Who are you?

Spending some insomnia nights have led to reading The “M” word Blog by Nancy Dowd. One in particular set my mind pondering- May I Vent. In short, this blog posting discusses the lack of real person for contact information on a library website for any number of key people - library director, media contact or marketing person. Well if your library is like mine, small and rural these three positions are wrapped into one person - you the director. While having lunch with my friend (non-library staffer) I discussed this blog posting. She said if she were looking to make a donation (memorial or otherwise) to a library and could not find a contact name and had to fill out just a form she would move on. I was floored. She said would you give money to a non-profit if you didn't know anything about the organization or the CEO? So I set out on my quest and searched for libraries that listed a contact name. There are a few out there on library websites. I also decided to look for staff bios or cv’s. There are even less out there. We are just as guilty at our library. I have a dummy e-mail set up that is read by a library staffer but has info as it name. So why don’t we have our names out there? Are we afraid of what someone will e-mail us about our library? Do we not want our name out there for everyone to see? Or did we just not think to add it to our website. So here is your challenge - add your name, your contact e-mail to your website. I further challenge you to create a section of staff bios. If you look at non-profit websites outside of library land you will find contact info for the CEO, a cv or bio of the director as well as key personnel. In the coming weeks I will post a link to our new section of staff bios.

Here is a link to her Ms. Dowd’s post May I Vent
http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/may-i-vent.html