The Camelot News system has been working for nearly 2 years now, and since it was implemented, the use of blogs in the Library has really developed. In particular, Counterculture, the blog that keeps Library staff informed about things concerning the Library’s services, has expanded considerably.

It has got to the point where most Library staff now need to check Camelot News and Counterculture. Also, quite frequently a piece of information needs to be put on both resources, and because Camelot News and Counterculture have different ways of putting up a news item, it is getting confusing as to what you need to do.

For the above reasons, LLT decided that we should merge the 2 systems. Essentially this means that we will do away with Camelot News and instead put all items of news for Library staff on to Counterculture. We will continue to display news on Camelot, but what is displayed will be taken from Counterculture. There will be some new categories created on Counterculture so it is possible to separate out items relating to staffing news from the news about Library services.

There will be a number of advantages, and some change in functionality.

– Counterculture allows you to make comments about any news item. This was not possible under the Camelot news system.
– The news entry form on Counterculture makes it easier to add web links and images.
– We will probably lose the Staff Announcement category (though I’m willing to discuss this if it’s still regarded as important).

We will recreate the documentation on how to add items, will probably run some training sessions.

I’ll be working on implementing this over the next few days, so you may see some new categories appearing on Counterculture, and some postings that duplicate postings on Camelot news. I’ll also be creating a new Camelot news page for trial purposes. I’ll put up a news item when that happens.

Catherine Jane