Government Web Site Taking Paid Ads?

[Mary-Ellen Mort]

> >Interesting topic surfaces on the GOVPUB mailing list.  Have any of y'all
> >confronted this issue re: paid ads on your (public sector) library Web
> >pages?  Various city officials make this "suggestion" to me from time to
> >time.  So far, I've managed to fend them off with a variety of common
> >sense-type arguments:


I run a public library website that has sought--and finally 
GOT--advertising type income to support the project. The site is JobStar: 
California Job Search Guide (http://jobstar.org.)  If you look you can 
see that we currently have two advertising/partnership/sponsorship 
relationships:

**with KVIE, Sacramento Public Television (you can see their banner at:
http://jobstar.org/sacto/ and throughout the Sacramento portion of JobStar)

**with careers.wsj.com, the career site of the Wall Street Journal, on 
the "core" of JobStar--all the non-local pages. You can see their banner 
on the top page & throughout the core (salaries, resumes, careers, hidden 
job market, ask electra.)

JobStar (formerly JobSmart) is a project of Bay Area Library & Information
System funded by LSTA grants administered by the California State Library.
Our goal, from the moment we launched in April, 1996, was to find a way to
support this "free to user" public library web service with private sector
funding. The only way, I think, one can accomplish this is to build a site
that has substantial traffic and appeal. JobStar is one of the first to
"get there" with outside confirmation of our traffic, by Mediametrix, as
placing this site as one of the "Top Ten Career Sites on the Web" with
audited traffic in the range of 300,000 unique visitors a month. 

Throughout this experience (grants from 1995 to present) we have had the
support (financial & otherwise) and encouragement and assistance of the
California State Library. The project was set up to work for outside
support and we have (finally) been able to demonstrate that support. 

It has been a giant learning experience for me and I suspect for all
concerned. One of the things I have learned is that you cannot speak of
your advertising relationships in public and in detail. Once you begin
working with outside partners you have to treat the details of your
relationships as "non public." Yes, there are some things I can say about
it--I write grant reports (we are still LSTA funded though this is our
final year of such support) and that information is public. 

So I am stepping forth with an example and an outline of "what" without 
too much detail on "how." I will see what the interest is in this topic 
on the list--perhaps summarizing any offline questions. 

I would LOVE to hear of other such projects--as I have not seen any myself.
I think this is the frontier. And I also think you can't work with 
outside monies (from advertising. partnership or other relationships) 
without the full and clear support of your sponsoring agencies.  Even 
WITH that support, it is a very hard row to hoe and we have been hoeing 
it as hard as we can--still are.

Mary-Ellen Mort
JobStar Project Director aka Electra
http://jobstar.org
memort at netcom.com