The Blogging Librarian:Avoiding Institutional Inertia

Case studyhttp://bathsciencenews.blogspot.com

Kara JonesResearch Publications LibrarianLibrary & Learning CentreUniversity of BathK.L.Jones@bath.ac.uk

Internet Librarian International 2007C

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Resources bookmarked with this tag: ili2007-blog-masterclass

Overview• Background• Purpose• Scope• Audience• Issues• What worked

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Background

• Solution to a problem:

– how to communicate with the departments I liaise with as a Subject Librarian?

– Academics/researchers.. • complaints of information overload• messages lost in inboxes• not always relevant to everyone• they hate ‘bulk emailing’ (dept-all@bath…)• ‘… the effort of having to decode a PDF’

(computer science lecturer)

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Background

• Library website– Subject specific web

pages but no permissions for authoring content

– ‘Currently we don't deploy any blogging software that staff can access.’ (University Computing Services)

– Can’t install any .exe files or programs on my PC

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Purpose

• To keep my departments up-to-date without overwhelming them

• To experiment with a new format for sharing information on current topics

• To encourage feedback with departments using comments

About us - http://bathsciencenews.wordpress.com/about-us/

The aim is to provide a place for us to disseminate library information to our departments, and to provide an opportunity, usually via comments, for people to feedback to us. We’d love to have your ideas, suggestions, criticisms, thoughts on any of the posts we write so please do send them in.

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Scope

• Posts cover:– Database trials– Updates or changes to resources– Announcements and events– New items or materials– Promotion of services or facilities– Miscellanea

About us - http://bathsciencenews.wordpress.com/about-us/

Posting occurs intermittently as we’ve got news to share. Sometimes the posts are quite short, sweet and to the point. Sometimes we’ll share our thoughts on a particular matter and invite responses

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Audience

• Very specific– Academics,

researchers, staff, postgrads and master’s students.

• Initially 3 departments, then expanded to cover the Science faculty at Bath

• Nothing that couldn’t be shared with the ‘outside world’!

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Issues

• Technical issues– No in-house support so hosted on Wordpress

• (Wordpress does need some knowledge of html)

– Migration possible if University decides to offer blog platform.

– Only one link needed from library pages

• Succession planning – Who takes over if you move on? – How to continue in the same style?

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Issues

• Feedback and interactivity– What gets the comments

going?– More witty repertoire! Need

a more conversational style to engage readers and encourage feedback

• Configuration– Difference of opinion in

opening up comments to moderation or not? How much risk to take?

– Look and feel of the blog?

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What worked

• Cut down on email clutter– One email per month as a ‘Brief Library Update’– Yet content available for those who choose to

subscribe by RSS• Visits measurable by sitemeter and blog statistics

– Can see that library information is being read– Can see stats at a glance – no waiting for IT to

send!

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What worked

• Links to blog appearing on department webpages and feeds in VLE– Incoming links visible as a blog statistic

• Seven departments – one blog– Lots of inter-disciplinary studies and tagging

allows for resource discovery in other subject areas

• More subject librarians starting blogs

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Conclusions

New blog at http://myselfarchive.wordpress.com

Questions, comments?

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