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Voter Services in the Library
In this article, we’ll talk about how Wordpress– open-source blogging software– can provide libraries with an affordable and innovative way to offer voting information online.
Tina Burger
In this article, we’ll talk about how Wordpress– open-source blogging software– can provide libraries with an affordable and innovative way to offer voting information online.
Libraries and democracy: a natural match
Quick. The election is in three days and you’ve no idea who to vote for, or perhaps even who is running for office. You want non-partisan information, not just the one-sided campaign leaflets that have begun to crowd your mailbox. Where do you turn?
If you said “a library!”, you are not alone. Libraries throughout the world play a critical role in supporting democratic ideals in their countries. In fact, many libraries are starting to take an even more active role in promoting democracy in their communities– offering more than access to voter registration forms, or generic links to political resources. They are hosting candidate forums, getting voters registered, and providing online access to state and local voter guides. Some have even provided their patrons with online opportunities to interact with candidates. In short, they are doing what libraries do best: linking citizens with information.
Guess what? There are free and open-source tools available to make this job easier.
Why blogging software?
Imagine that your library wants to create a voter education site for the community. You want to offer access to voter guides online, announce upcoming debates and civic events, and provide a nonpartisan archive of local candidate platforms and community issues. Maybe you even want to offer each of your local candidates a free page on the site to clarify their platform and respond directly to questions from the community. But you need to do it all on a shoestring budget. Where do you turn?
WordPress, open-source blogging software, might be just the thing.
Blogging software is very versatile. (For those who are still catching up on internet lingo, a “blog” is short for “web log”). Blogs are especially appealing to librarians, who love to place information into multiple categories for ease of searching. Every post added to the blog can belong to several “categories” at once, all specified by you (Yes, you have complete control over the taxonomy! Do I hear a collective sigh of relief?…).
This makes blogging software especially well-suited for archiving community voter guides and voting information. WordPress, like most open-source software, has a very enthusiastic community of users who are constantly innovating new plugins to make the software even more adaptable and customizable. Using WordPress plugins, you can:
- add images to your site
- create a calendar of events
- link to PDF’s
- allow community members to respond to selected categories of posts.
Want to share responsibility for maintaining your voter education site with other local organizations? WordPress also allows creation of ‘password protected’ areas, and customized permissions for different users.
An example
The Nelsonville Public Library System (NPL) in Athens, OH has used WordPress to create a Voter Education website http://athensareavotes.org
Since WordPress is open source, many users create their own templates and then make them available to other WordPress users. These templates differ in look (colors and layout) and the kinds of plugins they include. Of course, if you find a look you like, you can easily include plugins of your choosing to get special functionality. There are literally hundreds of WordPress themes freely available for download, so you don’t have to be a web designer to find a template that looks attractive and professional.
NPL is fortunate to have a savvy web designer on staff. Owen Leonard’s Space For Democracy 0.5 is based on the Blix template by Sebastian Schmieg (http://www.kingcosmonaut.de/).
NPL customized the HTML in the WordPress “comments” feature to invite community members to suggest questions for upcoming forums sponsored by the Library and the League of Women Voters. The ShowOnFrontPage plugin was installed to allow more control over which posts will display on the homepage. An events calendar was added using the Event Calendar 3.0.2 plugin. The Include Page plugin gives NPL the ability to add static content (text and images) to each of the “pages” on the website.
Using WordPress
How easy is WordPress to use?
WordPress is well known for its ease of installation. Under most circumstances, installing WordPress is a very simple process and takes less than five minutes to complete. The following installation guide will help you, whether you go for the Famous 5 Minute Installation, or require the more detailed installation guide.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress
Once WordPress has been installed and configured (and any desired plugins added), it doesn’t take any special “techie” or web design skills to add content or regularly update your site. The WordPress interface operates much like a standard word-processing program. You can add bold and italics, make bulleted and numeric lists, choose how text should be aligned, add images, and create image or text links to other websites with the click of a button. WordPress adds the HTML automatically. The text editor has some of the problems typical of a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) in Web translation, but there is the option of editing the HTML directly.
WordPress 2.0 is now available. In fact, LibLime’s newsletter is powered by WordPress 2.0.
Links of interest
- Can Libraries Save Democracy? By Michael Baldwin — October 15, 2002
- Libraries and Democracy by Laura A. Pinhey
- The September Project
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