For those working with their home church website:
Do you have your church library hooked up with your website?
Do you have a discussion forum about library materials?
If you do these things could you share with me. I am head of the Church Library as a Ministry Group and would like to know how you have done this.
Jo Vandermey
Providence CRC Beamsville Ont
Jo, this is a good question -- and a good idea. I have a Facebook friend (also my cousin) who has created a Facebook page for her church's library. (It's at: http://www.facebook.com/DCClibrary.) She posts information about new books that have come in and events such as a summer reading program with a prize. You could certainly link the library's Facebook page to your website.
When we redesigned our website a while ago, our pastor put together a section on books where he listed books he recommended for various categories such as Explore Christianity, Relationships, Grief and so on. In our case we connected it to links to Amazon for purchasing the book, but that kind of concept could work, too, for recommending books in the church library.
I've always thought an online book discussion would be fun but any time I've tried, it really hasn't made it. Not to say it can't be done but I haven't seen the magic formula for it yet. The Facebook page can be used for discussions of a sort, and there are other tools such as a Google group for group discussions.
I did a search of "library" on the network and I see you've posted your question in some other forums and have gotten some responses. Looks like you're doing a thorough job of looking for input and ideas. Please update us in the future on how your library ministry is doing.
There is some library software programs that you can hook up with your churches web site. The softeware I use is called resourcemate by jaywil software. We have not hooked up our data base with the web site because our churches website is not up and running as such to do this yet. It is a goal of mine to get us online.
Dialogue from the library or such can be done via a blog as well.