[Publib] Administration of city cable channel and city web site

[Carl F Paulson]

I used to be a reference librarian for the Borough of Sayreville, NJ. One
of my job assignments was running the Borough's community access cable
channel.

At the time, the Borough was only offering a community bulletin board,
but was planning to begin televising municipal meetings. I resigned
before they actually started televising the meetings. We had a consultant
compiling a list of the necessary equipment at that time.

Running the channel was the best community connection the library ever
made. We got to know almost every community organization in the Borough.
We had to refuse to put garage sales and business advertisements on the
bulletin board. But the people making those private requests were often
people we did not normally reach.

It was time-consuming. I used to spend about one hour a day entering new
and formatting new announcements. And any time something went wrong, I
had to troubleshoot the system. That involved a crosstown trip to reset
the transmitter, usually about twice a week.

I enjoyed the job. And I think a library could do this probably better
than most other city agencies. The mere fact that a library is open
nights and weekends to receive announcements (I really hope you are) is a
plus. Take the job, if you can, as long as you have someone to help with
the technical problems of television. It sounds like the necessary
equipment is already available. I hope you have the necessary personnel.
If you don't, the local school system might have the people. 

One last piece of advice: If you end up formatting community
announcements, use a simple background, and make sure that the type color
contrasts with the background color. The last two community bulletin
boards I saw were at times difficult to read. A complicated background
makes contrast difficult. And often colors are selected which do not
contrast.

Enjoy. It's a natural for a library.