The VHL started experimenting with web 2.0 tools in October 2007, as follows:

Facebook: We originally set up a group, which had an initial flurry of interest (and joinings) but then stagnated somewhat, with very little contribution from its members. In January 2008, after the pages facility was introduced, I set up a page for the VHL instead (although the group still exists for the moment, giving members a chance to transfer or in case there was protest!). Although there is no more usage of the page than the group by readers (and we have fewer fans currently than we had members), I find the page more useful. I can see usage statistics (which show a fairly healthy number of page views per day, comparable to what we're getting on the blog), and our blog news feed displays on the page automatically after installing an RSS application. In general I think being on Facebook is good in terms of another place to have a library presence, and to bring people back to our website and blog etc, but there doesn't seem to be much demand to interact with the library that way from users.

Blog: http://vereharmsworthlibrary.blogspot.com
This has replaced our static news page on our website, which was cumbersome to maintain (manual archiving, no automatic RSS feed unless maintained separately via OXITEMS). It also allows for some pulling together of many of the web 2.0 things we've been trying out, as I installed widgets from del.icio.us, LibraryThing and an instant messenger box on the sidebar, as well as links to the main web page, OLIS etc. As with Facebook, participation from readers is almost non-existent, with no real comments, but passive use is good. Usage statistics are gathered via Site Meter, and show an average of 5-10 hits per day, mostly coming from the VHL website and Facebook page. Statistics on feed subscribers are being gathered via Feedburner, and currently show 9 subscribers. Feedburner also allows for email subscriptions. The blog is very easy to maintain - archiving, searching and the feed are all done automatically. A major problem was ensuring that the blog was visible - there's no point putting out news if no-one's going to see it. It is linked to from our website, but hits remained low until I installed a widget to share the feed on our home page - this raises the profile of the blog and puts the latest news items where readers expect them.
Update May 2008: The blog has had a makeover to mark its 6 month birthday! And also to experiment with branding and seeing if I could make it look more OULS-y. I made an image banner for the header and changed the template.
Update May 2009: The feed is now also being pushed out to Twitter, via Tweetburner.com. I have also given the blog another makeover, having got bored of the blue look!

delicious: http://delicious.com/vhllib
I decided to use del.icio.us to build and maintain a list of free web resources for US studies, as we had many of these noted in various guides and on staff browsers, and a few already on the useful links page of our website. I was attracted by this as a way to collect them all together and store them easily, as well as allowing for subject browsing (with the tagging) and to offer feeds of new resources. Again the hoped-for participation side of things hasn't taken off - we have one 'fan', a college in the US, but none of our readers have joined in (fans can save links for people in their network, which would be great to have our readers share links they find too in theory). There's no way of knowing how many people view the page or subscribe to the feed. The page is linked to from our website, will be listed in new versions of printed guides, and feeds into a widget on the blog.

LibraryThing: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/vhllib
We've been uploading our montly accessions lists to LibraryThing since December, using the batch upload facility after getting our OLIS report tweaked to include ISBNs. Each month we have to delete off the last month's books before uploading the new ones, in order to keep below the limit of 200 books for free. In January I went through and tagged all the books as this would allow subject browsing, which was less time-consuming than I feared it might be. As with del.icio.us, using LibraryThing means we can now offer feeds of new accessions, but also have no indication of how many people are viewing the page or subscribing. We're still putting the traditional list with links to OLIS on our website too, but are linking to LibraryThing as well and have a blog widget. We have also listed ourselves on the LibraryThing Local service.


Instant Messaging: Using Meebo Me, I installed an instant messaging blog widget on the sidebar of the blog and also on the contact page of our website. It's low-maintenance for staff (just have to remember to log in to Meebo), but has hardly been used by readers. We also now have a Skype account for the library, and have installed Skype and a webcam on the PC in our group study room.

Wikis: We have set up a wetpaint wiki like this one to act as a VHL staff intranet and manual, where we can post notices so that all staff (eg part time staff who might not overlap) can see them, and have a reference space for our workflows etc.

Twitter: We created a library account on Twitter in April 2009. At the moment we are just using it as another place to push our our newsfeed from the blog, using Twitterfeed. Our username is @vhllib.

My WorldCat: Last year we found a large set of microfiches, part of the Travels in the West and Southwest collection, purchased by the library in the early seventies but never catalogued. We purchased MARC records for approximately half of these, and loaded them into OLIS, but due to the age of the collection and a lack of documentation (both here and with the supplier) we have been unable to obtain records for the rest. Getting them catalogued properly would be a slow and laborious task that at the moment we don’t have time to do, but we wanted to find a way to make a list of the titles available so that readers could see what was there. We also wanted to check them against WorldCat to see what proportion had records for when we do come to catalogue them. We are therefore making a list using OCLC’s My WorldCat – the web 2.0 version of WorldCat which allows you to save items from searches to your own lists, review, rate, add notes, share lists publicly and with feeds. Our list is at: http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/vhllib/lists/52208. Our readers can therefore see what we have until we can get records on OLIS and even subscribe to the feed to do so in real time as we work through the fiches. It also gives us a ready-made online list to link to from our website, and we will be able to export the list as a CSV file for Excel so that we can merge it easily with our existing microform subject lists. This is a perfect example of how a web 2.0 tool (admittedly a very library-oriented one) has really helped solve a problem and make a task easier, saving a lot of staff time and effort. Of course we still need to catalogue them properly at some point, but as a means of improving access short-term this has been very helpful.

Overall impressions

All the above are very easy to set up and maintain (in many cases easier to maintain than what we were doing previously), and I feel they offer extra services for little time investment. Only the blog is really a replacement for anything. Unfortunately the ideal of active user participation hasn't happened, despite fairly heavy promotion (on the web page, in the library, on the blog and emails to core users), but even despite that I feel it's been worth doing so far.