Making sense of events
The Problem
For so many libraries, figuring out how to display in-house events on our websites is a tough challenge. As we offer more content and services online, It’s important not to forget that online or in-bricks, we’re the same institution and those storefronts should complement each other.
Manchester took the route most libraries do when it comes to solving this problem, we contract with a calendaring provider. Ours provides administrative functions allowing us to track room bookings, program registrations, loan museum passes, and more as well as create a calendar to display next to our webpage. The problem, though, is very Web 2.0 vs 1.0. The content is attached to the software’s interface. There is no way to repurpose it. If someone wants to access our calendar they must visit that webpage - no arguments.
Speaking as a patron, this is mildly annoying; BUT as the person responsible for keeping our webpage up to date it’s downright infuriating. All the events that we want to publicize on the front page of our site must be hand entered and then hand removed when they’re outdated. For a library who hosted over 300 programs last year that can add up to a laborious and tedious (not to mention, expensive - time is money, you know) task. So far the solution has been to pick and choose what gets featured = a sad compromise.
If I ruled the world, my solution would be to migrate the whole site into Wordpress and be done with it, but I don’t. The city retains control over our site via a cms making that impossible. Nevertheless, the library is committed to creating a fully dynamic online branch. I decided to begin to solve both problems by making a distinction between a website (static and simple) and an online branch (dynamic and potentially confusing for beginners).
In short I could use the ‘online branch‘ to generate an events listing which I could then feed into the ‘website‘ thusly representing all library events on the front page in a timely fashion AND saving me the task of mucking around in html to do so.
The Solution - Generation
Enter Event Calendar. (Bless you, Alex.) It’s a Wordpress plugin specifically designed for handling events. You’ll find it deployed in slightly different forms at Tamworth as well as in my playground (sadly out of date now, but that’s for another day).
I began by installing and activating Events Calendar in my WP plugins directory and then entering a few events. To make this work, I had to configure it NOT to display events with regular posts, but in their own category only.
[Aside: the rad thing about Events Calendar is that you add events the same way you write a post, but it adds an option in the screen to define an associated date and time - this makes the magic happen.]
So from here, I get a nice list of the upcoming library events. Out of date events automatically drop off the list. And then, triumphantly, through the magic of Wordpress, I could get an upcoming events rss feed.
The Solution - Importation*
Now that I have my tidy little events feed, I needed to get it to automatically update in our static website. For this, I turn to Feedburner. This part is super-easy, actually, I simply add the events category feed as new, name it appropriately, and then configure Buzz Boost (under the Publicize tab) to republish is as html. Then I paste the generated javascript into the city’s content management system in the appropriate place and viola*!
Now Events can be entered one time, into wordpress and then accessed in the website, as a blog post, subscribed to in Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook, or any other calendaring application. Yay for the library getting in the path of the patron!
* I hope I just made that word up. It’s a good one.
** Potential extra step: tweaking the css a bit to get it to look pretty within the website.
December 30th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Although this gets off your main Wordpress thread, here’s something about calendar providers: you mentioned your library used LibraryInsight. Mine did, too, until about eight months ago. Although their interface was relatively simple and clean, we found them expensive, difficult to work with, and, as you say, the data was all locked up in their system.
We switched from them to Plymouth Rocket, and use their TixKeeper software for our museum passes. We’re looking at their calendar and meeting room booking systems, but haven’t picked them up yet (my town is also looking at them for a town-wide calendar of events).
They are great to work with, made many modifications to their software to fit our needs, and are much, much cheaper. Plus, their data is available as rss, so it’s easy to play with.
Please pardon the sales pitch - I just wanted to share our experience.
December 31st, 2007 at 9:13 am
Brian - Thanks for the tip. Out of curiosity, why did you find it necessary to purchase anything? Could you not have used some kind of free solution? Why can’t you manage museum passes and room bookings within your ILS and then the calendar simply to display events?
I’m asking because I’m wanting to separate the administrative functions from the public calendar view and I’m not quite clear if the administrative functions actually require their own, specialized piece of software.
Thanks! LJR
December 31st, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I looked into the Events Calendar plugin when redesigning the Capital Area Library District web site, but we wanted to be able to categorize the events. As far as I know EC only allows for one events category. I decided on the RS Event plugin which allows you to make any post in any category an event.
Although this plugin is no longer updated by the author, several users have banded together in the plugin author’s forum to make updates as needed. Templates and RSS feeds may need to be slightly modified, but overall it is another easy event calendar solution. See it in action on the CALD site on the home page (all events) and the events calendar page (categorized lists).
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Although my library is progressive and fairly well-staffed, we aren’t quite to the point (neither technological-knowledge nor confidence -wise) in not using a traditional vendor product for front-line applications like this. That’s why we went with a vendor rather than look for an open source option.
As for the ILS, ours (Horizon) I don’t think can handle date-specific reserves. Yes, we can check passes in and out, but there wouldn’t be a way for a patron to reserve a pass for a given date (and then another patron for a different date, etc). For that functionality, which I believe to be quite complex, we went with an off-the-shelf package. I’ve never been great and programming calendar software, so using a vendor proved the easiest and quickest solution (for now, anyway).
January 14th, 2008 at 9:21 am
I wanted to make sure you were aware of the “Maine Libraries: Something for Everyone” campaign that launched a few years back. As part of this effort, Maine libraries work together to create a single website that listed all of the library events in the state. I think it is worth looking at as a best practice: http://www.mainelibraries.com. The campaign focused on how libraries WERE relevant. You can go here to see the campaign materials: http://www.shoestringgroup.com/MaineLibraries