Community Information, Electrified

Ann is a single mother of two. Every morning she thinks about owning her own home. She walks the kids to school before catching the Metro bus to her job as a hairstylist. Ann usually works more than nine hours a day, and while she does well, she can't afford health insurance. Orlando is a 36-year-old immigrant from Central America. He was a businessman back home, and although he has a college education, his English aptitude is weak. He will receive his work visa in a few weeks and wants a job that will take advantage of his skills. Both Ann and Orlando have different information needs, ranging from healthcare to ESL classes. But they share a common desire: community information.

When librarians began collecting, maintaining, and delivering CI to patrons, they worked with a variety of nonprofits and other governmental agencies to develop card- or notebook-based systems to connect people with information. Many libraries set up departments to handle referral services.

Over the years, libraries have automated the services, harnessing the power and convenience of databases, the Internet, and ever-evolving tools to deliver more information to a wider base of patrons. To do this, libraries are partnering with government agencies, nonprofits, and even for-profit companies to attain and deliver news about and for their communities.

The majority of CI services fall into two main categories: online community directories and community calendars. Libraries are also beginning to create or repackage original content and develop social networks. Few libraries engage in all these efforts simultaneously, but throughout our research we saw some interesting combinations and hybrids. Acknowledgements go to the Public Library Association's Community Information Services Committee for allowing us to use some preliminary data from a survey administered in fall 2004. That committee is identifying online CI projects nationwide with the goal of building a comprehensive database to document activities and establish better practices.

Directories, the most basic form of CI, are databases of known information about specific organizations, services, or programs provided by or available to local people. As librarians, we have a good handle on databases of known information, e.g., the online catalog. It's not surprising, therefore, that libraries often use their integrated library systems (ILS) to manage their CI. Vendors like Sirsi, Dynix, Innovative Interfaces, and Geac all support the use of their software for this purpose.

The Merrimack Valley Library Consortium, Andover, MA, runs its CI database from its Dynix iPac (v2.03) system. The basic search interface provides users with a number of different keyword search options, while an advanced interface allows users to combine search limits to produce a refined hit list. In addition, a browse search lets users search using an authority-based browsing list.

The Dallas Public Library uses its DRA (Sirsi) system to store and deliver content from its CI directory. It, too, allows for keyword, subject, and browse searching, and the library has created a page listing the CI subject categories—another access point. Dallas PL also provides a form that allows information providers to update their own records.

Like most ILS-based systems, both Dallas's and Merrimack Valley's conform to MARC Community Information Format (CIF). This standard, created in the early 1990s, helps ensure that the content pieces (i.e., records) within the database are described so that they can be shared from system to system. It uses numbered field tags to describe the title of the event or program (245), an address associated with the service (270), the hours the service is available (307), and more. Unlike other records that are commonly shared by partnering libraries, MARC CIF records are rarely shared—though they could easily be. An example of a shared system is Maryland Connects, which brings together public library CI directories statewide with a searchable interface.

With the availability of database products like Microsoft's Access, SQL, and the open source MySQL (as well as a slew of others), libraries have begun to move away from ILS-based CI. (A different solution, which is to search community web sites through a search engine, is discussed in "Powered by Google," p. 11.)

The Medina County District Library, OH, provides Infolink—a listing of social service agencies, services to the disabled, government programs, local clubs, support groups, and counseling resources —to its patrons and those of the neighboring Wadsworth Public Library. The service delivers a CI database that allows users to search by keyword, subject, program, and geographic area. Infolink incorporates add-on features like a Frequently Called Numbers list; a Featured Information Page, which displays content relative to local or national events; and an online form so providers can update a record.

Since the mid-1990s, Peninsula Library System (PLS), San Mateo County, CA, has provided a CI directory of health and human service agencies serving county residents. Peninsula's approach includes a basic keyword and advanced search, giving users the option to limit by the languages offered by the service provider. PLS also repackages its directory data into customized publications and provides a mailing label service free to nonprofits.

