I have very little to add to this article but wanted to link it here because it is so, so good. As my colleagues know I have been on the content strategy soapbox of late, especially in light of our imminent website re-architecting/redesign. I’ve also been known to quote Ranganathan at unexpected moments, because his Five Laws of Library Science are still incredibly relevant to everything that we do to serve our users (and frankly, also because it’s nice that something I learned about in library school is still relevant – as opposed to, say, the pre-CSS HTML I spent hours hammering away upon!).
So when I came across this article on the (always excellent) Brain Traffic blog by content strategist (and former academic librarian) Claire Rasmussen, in which she looks at the Five Laws and applies them to the work of content strategy, I found myself bouncing in my chair with excitement. (Yes, I am a huge nerd. This is firmly established. Can we move on?) Librarians who create content for the web should read this and consider how the principles of content strategy can help us to achieve the basic goals and principles for which librarianship was developed in the first place. It’s what we already do, and content strategy will help us do it on our website too.
So read this, please, and if you have comments I’d love to hear them!
Do It Like a Librarian: Ranganathan for Content Strategists
[image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/valeriebb/290711738/]
1 Comment
Anne, thanks so much for this post and the reference to Claire Rasmussen’s post. They make explicit for me a connection between my former career in interactive marketing and my new career in librarianship. Few people who aren’t content strategists or librarians understand what either profession is all about. These posts clarify the purpose and function of both.
Pax,
Michael Henry Starks