Amanda L. Goodman provides advice to project publishing with The Comparative Guide to WordPress in Libraries, published in the American Library Association’s Library and Information Technology Association series.
It is a timely guide, as so many libraries are using either the free or subscription version of WordPress to build library websites. Though I hesitate to purchase books that offer instructions for learning and implementing web technologies because technologies update and change so quickly, this guide will be useful right now to librarians who are planning or who want to begin thinking about their online presence. Goodman begins with basics, from what is WordPress to what other similar software is available. The bulk of the guide is an overview (rather than a how-to set of instructions) of topics the library will need to consider, including considerations in planning, audience, matching the library’s mission and tool availability for enriching the user experience, such as using plugins, media, widgets, tagging and branding. Some attention is given to libraries looking to use WordPress to add value to websites that are hosted or built using institutional software already in place. For example, plenty of collecting institutions use WordPress to put library projects, such as book blogs, subject guides and patron programming up on the Web.
The guide concludes with 80 pages of examples: case studies and site evaluations of WordPress in use at academic, public, special, school and government libraries, as well as library associations and digital libraries. There does not seem to be a description of how sites were selected for inclusion in this guide. I find the descriptions of why WordPress was selected and what special features have been constructed very useful for thinking about the WordPress site used as a professional blog in my own institution. For example, Digital Forsyth chooses to use WordPress because of the level of control the designers have over site customizability; and Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library offers the special feature with a text widget used for virtual reference chatting between a patron and a librarian.
The guide’s strength in the how-to part of the book lies with definitions and clarifications of terminology used in site building with WordPress, like widget, Google Analytics and dashboard. The strength of the second part of the book is the lists of special features and screen shots of library websites and tools with evaluations that can certainly be used to help designers with planning their own library web presence tools. Not quite a directory of WordPress using libraries, this second part of the book provides names, screen shots and URLs of dozens of sites to visit. Several appendices round out the book, including lists of plugins and of resources that can be used with WordPress. The list of mostly, but not entirely, WordPress proprietary plugins includes the URL plus a descriptive annotation, such as an audio player, page number insertions and subscription options. The list of resources is a categorical bibliography of additional reading and resources covering topics from user experience to style guides to issues in accessibility.