Our own JoCoHealth.net, a partnership site built to serve local health information needs, includes a guided search directory. Users identify their sex, age, and the type of service they seek (prenatal, immunizations, etc.), and the system produces a list of matching services. In 2004, we received funding from the Mid-Continental Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine to build a new database that will continue to serve low-income and underinsured residents but will also serve as a health information resource for all county residents. The funding will allow us to improve on the input, display, printing, and search options of the current system. The new database, to be completed May 2006, will be available via open source and will include product documentation, user guides, and training resources.

One of the advantages of a homegrown system is the opportunity to customize the design and search features to best meet the needs of local patrons. Online community directories provide valuable information, but they are only useful if the interfaces are user-friendly. Additionally, if a library tries to collect more data than it can realistically maintain, the information will be unreliable and cease to be of benefit. A community directory that includes not only the contact data but also basic information about services and cost is a tremendous resource.

Ann does so. The first screen provides a little information about the database. She uses drop-down boxes to choose dental services for children, clicks the "low-cost, no insurance required" box, and runs the search. She limits the results by zip code and receives five dentists. Running out of time she writes down all five numbers, starring the one with weekend hours.

The activities or events calendar adds humanity to the CI service, leading the user not to a URL or a touch-tone information system but to a real-life, face-to-face session with a teacher, speaker, or storyteller. Calendars announce the whats and whens of informational engagement, ensuring that information passes from person to person. Libraries can either create their own calendar or purchase an off-the-shelf package.

NorthstarNet.org, a service of the North Suburban Library System, Wheeling, IL, provides one of the best online calendar systems in addition to a comprehensive resource directory. NorthStarNet.org is a CI network comprised of more than 120 communities in the suburban Chicago area. Its homegrown calendar system offers access to events, programs, and training sessions throughout the area, sponsored by various community organizations.

Community organizations key-in their own events through an online form. The events are reviewed by area librarians before being uploaded to the shared regional calendar, which is searchable by date, week, month, subject, and locale.

Filtering options on a calendar are important—and we're not talking about Internet blocking. As with community directories, the ability to provide unfamiliar users with easy-to-understand triggers (like a drop-down menu of general program types, locations, or dates) can spell the difference between success and frustration. Triggers must be coded into the calendar's database. Because there's no MARC format for calendars, libraries need to determine whether it is better to use an off-the-shelf product or create their own.

A big difference between directories and calendars is the time commitment. While directories usually exist in a world of annual or semiannual updates, calendars need more "hands on" attention. What does regular mean? Weekly is realistic, and daily is not out of the question.

Although a number of calendar systems include options for community providers to key in their own events, libraries are not the only organizations hosting online calendars, and entering information into numerous online systems can be a burden to community agencies. Host libraries can't rely on the community at large to keep the calendar regularly updated without the library reminding partners, offering to enter updates, and providing quality control.

All of our JCL partnership sites include calendar information. Within JoCoHealth.net, the calendar content is updated monthly, and daily additions or cancellations are handled by one staff member as part of her daily routine. However, even when we implement a system that allows partners to update their own information, our experience has been that good "calendaring" requires not only heightened levels of commitment by the library but also constant attention from content partners.

In identifying how JCL could position itself to better meet patron information needs, we determined that developing content-rich web entities that include calendars and directories will enable users to find the answers to their questions, not simply a page of links to sites that might answer their questions. Gary Price put it succinctly in a recent issue of Searcher: "a link to a possible answer is still not an answer."

AOL learned the value of content early on; in the mid-1990s it created an internal group to craft content and partnered with or bought out other content providers to pump up its system. As networking technologies brought to life the World Wide Web, AOL continued to morph, always offering more content for those who aren't advanced users. The result is one of the largest media giants in the world.

CI content won't position libraries to be the next AOL–TimeWarner. But content, not just links to content, is a requirement if you want patrons to return to your site. Additionally, content-rich pages help to ensure that your web site receives high search engine rankings—another imperative since, according to a 2004 study by usability guru Jakob Nielsen, 88 percent of the time, users looking for specific information online will begin by using a search engine.

The good news is that, while this may be a conceptual leap for libraries, providing original content is less technologically difficult than developing and managing a comprehensive and patron-friendly database or calendar. But creating and maintaining original, licensed, or repackaged content requires time, money, and—most important—a committed staff.

