Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library
ILI 2007 Conference

The following masterclass was held at the Internet Librarian International 2007 Conference on Sunday 7^th October 2007 at the Copthorne Tara Hotel, London.

Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library

Title

Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library

Facilitators

Brian Kelly (UKOLN) and Kara Jones (University of Bath)

Abstract

The dust is starting to settle after the initial heady rush of blogging onto the library scene. While the benefits of blogging have been well documented, it's now time to take a step back and look at some very practical elements involved with identifying potential barriers to implementing a sustainable blogging service within your institution.
This workshop will offer real user experiences with issues of using blogs (weblogs) 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 and frequency of publication. Finally we'll discuss how to measure the success of your blogging efforts, focusing on user feedback, return on investment and impact assessment.
This workshop will be of interest to those who are new to blogging, or those who have experimented with blogs but would like to learn more about strategies and metrics for developing a sustainable and cost-effective blogging service.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the workshop session participants will:

• Have learnt about up-to-date blog features and tools.
• Have identified potential issues with the implementation of blogs within an institution.
• Be able to outline policy considerations which best fit their individual or organisational purpose.
• Have learnt about tools for measuring blog success.
• Have heard about and discussed examples of best practices which participants will be able to make use of in developing a sustainable blogging service locally.

Interactive elements

The workshop session will include brief presentations, demonstrations and group exercises. The interactive elements for the workshop will include:

• Comparing hosted blog sites.
• Group discussions on identifying issues for consideration in the development of a blogging policy
• Demonstrations of tools which can be used for measuring blog success.

Date And Time

This Masterclass session took place from 14:00-17:00 on Sunday 7^th October, 2007.

Video Clip

If your browser supports Flash, a brief video clip about the workshop will be embedded into this page.

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 all the previous Internet Librarian Conferences held in the UK. Brian works at UKOLN, a national centre of expertise in digital information management, which is based at the University of Bath.

Kara Jones is a science subject librarian at the University of Bath, UK. Over the last few years she has developed an interest in social technologies and sees weblogs, wikis and podcasts opening doors for those of us who don't really know our XHTML from our CSS, but still want to develop online resources that engage our library communities.

Timetable

The timetable is given below:

Handouts

A number of handouts were distributed including:

• Information about the Masterclass (MS Word)
• Workshop exercises (MS Word)
• Action Plans (MS Word)

In addition briefing documents on Blog Basics, Launching Your Blog, Evaluating Your Blog, Building A Blogging Community, Library Uses For Blogs, Addressing Barriers to Blogging, Quality Processes for your Blog Content, Developing Blog Policies and Technical Issues For Your Blogging Service were also distributed.

Updated versionbs of most of these documents are now available from UKOLN's Cultural heritage Web site.

Feedback

The following blog post mentions the workshop:

• The Corp. Librarian, Penille Helholm

Note

This page is not HTML-compliant due to the embedded objects.