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January 11, 2009
Cool Idea for Library Newspaper
Thomas "Tip" O'Neill—a longtime Speaker of the House in the U.S. Congress—once declared, "All politics is local." Who is Joe the Plumber in your neighbourhood?
Well, we're seeing the emergence, particularly in North America, of the essential local web presence. The use of Google Maps, Zip or postal code targeting, geocoding of SEO, etc. is getting more mature and the ability to target your services and messages to a local audience is a big opportunity.
One of my favourite idea guys, Seth Godin, has a neat posting today:
Read it. He's talking about how a small real estate operation could engage their local communities and replace their dying local newspapers in a Zillow world. Real estate is one of those professions that is highly local. Agent need to know what's going on in their communities, what might affect home prices, what are the good neighbourhods, etc. It's just very local. And when done well you can take advantage of viral marketng and the local word of mouth trees. I love that Seth knows that you can start with just 20 free subscribers and a froward button. He's built well known many businesses on less!
Now how does this relate to libraries? Well, most libraries don't get much more local! Our physical presence often requires a visit to engage us. We can draw circles on maps about driving distance and define service areas using the census and postcodes. Campuses usually have the majority of their students living in close proximity. And we usually have more staff than your average real estate office. And that staff has a lot of deep local knowledge. They are part of the community as citizens and neighbours. And your staff don't even have to make phone calls necessarily - people actually visit you, often!
Anyway, a lot of libraries publish newsletters. These are often too irregular to engage communitiesand might be more a function of a strategy for comunicating with funders. Sometimes they are just an annual or quarterly affair. They are also often printed and you have to find their bin to get one or they are expensively mailed. Seth's idea reminds me that teamwork can work and many hands make light work. You could even assemble the contributions in a blog and then make your newspaper regularly as a PDF that e-mails.
I think that we are seeing a long term deterioration in 'local' news and community engagement through the 4th estate. In the local news business MBA spreadsheet driven cut after cut over the next few years will decimate even further the local news staffs and therefore the content that relates to your communities. This is a vacuum that waits to be filled and libraries abhor a an information vaccum. Can libraries play a role in increasing their provision of the local information that underpins the social glue that makes communities better?
Stephen
Posted by stephen at January 11, 2009 9:18 AM