Problems with the Ohio Business Blog?
By risablumlein - Posted on May 13th, 2008
It was really great to hear from someone who helped pioneer social software uses in his library (as well as libraries in general), because at the time Chad was considering the use of blogs and wikis for his business school it didn’t seem like there were many other examples for him to draw from. I really liked his comment about his job being “pattern-oriented”, which I think a lot of subject reference librarians can identify with. After being asked the same question over and over again, you begin to think “There’s got to be an easier and quicker way to answer these questions, to benefit both me and the student!”
During the presentation I was wondering how students initially responded to being referred to the blog/wiki as a reference resource. Chad explains how after discovering the pattern-oriented nature of business reference, he created the business blog and began responding to students by sending them links to the blog. I wonder if students felt like they were receiving good service or if they felt like he was minimizing their information need by only sending them a one-link response. Of course, on the blog he provides superior and detailed reference services, but they may not know this if they don't follow the link.
I was also interested to discover that as the business blog’s content grew, Chad found it a difficult application to keep organized. Blogs can maintain lots of information by employing the archiving function in the sidebar and by using keyword tags, so I wonder exactly what the problem was with maintaining growing content on the blog. Regardless, the BizWiki is a fantastic resource that I would greatly appreciate if I were a business student at Ohio University, not to mention the fact that it inspired my group's idea to make a subject guide wiki for our final project this semester :)
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