Hyperlocal Libraries in Netconnect

Library Journal’s Netconnect has published my article called “Hyperlocal Libraries.”  I haven’t seen the print version yet, but my article isn’t the cover story, I think it just has the same title as the cover.  To give you the gist of it, here’s an excerpt, this is a bit where I start laying it on a bit thick…

Every community is, in its own way, buzzing with activity, and local librarians can dare to press their ears to the hive. There is no shortage of material that locally curious libraries can strive to make more accessible online, from the traditional (oral histories, postcards, death certificates, draft cards) to the more techie (blogs, mashups, tweets). Let Big City Newspaper (if it even survives) serve up Pop-Tarts, while libraries focus on all the different types of bread being baked at home—the things that capture the truly unique personality of their communities and things that will not likely be available elsewhere.