Possible uses for blogs. It's really a silly thing to even contemplate. There are already zillions of blogs. When you explore them you find that it's an incestuous set but it's like any other set -- there are stars and there's everyone else. And that's well worth considering: what makes a blog successful? Name recognition? Lots of readers? Lots of commenters? Surely in the education business we'd like to be interested in the 2-way communication -- the commenters.
Many blogs but not all are highly focused. If you're an expert in your field, people are interested in what you're doing, how you're doing it, and what you think of everything else in the field. The best blogs, measured in any way you want, are well-written. Humor doesn't hurt. Two of the most popular blogs I've seen, in terms of involving a large audience, are Making Light (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/) and Yarn Harlot (http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/). These blogs have a regular readership ("community") and they're vocal. I think that over 100 comments per post is a pretty good indication of success. Item of interest -- the biggest responses are generated by off-topic issues! Think politics and social injustice. (Perhaps I should say perceived social injustice.)
What does this have to do with libraries??? Not much. But. Blogs can take on a life of their own. They are not just the product of one person. The best of them morph and change and reflect the world. If you read the books of P G Wodehouse, you'd never know that a war took place over the course of his career. It's never mentioned in the Wooster and Jeeves stories. That's not what you want from a blog, especially a library blog.
What do we want? Why create a blog? Or what kinds of blogs should we create? The best answer is, just create it and see what happens. We can come up with some highly contrived uses for a blog. I think the thing to remember is that you've got to start somewhere. If you've never used a blog, you won't recognize the perfect use for it when it comes along. You've got to use it enough to be comfortable with it, to even be bored with it, before you can explore what else it might be good for.
I think there would be great utility in an internal library blog, archiving posts created by library employees, for library employees. Ideally this would be a blog with multiple "owners." If we couldn't stand the thought of that much chaos, the Reference group comes to mind as a logical group. What kinds of things might go on a blog like that?
First, there are the "look at this" items. Tag them with the appropriate category or keyword and they're easy to find. Not just new databases or new reference books. When we're looking at websites at other university's libraries, or when we're debating what an information commons should be, a blog might be a good way to get input from multiple people and store it in one place.
Second, there are local "what's new" items. We probably don't need to record the water problems or the elevator malfunctions but it might be nice to know when Leyburn switched to card-access at night. It might be nice to know when certain positions were created or substantially changed, without asking someone to look it up in their paper files.
Third, there are the reports from meetings and trips and workshops and classes. Sometimes these end up on someone's web page. Sometimes they end up in the minutes of a staff meeting. Why not one place where they can be retrieved based on a variety of searches (including where the meeting took place, for example). Certainly the search utility on Groupwise leaves something to be desired.
[Just a few thoughts. I've actually spent a little time trying to organize and edit and rewrite this and I'm still not happy with it.]
