I must admit that before I started this course the only blogs I had heard about where the ones where courageous people with incurable diseases put their daily achievements or struggles on line so that all their families and friends could keep up to date with their progress.
I now see that there is more to blogs than I first realised. On looking at some blogs I have found those that appeal most to me are usually those that are dedicated to subjects that personally interest me.
This first blog is written by a Librarian who is looking at web 2.0 and it's uses within the library setting.
http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/
I was talking to one of my library colleagues we were considering setting up a library blog. The Trust we work for has recently added another local hospital and with it another library site . The merger of the three library sites means that our overall user base is now much larger and more diverse geographically and with the streamlining that will ultimately take place a lot of changes will need to be made public to our users i.e. changes to opening hours, what services are now available at each site etc.
We both felt that the time was right to start a Trust Library blog. So what do we need to do before we start the blog?
First we will need to speak to all the other members of library staff to get a feel of their views and formulate exactly what we want the blog to do. The next thing is to decide who will be responsible for the actual blog for the posts and the comments. A decision will also need to be made on which blog provider we would use and what links we should put on the blog itself. The final thing we need to do is to decide how often we will be posting on the blog perhaps consider a weekly quiz or something to encourage people to keep coming back.
Oh well the only thing I need to do now is schedule this item on the next staff meeting agenda......
