I’ve had this website bookmarked for quite some time now, after a colleague mentioned that it was one of the best public library websites he’d ever come across.
Librarian in Black reports that it’s still one to look out for after it was talked about by Ellyssa Kroski at yesterday’s Computers in Libraries Conference in Virginia .
Ann Arbor Public Library is a real success story. Using Drupal, the free open source content management system, they’ve moved away from a dull static website to a fully integrated social networking model; complete with blogs, RSS feeds, event calendars, chat, groups, tagging, and of course a pretty impressive catalogue. And it seems to be working.
Check out Ellyssa’s presentation for yourself. She reports that to date Ann Arbour has received over 13,000 comments (12,000 of which were from teen users); they’re boasting 50,000 unique users and their page views have increased by 216%. Wow!
I hope they start up Drupal Camps in the UK so that we can work together to produce similar social networking websites for our public library users.
The Library of Digress 
Weirdly I have just blogged about this too! Drupal seems to be a fabulous tool for library websites, and I second your suggestion that they set up Drupal camps in the UK asap!
Those stats are pretty impressive as well – our public libraries have an awful lot to learn.
I think lots of people are blogging about it at the moment, especially American librarians.
I could be wrong but I’m sure I heard mutterings that Talis are looking to set up something similar for UK libraries. Exciting times! 🙂
[…] confessed library geek John Blyberg who, in a previous life was instrumental in the development of my other favourite library website – Ann Arbor Public […]
Please help me find the Ann Arbor library information about a gadget I just heard about: some kind of portable “reading device” that one can load books and magazines, I guess from AA Public Library, into. It’s not a Kindle, I guess, but something smaller.
Sounds like fun. Does it work with Macs?