2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

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BEST PRACTICES 2012
The middle pane, which is the largest pane, was available for each department to
populate with whatever relevant information they wanted to include. Aside from a
“Welcome to” section with links at the very top of the middle pane, the IC staff
decided we wanted to have dynamic content that was updated on a regular basis
and that conveyed a variety of information that OPIC staff would be drawn to. In
essence, the middle pane of our website became a type of blog, albeit one without
the look of a typical blog. It maintains the uniform appearance of web pages across
the agency, but provides regularly updated information, created and managed by
the IC, that informs OPIC staff about, for example, new or updated research in the
development finance and related business fields. A “Feature of the Week” section
featured prominently in the middle of the page highlights one information resource
of note each week. In addition, an “On the Bookshelf” section lists newly-added
items to the IC’s collection, and an “FYI” section showcases any number of
information events that may be of interest to OPIC staff, from topical webinars to
information about professional conferences, relevant journal or news articles,
industry or sector specific news, and even the occasional “fun” item, like where to
find tips for planning a green vacation.
The IC staff also wanted to figure out how best to repurpose content from this
dynamic middle pane into other forms of information sharing. Like any corporate
library, we are always working on new ways to market our services. We realized we
could repurpose the “Feature of the Week” content verbatim in our email
signatures. This actually evolved into an effective way to market the Information
Center to our internal clients. Our “Feature of the Week” content changes every
Monday (IC staff divide up the responsibility for creating the content on a monthly
basis). Not only does this featured content appear on our homepage, but the same
content appears as part of the email signatures of all IC staff during the same week
the feature is on our website. Every email we send out to internal clients carries
this “Feature of the Week” content as the email signature. (Figure 2)