The blogging church?
Submitted by Steve Lawson on Thu, 2007-02-15 18:24.
I thought people might find a post on Merlin Mann's blog 43Folders interesting. Blogs (watching passionate thoughts evolve in public) notes the existence of the book The Blogging Church which might be relevant for some library blogs.
More to the point, though, Merlin includes an excerpt of something he wrote for that book--a passage about the period right after you start a new blog. Here is a shorter excerpt of his already-short excerpt:
Remember that your blog is only incidentally a publishing system or a public website. At its heart, your blog represents the evolving expression of your most passionately held ideas. It’s a conversation you’re holding up with the world and with yourself — a place where you can watch your own thoughts take different shapes and occasionally surprise you with where they end up…
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My church recently launched
My church recently launched a program called Be the Body which is a program where each member spends 20 minutes a day in time with God. They created a web site and lots of materials, but part of the website is a blog on which members of the church can share their stories as they grow through their time with God.
Now admittedly, it is more like a bulletin board and I am not sure there is an RSS feed, but I did not build the thing.
What can we learn from this? People participate in something when they feel attached to the endeavor or if they feel they have something to say. Even if people never comment, they will read and feel like they are part of the experience they are reading about. It makes them invested in the program or the organization. Blogs, and other social networking tools, put a human face on libraries and other organizations by revealing us. The true us. The people that make the building and institution real.