Following on from Terry’s post about the way that Highland libraries have embedded the Prism search box into their Facebook page, I was interested to see how Leeds Libaries are taking an opposite view – and using their Prism interface to surface the feed from their Facebook site.

As many libraries seek to attract new users and engage with their customers, it’s becoming increasingly important to be able to create not only a suitably branded web presence for the library catalogue, but also one that offers multiple channels to ‘speak’ to users. Currently Leeds Libraries  are parallel running their ‘old’ catalogue with the new interface, which is allowing them to fully ‘road test’ the functionality and get feedback from users as to what they want to see. 

The integration of the Facebook feed on the front page, allows for a seamless ‘news’ feature to appear on their catalogue home page, the recent information covers such diverse topics as the death of the writer Beryl Bainbridge to encouraging people to still celebrate the World Cup. This is all contained within a well designed page, making the information easy for users of the catalogue to consume.  The flexibility of the interface aids the useability of the interface, and keeps it fresh and entertaining.

Have a look here to see what you think.