Using electronic resources to extend library services into the community

Last semester I took two classes that had me doing a lot of thinking about effective marketing and outreach for libraries in the United States: Information Professions (which I typically described as my “survey of the profession” class) and Graphic Design for Librarians (which was what it sounds like it would be). While doing some background work for a weekly assignment, I came across the website for the Prince George’s County Memorial Library.

It’s a wonderful example of using your website to extend the reach of your public library to potential patrons who for whatever reason, may not be able to get to the library on their own or who need the resources of the library during hours the library is typically closed. You’ll note that some of those resources are the very electronic databases that I talked about in my last post.

It’s worth taking a minute to click through to see how they have it organized, but I wanted to point out a couple of things that caught my eye.

Home page for the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System. (Source: Prince George’s County Memorial Library System)

Every icon in the Online Library bar of icons takes you to a different set of electronic resources, tailored to the needs of specific communities. The yellow pencil leads to a Homework Help collection, which includes Gale in Context Biography, Mango, Brainfuse, and other databases designed for use by K-12 students. The red glasses lead to the Senior Center, where older patrons can find information about getting financial and food support, or senior activities at the local rec center. The green globe takes genealogists and researchers to the Discovery Suite, where they can access primary records from our nation’s past from sources such as the Ancestry Library Edition from Proquest, Freedman’s Bureau records from 1865-1872, and the American Indian Experience for research projects or simply to trace their own family’s history.

The site can be translated on the fly to any of 19 languages, using Google Translate technology. Here’s what the home page looks like translated to Haitian Creole.

Same home page, this time in Haitian Creole. (Source: Prince George’s County Memorial Library System)

It’s a thoughtful and inclusive piece of marketing and outreach, and an excellent example of how public libraries are using their electronic resources to extend 24/7 access to information to patrons who may or may not be able to visit the library in person.

References & Related Links

Prince George’s County Memorial Library SystemHmmm…. Should my library buy a subscription to Elsevier ScienceDirect or a cabin on the lake? (Caterpickles)