Blooming Library Blogs

Robert Goldwater Library Blog

Today I came across an art library and an Art Library Society using Web 2.0 tools quite effectively. The ArLiSNAP website belonging to the Art Library Students & New ARLIS* Professionals is very well done. These library students have clearly embraced Web 2.0 tools with a blog and a blog feed, using del.icio.us to organize their links and Flickr for sharing photos of the libraries. The main website is well organized with good navigation explanations and, not knowing what ARLIS stood for, there was a helpful link to the official Art Library Society of North America official conference website. I thought the use of the Snap Shots™ plugin was effective. Like the website, the blog is well-designed with postings organized by month and category. Having a Suggestions link was a good idea especially if a visitor has no previous experience posting a comment to a blog.

The Robert Goldwater Library Online Resource is another attractive, well-organized blog. Another tool used here is the wiki, created by the library staff to provide researchers with access to resources to traditional art and material culture of sub-Saharan Africa, Native and Pre-columbian America and Pacific Islands. And it is not restricted to just the Metropolitan Museum of Art community but is accessible to the greater museum community. This blog is particularly rich in resources; Flickr and del.icou.us are used for posting photos of museum exhibits and bookmarking, and News feeds updates newly published articles from e-journals and as well as the latest posting. As a first time visitor to this blog, I spent a quite a bit of time exploring the links to other museum departments as well as the lengthy blogroll of other libraries and museums. My only complaint with this blog was I could not actually find a direct link to the Robert Goldwater Library itself. I found it by going through the MMA Libraries: E-resources and then linking to the Library through the MET libraries portal. .