Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

David Lee King’s library, the Topeka and Shawnee County PublicLibrary, has a great sign in the library right now.  I know, you’re thinking “A great library sign?  Yeah right!”  But just look to your left.  The sign reads: “Your Library Does Not End Here: Open New Doors to Digital Library Resources @ www.tscpl.org.”  David blogs about this idea in his post: Connecting the Physical to the Digital.

There are so many ways to connect the physical and digital.

• Put up small signs reading “This magazine is online for free too, courtesy of your Anytown Public Library”  in your periodicals area under each title that you also have online.
• You can hand out business cards (moo cards are best!) at the reference desk and to any customer you talk to (as well as in the computer areas), listing all of your online reference options.
• You can give out bookmarks with the URLs for online storytime podcasts.
• Put signs in the audiobook stacks reading “We have thousands of eAudioBooks available for download any time online!  Go to YourURL.”
• The list goes on and on…

If you want to hear more about David’s approach to their digital branch, take a look at the archived version of his webinar and slides from WebJunction today: Building the Digital Branch for the 21st Century.  Oh yeah, and his book (Designing the Digital Experience) ain’t bad either