Pikes Peak Library District (PPLD), Colorado Springs, is an excellent example of how a library can provide answers without necessarily writing original content. In addition to a calendar of learning opportunities and topic-specific CI directories, PPLD provides extensive economic indicator data and other statistical information reflecting ongoing regional trends. The database includes local demographic information as well as data on specific topics, such as crime statistics comparisons (2001–04), number of DUI crashes (1995–2001), Colorado exports by destination country, Pikes Peak region home sales, and much more. With each statistical report, Pikes Peak also includes citations and direct links to source organizations.

In our 2002 plan, Creating the Johnson County Digital Community Information Clearinghouse, we paved the way to restructure our web content development process, explained why this was important, and identified how to ensure success. The plan was the natural outgrowth of our strategic plan, which, at the insistence of county librarian Mona Carmack, called for the library to focus on CI. She saw a CI system as unlocking the huge amount of information packed away in county-sponsored pamphlets, booklets, web pages, and staff cubicles. We dedicated ourselves to developing content and to partnering with local agencies and organizations to leverage their content. Our goal is to create independent topic-specific sites that are searchable through a single interface (nowadays called a portal).

JoCoFamily.net, for example, was developed (and funded through a Juvenile Crime Prevention grant) to provide at-risk youth, their families, and professionals serving them with 24-hour access to community resources and legal material. It was established with support from the district attorney's office and Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center. We hoped to give users a better understanding of the local juvenile justice system through accurate, straightforward, and sometimes humorous original content.

The content of JoCoFamily.net is focused by audience. Articles for parents include an overview of the court process, directories of hotlines, and video clips and tours. For youth we developed theme-driven materials, dealing with personal disagreements, suicide, and problems at school. The professional's page provides referrals to commonly needed resources and research about at-risk youth.

The site was created using static pages for most content but with an MS Access database for the resource directory. As we retire the original server, we are moving the database to MS SQL, giving the site a facelift, and expanding the scope to all at-risk youth and their families.

The next step, easily the most exciting, ties in to what libraries and other organizations of social responsibility have been doing successfully for years: building, encouraging, and enhancing the social networks that make up our communities.

A great deal has been written about the promise of virtual communities and how libraries have a responsibility to cultivate them. Our stratetic planning was highly influenced by Robert Putnam'sBowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (S. & S., 2001), in which Putnam challenges American institutions, like libraries, to help rebuild their communities. Some libraries are web-hosting their community organizations. This service has taken on different forms, such as providing topic-specific sites or offering local business and nonprofits server space and editing tools.

The Lake Orion Community Information Network (LOCIN), provided by the Orion Township Public Library, MI, offers a community calendar service and a directory with links back to the organizations' sites and even creates and maintains pages for organizations without web sites, ensuring that all community agencies can participate in the social network.

Several libraries encourage community members to share their expertise and interests with their neighbors. Many libraries, including JCL, provide interactive forms for patrons of all ages to submit book reviews and creative writing postings on our web site. Other libraries engage their communities with blogs—used to disseminate library news, book reviews, or target specific patron groups, like young adults. For more on library blogging, visit Amanda Etches-Johnson's site Blogwithoutalibrary; in December 2004, her growing list documented over 90 different public library blogs.

The question for libraries today isn't if they should provide community information but how. Librarians nationwide gather, organize, and distribute locally relevant information like never before. The integration of online directories and calendars with community-based content has begun to extend the reach of library-sponsored CI beyond library walls into social service centers, arts groups, boardrooms, and peoples' lives.

Libraries matching CI with tools for social networking like blogs, discussion boards, instant messaging, and live presentation software will create and grow the communities of tomorrow, not in isolation but in the true spirit of the web. "If I work with many people, I produce much more powerful, effective work than if I limit myself to only what I can do alone," Christian Crumlish wrote in The Power of Many (Sybex, 2004). Libraries bring this philosophy to bear every day, and as we speed forward, it is bound to find new life through the collaborative creativity that our information communities will generate.