OLA: The Blog People: Librarians Generating Content and Communication

OLA Super Conference
Presenter: Michael Stephens, St. Joseph County Public Library

I finally got to meet Michael Stephens, after years of reading his blog and admiring his work! I was pretty-well sitting back and enjoying his talk for the most part, so this is mostly summary stuff.

Update: Michael’s presentation materials are here.

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- blog as tool, CMS, software, to generate web content.
- brief history of blog: hand coding began it, then Blogger and Livejournal in 1999
- 2000-2005: the tools made it easy to publish to the web, no html needed, no ftp; dozens of features, dynamic, quick, easy to develop

Taxonomy of library & librarian blogs:
- library-sponsored blogs (marketing, topical, internal, organizational, etc.)
- independent librarian blogs (frontline, innovator, commentator, etc.)

Newer trends in blogging:
- photo-blogging, flickr, podcasting, etc.

Rrecent research in weblogs & libraries:
- lawley, blanchard, clyde
- blogs as virtual communities
- trust in blog communities: high degree of self-disclosure, bloggers with internal evaluation system, medium of publishing in progress

Conversations and the cluetrain
- aadl
- talk to users, allow comments, get interactive, share book reviews, thoughts, more…
- cluetrain: networked conversations going on and we need to learn from them; speak with a human voice, see the face of the library, make the library human, transparency, communicate with market directly.
- catalogue as blog
- library wikis – great for subject guides. At SJCPL, librarians use MediaWiki to create and edit subject guides and patrons can “discuss” the pages.

Questions for further research:
- how have blogs changed communication between librarians?
- how does blogs serve the social purpose of the library?
- who comments on library blogs and why?