Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg (NC) County
by Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 8/1/1999
Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg (NC) County
The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg (NC) County has always had an impressive Web site -- and now it's even more impressive with the inauguration of its new review site for young people, the BookHive. Produced by the library's Web Services Director Helene Blowers (hblowers@plcmc.lib.nc.us) with the help of Children's Specialist Tammy LaGasse (tlagasse@plcmc.lib.nc.us), the site features a long list of recommended books for teens and YAs reviewed by the library staff.
Librarians and children's specialists throughout the 22-branch system are"encouraged to write reviews for the site each month, but not required," says Blowers. The six-member BookHive team meets monthly to work on ways to keep the reviews flowing.
The site features whimsical graphics of its bee mascot (which was chosen by a vote of young library users), and a graphic of the book cover accompanies each review. Blowers and the library system's programmer built the site using active-server pages (ASP) technology with Microsoft Access as its database engine. ASP technology allows the BookHive team to update pagesóadding and removing reviewsówithout needing to write HTML code.
The BookHive team hopes to add a feature allowing kids and parents to comment on the reviews. Although it's only been up a few months, the BookHive's reputation is growing. Blowers has received several requests from children's writers and publishers to review their titles.
