Do you have a church library you’d like  to be able to BROWSE online, search for resources, and request materials?

Would you like for users of your church library to get automatic emails about new resources?

Would you like to do that FREE and EASY?

…then read this article:

Church volunteers and librarians frequently email me asking “how to put their church library resources online to members can see what we have!”  And over the years I’ve pointed them to library software which can be put on your church’s server or just run on a computer sitting in the library.  Most cost money. Some are easier to use than others.   And if you want to make your  “library software” accessible online, it can quickly get complicated.

Library software has an achilles heel too:  ONE PERSON ends up managing the software -trying to keep it all up to date. And they have to do it where the software is installed, which usually means sitting in the library at the computer.  Eventually, both that volunteer and the software go out of date.

Fortunately, time has marched on!  And there’s now a FREE solution that’s REALLY EASY to implement, allows for searchability and multiple contributors, and has all the functionality that most church library will want.

Drumroll please!

Go create a free online library using free and easy to use “blog” software  at wordpress.com.  

You can do it from any computer, and start by posting your individual resources as “posts” under the “categories” you create through wordpress.com’s easy to use online blog software.

Look at my example at www.churchlibrary.wordpress.com  Took me about 25 minutes to make from home.

WHAT ???   ”Blog” Software? 
Yep, it’s easy! …it’s free, …and it will do everything the typical church library needs to do, –and some new things you always wish your church library could do! 

Come see my sample “Church Library Blog” at www.churchlibrary.wordpress.com

The Advantages of creating a Church Library “Blog” in Wordpress….

1. It’s free.

If I want to convert it to it’s own domain name, such as 1stChurchLibrary.org, I can pay a small fee to wordpress to do that.

2. You select from Templates to create your blog. No graphics or web-coding knowledge necessary. In fact, you can change templates with the simple click of a button.  (I can’t stress enough how SHORT the learning curve is for creating a ‘blog’ at wordpress.com.)

Link to our great software resources

3. Wordpress blog software can be accessed from any computer via the web. You do not install it on your computer. It’s on their servers and they update the software regularly for free. (and if you want a custom web address, it will cost you about $15 a year from wordpress)

4. You can easily set up many “contributors” who can help you build the site and edit it from their own computers. This keeps the site from dieing.

5. Wordpress blog features easy-to-add SEARCH FUNCTIONS, and tons of other widgets you can add simply by dragging the feature onto your template.

6. People can “subscribe” to receive email about new resources. You can set up a Feedburner Email Newsletter service right in the blog so that any “subscribing” to your Library Blog will instantly get notifications of your new postings. See my church website article which describes how to set up a free Google “Feedburner” email newsletter for any website.

See my article about Creating a Church Website in Wordpress which includes instructions on how to setup a free Google “Feedburner” Email Newsletter, – at http://www.sundaysoftware.com/wordpress.htm

7. With a little creative thinking and use, your blog can also track “who has checked out the resource” by using the blog’s comment features. See my examle at www.churchlibrary.wordpress.com

Privacy Note: Anybody can leave a ‘comment’ on any resource post you create. As the moderator of the site, you’ll get email notifications anytime someone leaves a comment. Then you must go in to ‘approve it’ to make it visible to other. Or …you can just read them and respond privately.

8. Did I mention that Wordpress blog software is intuitive and easy to use? 

9. When someone posts a “comment” to one of your resource posts in the blog, the blog software AUTOMATICALLY notifies you via email about the person’s comment. It acts as a message system.

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In my example Church Library Blog, you can see that I can create many many different CATEGORIES of resources, and then create individuals posts for each resource under the appropriate category.

Now I know that many church resources are coded BY NUMBER, maybe even properly coded!  The numbering system doesn’t have to go away. It can still be used to organize the materials on the shelf. And you can still INCLUDE the number in your online description. But ‘online search’ isn’t about numbers for the average user, –it’s about keywords (authors, titles and subject).   And the built-in search feature you can enable in Wordpress, will allow any user to search your entire site just by typing keywords into a search field. You don’t have to enter or organize keywords. The built-in search function looks at ALL the text you put in every post.

Why Wordpress and not Google’s Blogger ?? (aka Blogspot –which is another online free popular blog service).   Wordpress allows you to organize posts under ”categories” (subjects), whereas, Blogger/blogspot.com organizes posts by the date they were posted.  Wordpress is the solution.

Last but not least…
Suppose you “just want to have a computer in the church library with software that helps you organize the library.“   That’s cool, but you can still use wordpress.com as your “library software.”  The difference is that your “library software” isn’t stored on your computer, it’s stored online at wordpress.com. And that makes it accessible and maintainable from ANY computer –whether it’s sitting in the church library …or at home.  The fact that church members can now access your extensive cataloging work from THEIR home computers is merely a huge bonus.  

What to do next:

1. Go to www.wordpress.com and sign up for a free blog. Title is something like yourchurchlibrary.wordpress.com.  

2. Pick a nice simple starter template. Play around with the “appearance” and “widget” features.

3. Dive into the “dashboard and start creating some sample categories and posts.

Within a short time, you’ll be a wizard. And you can sit down with other volunteers to lay out how you’re going to organize things.

And don’t worry, nothing is carved in stone!  You can reorganize categories, pages and resource postings with a click of your mouse. It’s really quite Easy.

Neil MacQueen
www.sundayresources.net/neil
www.sundaysoftware.comPermission granted to copy for local church use.