My Kind of Town

26.2, thing 14

I did not know about the American Towns web site and was glad to be introduced - honestly, mostly because I'm always looking for places to list library programs for free, but it's a great way to find out what's going on also. It was fun to explore. I got side-tracked from looking for spooky happenings when I went searching instead for local book groups. I was excited to see many, the first being at Cambridge Public Library. I even found events listed for several BPL branches including mine, Allston - just some of the weekly children's storytimes.... but found out that no one currently at the branch actually posted them. Huh. They could be old repeating events with no end date. I decided to delve further by registering at the site and trying my hand at updating things listed, and posting my own events. This seemingly easy task was not so easy - I ran into unexplained roadblocks. In the end I contacted the American Town staff via email. They were helpful, responded right away, but did not have answers for me. Having done all this from my computer at work, I decided to try at home, in order to test a different web browser (not possible at work), see if perhaps it was a firewall issue, or something else. I'm still not sure what, but I was successful in registering, logging in , and posting events from my home computer. I've listed the library's November Book Group meeting, and an upcoming teen event. Next task, to fill in with more of the branch's events....maybe....not realistic if I can't do it from work.... to be determined.....

I don't love that American Towns poplulates neighborhood pages with generalized material - like "pumpkin patches in your-town-name-here" that I saw on many pages....really, there are no pumpkin patches in Allston or Dorchester ..... But, I do understand that the creators of the site don't want to have empty pages if not enough people have registered and listed content. I think that where there is a strong community effort, these web sites can be very successful - here's a particularly rich example (which Placeblogger finds), and one I already use for local events, news, connections - SCI Dorchester. Web 2.0 in action!