Tags can also be used to enhance and organize information within blogs. A very effective use of this can be seen in the Williamsburg Regional Library Blogging for a Good Book blog. The staff at this library post one blog entry per day, reviewing a book or movie in the library. The goal is to help users find a book they might like. On the blog page, the right side of the screen consists of a list of tags used to label the various book reviews, as well as the number of posts that are labelled with that tag. Tags, labeled here as “categories”, include the genre of the book (eg. Graphic Novel), strengths of the book (eg. Clever Dialogue), age level (eg. Children’s), and who wrote the review (eg. Charlotte’s Picks).

(image source: http://bfgb.wordpress.com/)

In Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software revisited, Micheal Stephens includes the impressions of a Williamsburg Regional Library librarian, Jessica Zellers, on the usefulness of the tagging and the blog. She explains that the tags make the librarians’ jobs of readers’ advisory easier. Users can, with just one click, see a list of books owned by the library that have a particular attribute. For instance, if the book is tagged with “Sense of Place”, then it is understood that that is a strong aspect of the book, and it might be suitable for readers that enjoy a well developed sense of place in a book.

The blog is easily accessed from the library’s homepage, by clicking on the prominent “Looking for a good blog?”. However I would have liked to see the link emphasize the purpose of the blog and the readers’ advisory role more with, for instance “Looking for a good book?”. Unless the user is familiar with the blog and already knows that it serves as a good way to find an interesting book, one may not necessarily think of clicking on a link to a blog when looking for a book to read.

The blog is extremely intuitive and easy to use, and the tags definitely help with that. A nice feature is the link at the end of each post to the record of the book in the library catalogue – easily allowing an interested patron to find the call number and the current status of the book. The option for library users or other interested web surfers to leave comments about a post is a nice feature as well. I wonder, however, if a way to get interested users even more involved and engaged in the readers’ advisory process would be to allow them to also post reviews and tags of their own.

The librarian, Jessica Zellers, has also mentioned the importance the blog has played in outreach – reaching users that wouldn’t normally benefit from the readers’ advisory services of Williamsburg Regional Library. Internet users from across the continent have posted comments on the blog. This blog and its effective use of tagging seem so useful that I too may become a regular visitor at Blogging for a Good Book.