipedia) Shelfari as relative link to the recommendations and reviews of books.

Unlike the library’s website, the teen blog appears to be kept up to date, as the last posting to date was made April 16th, 2009, and is highly informative in regards to current events, book reviews and relative useful links, such as journals and news feed. The young adult librarian responsible for the teen blog also lists the social network Shelfari as relative link, and other useful web 2.0 tool, for communicating to readers recommendations and reviews of books. In addition to this, one of the suggested links in the navigation bar is to a video game blog site. Even though this is a teen blog affiliated with a library, the video game link does relate to the many of the postings found on the page. The fact that there are so many postings related to video game reviews and events as opposed to other literature reviews and events, is surprising. The literature section of the blog seems to be of secondary importance to the book discussion section of the page. If I were searching for a library teen blog to join, I would not expect one of the main concepts to be centered around video games. The fact that the literature related posts are mostly found on the Shelfari link, as a library patron, I would seek library information needs from the social network link instead of the set RGPL Teen Blog.

This may also be part of the issue as to why there is only one subscriber to this blog. In the page header, it is described that the library blog is a place where teens can claim as their own, yet there is no congregation of young adults taking hold of the opportunity and using this blog as means of sharing information. The point of using the blog as a community building tool is not being fulfilled.

The design of the page itself is quite suitable for a teenage audience (with the use of colour and imagery). As well, the librarian provides a personal profile of herself which should build a report with the users. Therefore, I must conclude that in addition to the lack of navigational tools (a blog link) from the library’s website, the information offered on the blog page must not be satisfying the information needs of the teen patron population. Perhaps the librarian should conduct a needs assessment as to the information needs of the teen patrons, in order to help find out why there is such low level participation by young adults. As well, perhaps outreach programs are required or marketing for the blog itself is needed. Using other web 2.0 tools and technologies such as popular social networks (like Facebook and Twitter) would attract the attention and membership of teen groups.