A blog is great way to empower staff and keep in tune with developments. This is true both for in-the-same-building staff and working relationships between libraries. One very useful application of this appears in the form of Library Directors or Chief Librarian Blogs. According to Michael Stephens in the September/October, 2007 issue of Library Technology Reports , the advantages of Librarians blogging are improved communication, human interaction, and a vehicle to have a say.
Here are some examples of librarian blogs:
Hennepin County Librarian Blog
Reference and Instruction Committee at the UBC Library
I really like the idea of using blogs to keep a working group apprised of events/news. It would appear to be a natural extension of their use. The primary use in these examples seems to be a means of “distributing” minutes and agendas and archiving the same. For the most part their content appears to be uni-directional.
For some reason, I was expecting to see more back and forth communication. The Hennepin County Librarian Blog doesn’t even seem to allow for comments. And, although, the other two do, I could only find one instance of a comment, following a cursory scan of both.
Maybe that’s OK. If the blogs are updated on a regular basis, maybe they can simply provide an information service that is available for reference. In a pure Library 2.0 world, maybe we can at some point envision a sharing of ideas, but that doesn’t seem to be the case today.
A possible enhancement would be the use of an RSS feed. With it, information could be pushed to the user rather than the user having to come to the blog. Finally, in terms of accessibility, the user would have to know the URL. But I wouldn’t necessarily call that a shortcoming. As a librarian, I could see myself making use of a blog for this purpose.
A blog in this environment could also be used for such things as a chronology of events for a project or for preparation plans for a conference.
