OLA Post: part two

Thursday - Day Two:

Session # 303 Blogging in the Library
Jessica Olliver, MLIS Candidate, University of Western Ontario.

Jess is a friend and I was thrilled to see her present at the conference.

This was a really good overview of the blogging basics and how a blog could fit in the library.

She touched on a few specific points:

The extensive Blogging Libraries Wiki created by my colleague Amanda Etches-Johnson, this is an excellent resource of different library blogs (of all shapes, sizes and types).

Jess's presentation spoke about her research study in which she looked at a sample of library blogs for content, reader participation aka comments and how it presented information to the library community (I think I've got that right, if I don't, Jess reads this blog and should feel free to correct my paraphrasing).

What she found was that although the literature centered around the utility of blogs for frequently asked reference questions, most did not use the tool in that manner.

Blogs are definitely part of my library's communication plan, we have them for staff and for the public, and being that things are changing so quickly at my library, new tools and ideas are currently being developed and redesigned to streamline the process.

I do really do like the idea of a library's knowledge base being available online so that any of the staff can access it, at any time, provided they have an internet connection.

I also don't think that blogs are dead (to answer Jess's question). Some blogs get a lot more traffic than others, granted, but even if there are few comments, there could be any number of lurkers (a good way to get them out in the open is to post a poll, or talk about your hatred for a major holiday..lol).

I think you definitely do need to know your audience (or have a pretty good idea about them) and you need to keep current (I'm trying...) and as for libraries and blogs, I think they are a fantastic resource for staff and have the potential to be great for users as well.

Afterward Jess was taking questions and talking to some of the attendees about blogging and the like, and I experienced my first in a series of reference questions at the conference.

One of the attendees asked me about wikis, blogging and 2.0; I explained the basics and she went on her way. This happened twice more over the course of the conference and not just to me, but to a couple of friends who had also just graduated from the program. The questions were always about 2.0 and wikis, etc.

I think this may have been a case of the 'young face - new technology' assumption, which I find very interesting. I also think we could do a better job of defining what Web 2.0 really involves (which a couple sessions aimed to do, more on that later), for the entire library community.

M.

PS She also included a screen shot of my blog in her presentation, if you found me through Jess, then welcome. :)