Blogging in Libraries, Bonnie Shucha: Part II, RSS Readers, The Pros & Cons of Library Blogs, and Blogging Policies.
I apologize for the length of this post. This presentation was so full of good information, I wasn't sure what to leave out! I hope you'll bear with me and keep reading, but if you don't want to read the whole thing, the handouts for this presentation are available on WisBlawg, the blog Bonnie Shucha runs for the UW-Madison Law Library.
Ms. Shucha started her discussion of RSS Readers (also known as “News readers,” or “aggregators”) with Bloglines. Bloglines is an Internet-based reader, and is the reader that Ms. Shucha uses. She demonstrated how she weeds through the hundreds of posts she gets every week. Essentially, she has it set up so that she can scan the headlines, and if a headline looks interesting to her, she can read a summary or the beginning of the post. If that looks interesting, she’ll read the whole post. She estimates that she reads about 10% of the summaries, and uses about 2% of the content. This is one reason that it’s important to choose good titles and introductions for your blog posts!
News readers can also be used to get notices of new content from newspapers and Web sites other than blogs. Bloglines can even be used as a way to track your listservs, so that your email inbox does not get too full. Some feeds can be tailored to look for items on a particular subject. One great example of this is “GovTrack,” which allows you to select any specific legislation, bill, or subject before U.S. Congress and monitor it.
One RSS Feed that allows you to subscribe to headlines from various newspapers is “Media Drop.” From this feed, you can get headlines for papers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. You may need a subscription to the newspaper in order to read the actual articles, though.
As mentioned in the first post about this presentation, there are search engines for blogs that allow you to find posts on various subjects. These search engines (Feedster and Google Blog Search) also allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds based on your search terms. For example, Ms. Shucha stated that she subscribes to a search of one of the UW-Law School professor’s (and some of the students’) blogs for mentions of the UW Law Library or librarian. This way, she can keep on top of complaints about the library (even when they’re not mentioned to the library itself), and she can respond to them by commenting on the blog post.
Ms. Shucha also discussed two tools that allow you to get an RSS feed from any page, even if the author of the page has not created an RSS feed (which is usually required in order to be able to receive the feed). The tools are called FeedYes and Ponyfish.
Ms. Shucha then went on to examine reasons a library might want to have a blog. She stated that Blogs can promote collaboration and offer another avenue of communication to staff and users of the library. For example, in communicating with users, a blog can act as a newsletter, a way of alerting patrons to new library services, a way to publish lists of recent acquisitions, or as a way for staff to disseminate recommendations for books, Web sites, and research resources. Blogs can also be used internally, like an intranet, to communicate staff announcements, for knowledge management, or for project management. She emphasized that if your library already has an intranet, there’s no need to use a blog for that purpose, but if your library does not, a blog can be an easy way to set up an intranet.
Some of the benefits of library blogs are that they are an inexpensive communication and marketing tool; they are easy to use – no knowledge of HTML is required; they may be seen as innovative; they attract tech-savvy users; they allow user feedback through comments; and they can be career boosters for bloggers. The drawbacks of library blogs include the large commitment of staff time for training, set-up and posting. Also, there may be a need to educate both users and staff about blogs.
How do you decide if blogging is worth your time? Ms. Shucha recommends considering the following points when making this decision: Weigh the cost of your time; assess skills and training time needed; consider other time-consuming projects your library might already have undertaken; consider other blogs or Web pages that offer similar information (if there are already resources on the Internet that do what you want to do, it may be better just to link to those resources).
There are a number of different options when it comes to choosing the right blog software. The software packages Ms. Shucha mentioned are Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, and MovableType. See the handouts for this presentation for a more detailed description of the pros and cons of each of the packages (p. 10-12).
In the final part of her presentation, Ms. Shucha talked about the importance of having good blogging policies. Two of the resources she cited about creating good policies are The Library Blogger’s Personal Protocols and Sample Corporate Blogging Policy & Blogger Code of Ethics. Some important questions to consider when writing a blogging policy include staffing issues, such as deciding who will post to the blog (one person or a team) and deciding how best to train staff to blog. Ms. Shucha also emphasized the importance of allowing the staff the necessary time to write posts for the blog.
It’s also important to consider issues involved with posting content to a blog. There should be a policy about the type of information the blog will post. The blog should have a consistent style between posts (this is especially important if there is a team of bloggers). Develop a consistent frequency so that readers know when to check back. How often you post (monthly or daily, for example) is less important than that you post at regular, predictable intervals. Use “your own voice” whenever possible, especially when posting content found on other blogs. If you are only repeating what someone else says without adding to it, there’s no reason for the reader to look at your site instead of theirs.
Once you have a blog, it’s important to promote it. Some ideas for promoting your blog are to include the URL on library publications, seek links from other Web sites and blogs, list with search engines and blog directories, create bookmarks, business cards, etc., announce the blog in the library newsletter or ask other publications to announce it, email users directly, and share by word of mouth.
The presentation ended with a live demonstration of how to create a blog using Blogger (a free, web-based service). Cathy Martin of North Carolina volunteered to be blogger for a day. Despite some technical glitches, she was able to register and post an entry right before our eyes.
Ms. Shucha mentioned a new book that she thinks will be a good resource for librarians interested in blogging (it’s so new she hasn’t read it yet). It is Blogging and RSS: A Librarian’s Guide, by Michael P. Sauers.
I hope you stuck with this long summary. This program really was densely packed with information. I would love to hear if anyone has tried blogging since this session, either for work or for fun. Please post your experiences below!













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