LITA Blog

Do library’s need to blog?

If you’ve thought of blogging your library, don’t dismiss blogging but don’t rush to embrace it, either. If your reasons are: administration says I should, everybody else is doing it or we’ve got to stay up with technology, think again. If, on the other hand, you see it as a tool to push information to your community or a marketing tool for your library or similar well thought out reasons, then BLOG!

Who’s blogging and why?

Over 90% of the attendees indicated they were blogging. Presenters from Western Kentucky University Library (WKUL) are blogging, podcasting and vodcasting (video podcasting). Haiwang Yuan in tandem with Rosemary Meszaros, tag-team co-presenter, led the audience through their process of developing library interactivity. Their reasons for this venture, policies developed, and basic good practices were covered.

Haiwang, a personal blogger carried the idea over into the library arena in an effort to present information to their audience, roughly defined as the University population and surrounding communities. Blogging is a forum for the library to showcase events, host tutorials, communicate with their community, and keep them up-to-date on changes in their services. This is available through RSS subscription as well, so you don’t have to continually log in to their site to see what’s new.

How do you blog?

According to the presenters, “blogging is as easy as 1,2,3”. WordPress and Blogger were the two named blog CMS (content management system) services with WordPress being their choice due to the more powerful hierarchical control system. The control system was part of their policy established in collaboration with university administration. There is no HTML or FTP to learn it’s like using a word processor and loading it to the web.

What about podcasting?

From blogging, podcasting and vodcasting were easy segues. These venues are used to showcase their programming. The recordings of library-sponsored speakers are the main fare of the pod/vodcast at WKU. If using these forums as material for pod/vodcasts, one needs to be aware of potential risks due to recording device malfunction. Using good equipment and the suggestions of redundancy through a second recorder will save you from losing the event.

Podcasting/Vodcasting take a bit more work, more software and more server space. Surfpack.com provides information on software and hardware needs. The how and what to podcast are the two variables to evaluate before beginning.
What does one need to pod/vodcast?

• Mini-recorder or mp3 recorder (for remote recording) (2 recommended)
• Podcast softwares suggested
o Audacity (free)
o Propaganda
o WebPod Studio
o FeedForAll
• Software for listening:
o iTunes
o Yahoo
• Hardware requirements for listening:
o Any portable MP3 player
o USB connect ability
o Synchronize with PC

What does one podcast?

• Library tours
• Special programs
• Train the Trainer
• Announcements

How successful are these ventures?

The team has not done tracking studies to determine WHO or HOW MANY persons are accessing these tools. It seems that most of the blogging responses are machine driven spam. The next logical step would be to obtain data to determine the progress of these information-dispensing venues.

To check out the podcasts, go to http://www.wku.edu/library
To read the policies and blogs: http://blog.wku.edu/library/

Presenters:
Haiwang Yuan, Associate Professor and Web Site & Virtual Library Coordinator, WKU
Rosemary Meszaros, coordinator of the Government Information & Law Library, WKU

Blogger: Laura Haynie Castillo, Alvin Community College Library, Alvin, Tx
Personal blog: beasilyscorner.blogspot.com

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 28th, 2006 at 2:30 pm and is filed under LITA Forum 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.