![[Logo of the Galion Public Library]](/img/hdrxparent.png)
419-468-3203
123 North Market Street
Galion OH 44833
So, the library staff would post articles, and then everyone else could respond with their thoughts?
Anyone with a library card from our library could respond, yes. In addition to the staff, board members could probably also post topics.
Requiring a library card number would hopefully prevent the forum from being overrun with automated junk posts, without requiring anyone to go through a lengthy sign-up and verification process, complete a complicated CAPTCHA, or similar measures like most online fora have started requiring. It also eliminates the need for the user to memorize yet another username and password just for our forum. Our patrons should all have a library card already, so using that for login is a way we can make life easier for everyone and yet still keep the spammers out.
I see, and you can tell which comments are posted by staff, too.
Yes. This is what a comment from a board member would look like.
This is what a comment from a member of the Friends of the Library might look like. (Although, tracking who is a current member of the Friends all of the time could be difficult to do perfectly.)
Indeed, this is trickier than I realized at first. Not only are there a lot more people than for the staff and board members, but also in some cases it's not obvious how to determine which person is a Friends member. The Friends list does not have the library card numbers on it -- until now, it would have seemed pointless to have them there -- and in many cases it has people listed with different names than we have in the main library database (where the library card numbers are). So who's a friend and who's not could be hard to keep perfectly in sync.
I've now implemented reply notification, so that if you give the forum your email address, it will drop you a line whenever anyone replies to one of your forum posts. This is only lightly tested, but I believe it now works.
So, if I post a reply here, you will get email?
That's the idea. Here, let me test that. After I send this, you should get email.
Well, sure enough.