Jo Alcock › Likes

Yes, continue. Stats aren't important -- it's what you get out of sharing and developing your ideas. Give it at least a year. - John Dupuis

should of added, yes continue, I've found you blog posts useful :) - Chris Keene

Just saw this via Will Richardson: http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog... - John Dupuis

My blog seems to be a "summary" blog + some original research/evidence blog. I suppose such posts don't quite encourage feedback and comments. - aarontay

As others have said, these things take time. Don't give up. Quality content will find an audience eventually :) - Brian Krueger - LabSpaces

I think you will have far more readers than subscribers. I get few comments on my posts but from time to time people I meet mention that they saw something on my blog, so I presume there are readers out there. - Frank Norman

I'm coming to the conclusion that blogging is a misleading term. before it, many of us had websites, which we would occasionally add a page to, and often with subsections. Blogging is just this, but with timestamps and a front page showing the latest stuff :) - Chris Keene

I agree with John, it's not the number of readers or subscribers that matter for me, it's what I get out of blogging. I find it an incredibly useful avenue for developing ideas, sharing my thoughts, reporting on things, and engaging discussion. - Jo Alcock

we are not academic (large national research org) but similar issues. Just about (next week) to launch blogs. Have divided by discipline which also reflects org structure. 1 main blog then 5 subject areas with sub disciplines covered by categories. Using WordpressMU. - suelibrarian

I'm not a liaison, but.... we have one main library blog and several blogs for individual disciplines. http://homer.gsu.edu/blogs... - Jàson Puçkett

We're not doing any blogs at present because of issues with legal. Hope that will be changing soon. - Rachel Walden

We have one main library blog and blogs for different colleges. (More or less.) But not every college has a blog. We also use categories for different subjects within a college. I think it largely depends on how many people / how much time you've got to maintain the blog(s). - Deborah Fitchett

I have about 7 different departments. I tend to tag the entries according to the various liaison areas, such as: http://sci-eng-penrose.blogspot.com/search... - Joe

we're about to start one out at the biz library for our faculty as a pilot project. i proposed them at the branch level to a) make sure we aren't just syndicating our "events & announcements" stuff from the library home page, and b) to make it easier to know what content to add. plus i see it as more of a tool for reaching our faculty over our students - so i'm going to try and showcase faculty research (deep linking into our resources) as well as giving them the headsup about other biz programs. - jambina

Subsidiary questions for those that do have subject blogs and a main blog. Do you pipe the posts from your main blog to the subject blogs? I am in two minds about this. It would save the time of the reader and remove the issue of expecting them to subscribe to two places but for those that have cross subject interests they would get those posts multiple times. - suelibrarian

We don't. I suspect it'd be tricky with our software. If something's important enough we'll copy and paste (or copy and edit if I want it to suit the style of our particular users). One thing for ours is that we have php set up to pull snippets of the most recent blog entries onto library webpages - eg main blog shows on library homepage (http://library.canterbury.ac.nz) and subject... more... - Deborah Fitchett

I am using WordpressMU so I was just going to use the feed plugin to pull from the main blog to each of the others. It would take a bit to set up which is why I havent done it yet.Thks for the examples. Unfortunately our main library are part of our intranet and static only ATM. - suelibrarian

We have one main blog and pull feeds into various pages based on categories. I thought that librarians would be excited about having such a quick and easy way to push news/information out to users, but only our electronic resources librarian is using it. I think I'm going to start an informal brown bag series to communicate these ideas better. I get it, but not sure my colleagues even have it on their radar. - Jen

One main blog (Wordpress) with multiple categories representing different departments/campus libraries. This way posts can be assigned to multiple categories, if relevant. We also use a little Javascript/PHP to display the headlines on the main library site and campus sites. We basically treat each category as a separate blog with it's own RSS, but it's nice to let librarians cross-post items. - jönαthaη

Rachel--I'm curious to know why legal is holding up blogs? - Connie Crosby

Connie, they just haven't really gotten it and are nervous about the whole thing. For example, there is a med center blog, but you have to log in with med center ID and password to view it and comments always have that identifying information attached. Not allowed to have public blogs. They say the only way around this currently is if no comments are allowed, which sort of defeats the purpose. (added: and that med center blog hasn't been updated since Feb) - Rachel Walden

That's what I was told last time I checked anyway - I think there have been some personnel changes in a position to shake it up a bit, though. There are some existing blogs on the univ side, but my understanding is that there's a freeze on new ones. *sigh* - Rachel Walden

Unfortunately counsel often don't understand Web 2.0. Their whole purpose is to mitigate risk, so it is easier for them to just say no. What kind of organization are you in? - Connie Crosby

We started out with all comments pre-screened. Once we got authentication working we got to give the choice so people can comment with their name attached and it appears immediately, or anonymously and it's pre-screened. Once long ago people had to log in just to view, but fortunately that was rapidly seen as Sub-Optimal. - Deborah Fitchett

Connie, I'm at the med library at an academic medical center. - Rachel Walden

A tricky area, Rachel. It will take some work to educate them that you are using blogs to facilitate communication, not to say anything confidential or give out medical advice. Too bad they can't see blogs as just a quick-to-edit website news page, or a newsletter. I think it is the word "blog" that gets people tied up into knots. I like the idea of moderated comments with a comment policy posted. Could they live with that?? - Connie Crosby