The University Library at Colorado State University – Pueblo (CSU-Pueblo) unveiled its new Archives website yesterday. The site provides links to the Archives’ online finding aids and digital collections as well as general information about the Archives’ holdings and policies.

The Archives’ Southern Colorado Ethnic Heritage and Diversity Archives (SCEHADA) is sponsored by CSU-Pueblo with a generous grant of $30,000 from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

New University Archives and Special Collections (UASC) website unveiled 7/1/09

http://library.colostate-pueblo.edu/about/departments/archives/index.asp

Here’s another site that is a “blog as website”. In fact, this is a company called ContentRobot that is offering to design your blog powered website for you and their own site is, in fact, a blog. They claim to be WordPress experts.

Here’s a quote from their site about the benefits of a blog powered website:

http://www.contentrobot.com/Blog-Powered-Web-Sites

What the Blog Platforms Adds

• A blog, of course, provides reader interactivity and updated content.
• Authorized users can add, edit, and delete content on EVERY page with minimal HTML knowledge.
• Enhanced web site elements, which often can be cost-prohibitive, are easily and inexpensively added, including:
  • Blog template designs can be easily modified and branded with CSS knowledge.
  • Developing an Internet-based taxonomy, which categorizes site information, helps readers and administrators to manage and find information.
  • Contact forms allow visitors to easily reach you.
  • Adding web site forums and/or comments allow readers to get involved in the site.
  • Allows multiple-user access, including defining different roles and touch points for each (including banning particular users as well).
  • E-commerce can be added just as with any web site.
  • It’s simple to add imagery and visual interest to every page with minor HTML knowledge.
  • Adding advertising and banners to pages is fairly straightforward and easily managed.
  • Pushing content to readers and subscribers via RSS feeds keeps them informed without them having to visit the site or get their inboxes filled with unwanted emails.
  • Adding news aggregators allows you to include industry news to your site, keeping it fresh and interesting.
  • Easy to establish and track web site statistics and success metrics.
  • Can add fun elements like contests and forms without design constraints.
  • Multiple writers can be responsible for developing and managing content.

They include links to other blog powered websites; however, they are all commercial sites and I had varying levels of success connecting to them. So I don’t have any other examples to point to. I’ll keep looking! Still, I think the points above are fairly compelling and I think using WordPress.com would be an easy and effective way for small libraries or other libraries with limited IT resources to put up an interactive library2.0 rich website.

I have started a de.licio.us page where I’m bookmarking more innovative library sites that are using blogs (or mashups of blogs and other software applications) as the platform for their websites. I’ll bookmark them at http://del.icio.us/RhondaGonzales/blogsaswebsites if you want to check back for more examples.

One of the most impressive is Plymouth State University’s Lamson Library. Take a look at their beta site: http://lamson.wpopac.com/library. If you do a catalog search, the results are posted to the site like blog postings complete with comments. You can also browse the catalog or the whole site by drilling down through categories, etc. Here’s a screenshot.

This site is built on a product called Scriblio (formerly WPopac) which describes itself as “Scriblio (formerly WPopac) is an award winning, free, open source CMS and OPAC with faceted searching and browsing features based on WordPress“. Scriblio is not available for general use at the present, but learn more about it at About Scriblio.

More to come.

Here’s another example of a library that has made its blog its website. The only thing I don’t like about this site is that you really have to hunt to find the links to the card catalog. Then when you click on the link, you leave the blog. They might consider making the link to the catalog and databases each their own page so that they would have a prominent tab across the top. Then have the link open in a new window. My two cents. However, I am impressed with the rest of the site!

Stillwater Free Library » Welcome Home!

I ran across this posting by Ellyssa Kroski today: InfoTangle :: Information Design for the New Web :: April :: 2007

It is basically a summary of her presentation on Web Design at Computers in Libraries. Since I wasn’t able to attend that, I thought this posting was really great! She gives a really nice overview of current trends in web design and it was informative on a level that I could easily follow.

Thanks Ellyssa!

Incidentally, I stumbled upon it in the Library2.0 ning that libnetters have been talking about today! I just joined and I think it’s going to be really fun!