Final Proposal
Submitted by krisveldheer on Sat, 2007-03-10 00:41.
Proposal for Creating a Faculty Blog for the Faculty of the Graduate Theological Union
The Graduate Theological Union is comprised of nine separate seminaries in and around Berkeley, California which are served by a common library. Because the faculty of the nine seminaries is both diverse and scattered, finding a central way to communicate library information with them other than by email is important.
The technology to be implemented is a blog designed for library announcements and communication to the faculty only. A blog offers several key features including an archival function for faculty to look up prior announcements; a linking feature to link to the New Books blog and library homepage; an RSS-type feed function for those faculty more digitally advanced; and finally, a comment feature for faculty to interact with the blogger and each other if need be. By creating and maintaining the blog, communication with a scattered faculty will improve. Library staff will be able to remind faculty of deadlines, send out announcements and so on from one central location, thus eliminating a need for multiple emails, while at the same time providing an archive. For the library and the faculty it is a win-win.
Four Libraries using blogs successfully:
1. Seattle University's "What's up at Lemieux Library" (http://community.seattleu.edu/blogs/lemieux_library/default.aspx)
A blog used to communicate both with the students but also the wider community served by the Lemieux Library.
2. Keffer Library News from the University of St. Thomas (http://kefferlibrarynews.blogspot.com/)
This was a great example of a specialized library using a blog to share information. Unfortunately, it seems to not be updated anymore.
3. Books for Fun Blog from Vanderbilt University (http://books4fun.library.vanderbilt.edu/)
This is a blog set up for students, faculty and staff to contribute to about the books they are reading for fun.
4. MIT Library News (http://news-libraries.mit.edu/blog/)
A final example of a library blog used to get out the word about what is going on.
There are two main roadblocks at the GTU- money and technophobic faculty. As a rule the GTU runs on a very tight budget, so the blog will have to be created and maintained on a free site. Likewise, it will take some time before the faculty gets used to looking at the blog for announcements and information. Since there are several great free blogging sites, the financial issues will not be a hurdle, and starting this new blog has the support of the library director and the faculty library committee. The ongoing maintenance of the blog will be handled by the electronic resources librarian and will eventually be folded into a faculty page on the remodeled library website.
Footnote:
As a direct result of taking this online class, this proposal has already been implemented. The new faculty blog launched on March 2, 2007 to strong support for the library director and the faculty. A link to the blog is http://gtulibraryfaculty.blogspot.com/ . The blog was created using Google's Blogger which is free and as a bonus we were able to nest the library's New Books Blog into the same account for easy updating. The New Book blog has been around for about two years. As was mentioned above, the goal is to fold the faculty blog into a new page on the library website dedicated to faculty and it will continue to be used as a simple way to get the word out on a monthly basis to the faculty. At least for the present time, updates and maintenance will be monthly, but as more faculty get used to turning to the blog for library news, it is hopeful more frequent updates will occur.
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Great proposal! Look like a
Great proposal! Look like a perfect opportunity for the implementation of social software. One thought I've had in addressing techno-reluctance is to look at establishing RSS-to-email for those who may check their email, but not likely to check a blog or establish a feed reader(?)
Working within such a union sounds like it would be quite interesting, too.
Kris U ROCK! How wonderful:)
Kris U ROCK! How wonderful:) What a great way to keep staff informed, up-to-date and educated on a social software tool that has so much potential. Plus, it allows for all staff to get involved at their pace so as to be much less threatening to those who might be intimidated. Way to go!
Rachel S. Kingcade
Kris - this sounds like a
Kris - this sounds like a great way to improve communication between faculty and librarians. I am very interested in how faculty and librarians can help each other out - we can all learn from each other and using a blog to connect makes things much easier!
Renata Gibson, Public Services Librarian
Kris, this looks like a good
Kris, this looks like a good idea. Do you think you will get immediate buy-in from your faculty or will you need to persuade them?
Kris, That's really exciting
Kris,
That's really exciting that you've already implemented your proposal! It definitely seems like a great medium for communication among the faculty, and I hope it's used to its full potential.
Dell Bayer TechLibrary
Dell Bayer TechLibrary Sandia National Labs jabayer@sandia.gov
Congrats on having your proposal approved and implemented so quickly. With the widely distributed faculty that uses your library, I think the blog will be a great communication tool. RE: Encouraging people to read the blog: Old time newsletters used to encourage readership by having a secret word or number "hidden" somewhere in each issue. If you tried such an incentive, the first reader to blog the hidden word would get a prize of some kind. Here at the labs we incentivize physicists with a big poster Chart of the Nuclides. But you audience would no doubt want something a bit different. :-)