back to blogs

Rebecca Hedreen's webcast on blogs was one of the most informative sessions for me - after getting over some technical difficulties I was able to join in at the Opal room and was treated to my first ever live webcast. At first it was distracting to see everyone's comments on the side of the screen, but it was great to see people talking to each other about what Rebecca was saying. The many different uses for blogs and their relevance to libraries was something I had never thought about - but the idea that blogs are built in commenting systems was something that really rang true for me. Blogs are great, but it is the comments (and the community created by the comments) that really make it a phenomenal tool for libraries - and it is what one hopes for when a library institutes a blog of any kind, whether it is an internal staff one or a new materials blog, or a suggestion box blog. I was amazed at the gallery blog, the novel blog and her idea of using a blog to give presentations with - all of these things were ideas I had never even thought of!

I think at my library we are going to start out with a basic library blog where we give library news and helpful hints as well as mention any classes we will be holding for things like NoodleTools. It would be great to expand it to include a new materials blog where patrons could post reviews or suggest other things they would like us to purchase. Rebecca suggests Blogger because it is free and good for beginners, but we would hopefully some day move up to something like WordPress so we could have more features (such as the ability to track the blog). I also thought it was interesting that Rebecca brought up how the library is going to approach language in the blog, the general feel of the blog - is it going to be formal or more casual - these are very important things to think about - although I do think that the general nature of blogs is more casual - and this is good, because it makes it more accessible and friendly.