"A centre of excellence in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information and cultural heritage communities."

UKOLN is based at the University of Bath.

Using Blogs, Micro-blogs and Social Networks Effectively Within Your Library: 14 October 2009

Background

Brian Kelly and Marieke Guy were facilitators for a workshop on "Using Blogs, Micro-blogs and Social Networks Effectively Within Your Library" which was held at Novotel London West on 14 October 2009. This event was part of the pre-conference workshop programme of the Internet Librarian International Conference 2009. Further information is available on the ILI 2009 web site.

Abstract

This workshop will offer practical experiences on issues of using blogs and blogging in your library. The session will start with an update on blog fundamentals - how the tools for blogging have developed, blog-specific search tools and blog aggregators.

Next are issues involved in setting up a blog, such as selection of software and hosting decisions. Using examples of best practice, we will move on to policy and procedure considerations such as blog scope, writing style, frequency of publication and use of individual versus team blogs. We will then discuss how to measure the success of your blogging efforts, focusing on user feedback, return on investment and impact assessment.

These days it would be inappropriate to develop strategies for organisational blogs without considering the role of social networking services (such as Facebook) and micro-blogging tools such as Twitter. Although such tools were initially developed for individual use, they are now beginning to be used by organisations. Is this a sensible approach, in which organisations are being quick to exploit the potential of popular services, or a misuse of such services which is unlikely to be sustainable? The session will also explore such issues and provide advice on best practices on the use of social networking services in an organisational context.

This workshop will be of interest to those who are new to blogs and social networks, or those who have experimented with such tools but would like to learn more about strategies and metrics for developing effective, sustainable and cost-effective services.

Accompanying Wiki

A Wetpaint wiki has been set up for note-keeping at the event.

Draft Timetable

The draft timetable is given below.

Time	Session	Comment
14.00-14.10	Introduction [MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]	Brian Kelly will provide an introduction to the workshop
14.10-14.20	Group discussion 1: Why are you here?	Group exercise
14.20-14.35	Case Study 1a: The UK Web Focus blog [MS PowerPoint] - [HTML] Case Study 1b: The JISC PoWR blog [MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]	Brian Kelly will describe two of the blogs he contributes to.
14.35-14.50	Case Study 2: Ramblings of a Remote Worker blog [MS PowerPoint] - [HTML] Case Study 1b: The IWMW 2009 blog [MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]	Marieke Guy will describe two of the blogs she contributes to.
14.50-15.05	Why have a blog? The library context [MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]	Marieke Guy will describe how blogs are used in a library context
15.05-15.20	Break
15.20-15.40	Beyond blogs: micro-blogs and social networks [MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]	Brian Kelly will describe the potential of micro-blogs(such as Twiter) and Social Networks (such as Facebook)
15.40-16.00	Group discussion 2: What are the barriers?
16.00-16.20	Addressing the barriers [MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]	Marieke Guy
16.20-16.40	Best practices with blogs	These slides record the points raised in the group discussion session
16.40-16.50	Personal action plans
16.55-17.00	Final remarks	Brian Kelly and Marieke Guy

Handouts

The following handouts will be provided:

An Introduction to Blogs (briefing no 2)

Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]

Use of Blogs in Libraries (briefing no 3)

Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]

Developing Blog Policies (briefing no 5)

Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]

Addressing Barriers to Blogging (briefing no 12)

Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]

An Introduction to Social Networks (briefing no 13)

Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]

Facebook: Opportunities and Challenges (briefing no 14)

Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]

An Introduction to Micro-blogging (briefing no 35)

Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]

An Introduction to Twitter (briefing no 36)

Briefing Document: [About] - [HTML] - [MS Word]

UK Web Focus flyer: [MS Word]

Personal Action Plans: [MS Word]

Accompanying Resources

For a list of related resources please see the del.icio.us social bookmarking Web site (for the tag 'ili2009-workshop').

 

Biographical Details

Brian Kelly is UK Web Focus, a post funded by the JISC and the MLA which advises the UK's higher and further education communities and museums, libraries and archives sector on best practices in use of the Web. Brian is an experienced presenter, and has spoken at nearly all of the previous Internet Librarian conferences.

Brian has given many presentations on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 over the past few years. Brian was a invited plenary speaker at international conferences held in Stockholm, Taiwan and Singapore in 2008.

Marieke Guy works for UKOLN, a centre of excellence in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information and cultural heritage communities, based at the University of Bath. She currently works as a research officer in the Community and Outreach Team. Much of her work involves exploring Web 2.0 technologies and their relevance to the communities we work with. She is co-chair of the Institutional Web Management Workshop, an annual event that provides an opportunity for those involved in the provision of institutional Web services to hear about national initiatives and emerging technologies. She has recently worked on a number of JISC funded project including the Good APIs project which aims to provide the education sector with information and advice on the factors that encourage use of machine interfaces, based on existing practice and the JISC PoWR project, which looked at the preservation of Web resources.

Marieke has worked from home since April 2008. She made the decision to work from home for family and environmental reasons. She is the remote worker champion at UKOLN and in this role has worked on a number of initiatives aimed specifically at remote workers. She has written a number of articles on remote working and related technologies and maintains a blog entitled 'Ramblings of a Remote Worker' which documents her reflections on related issues.