Online History-Keeping for Outreach and Community Development

The rapidly evolving digital world inspires much use of nautical terminology: (1) navigation; (2) discovery; (3) the voyage; and (4) the new terrain at the end of the journey. Considering how quickly new technologies are arriving on smartphones, the nautical adventure is continuing at an increased pace. Innovations in basic library services follow big successes in the marketplace, such as blogs, microblogs, and social media domains. Although they look much the same as they have for the past 10 years or so, large-scale library utilities include new functionalities and links to worlds of related services (print on demand, book paging, book buying, full text, etc.). As public librarians find themselves sailing through a digital ocean that is awash in new tools, the best rule of navigation is to serve user communities as technology evaluators--applying only the tools that are most appropriate to a given situation. Such critical evaluation helps them stay on course. In this article, the author shares his thoughts on how to use digital tools in creative (and low-cost) ways to create a digital library--or even a full-blown social community--that was built around local history.