November was a busy month, both for me and for the library. Here are a few highlights:
- Many good things happened on Election Day this year, but for me the best one of all was that the cap tax passed. That means that Cody (our main branch) will get a much-needed new library, Powell (where another branch is located) will get a new pool, and Meeteetse will get a newly refurbished pool. As a librarian, a library patron, and a swimmer, I am thrilled about all of the above.
- I put together a little website for the cap tax back in August, and it went live sometime in September. Because a) I like to do things cheaply and b) the cap tax committee was initially interested in having a blog (though that ended up not happening), I set up the site using WordPress.com. A look at the statistics for the site (the address of which was run regularly in the Cody Enterprise and was on all the
propagandapublicity for the campaign) is a good way of getting a sense of what it’s like to live in a culture that is not as saturated by the internet as many places. The site had 2588 total views, with 234 views on its best day ever, and it had one incoming link. Park County has a total population of 26,664. I know that in many places, it’s crucial to do outreach on the internet and to find library users, or potential users, where they are. I’m glad we put the site up, but there was far more discussion of the cap tax on the op-ed pages of our local newspapers than there was online.
Right after Election Day, I went on a short vacation to Moab, Utah and environs. There are pictures on Flickr, which I may someday arrange into a set, but don’t hold your breath. - Meeteetse’s six-man football team made it to the playoffs, although sadly not farther. Everyone in town had signs up wishing them good luck, including the library.
- My friend Mitchell pointed out this intriguing reference-like service.
Well, what an honor to be your sole incoming link! Thanks for the pingback to the post. I always enjoy local feedback (rare as it is š )
I was at the Park County GOP Election night party at the Holiday Inn and there was a good applause when it was announced that the Cap Tax had passed. It took some time for me to decide up or down on the tax, but I did ultimately decide yes (in spite of not being a fan of taxes), for the good of the library (did four years of library work at the college I graduated from).
Hey Laura! Where I live in Vermont is very similar in terms of their use of technology to access local information. Basically if I wanted to get information on candidates for our local elections, I’d better be looking in our local newspapers because there was next to nothing available online (the candidates didn’t even have Websites). This is the sort of place where lots of information is still passed by word of mouth/town meetings and everyone still subscribes to the local newspaper. It’s good to know your audience… this definitely isn’t a bloggy sort of town either.
Part of the reason I volunteered to make a website for the cap tax is that I come from places where the web is now the first place I look for information. I also thought it might reach a demographic that maybe wasn’t looking at newspapers. I’m not sure if that’s true–it’s hard to get demographic data from website statistics–but at least a few people checked it out.
We all read these reports from the Pew Internet & American Life project and think, “we must be online! everything must be online!” While the numbers certainly suggest that the majority are online, I think there are still a substantial number of people in the minority (which you realize if you live in places where that’s true).
And yeah, word of mouth is huge. I’m thankful that I work in the library, where many people come to socialize. I got a lot of local election information that way.