Finally the 'real' librarian exposed to the world!

From reading the articles for this week it is obvious that in order to maintain an interesting and inviting blog there are certain guidelines that need to be adhered to. All four authors of the articles, Scout, Neilson, Schneider and Blood stress the importance of establishing rules that need to be followed to post interesting articles and produce a well informed blog with relevant links and one that readers will want to keep re-visiting.
The word 'credibility' was mentioned frequently in the articles and this suggests that many posts and blogs lack credibility and therefore owners of blogs need to affirm the authority of information posted, provide relevant links, stay focused and create a blogging policy and set guidelines which will avoid any bad publicity and protect their credibility.
Above all the blog needs to maintain interest, be informative and provide enjoyment to the reader. Grammer, spelling and punctuation are important and the tone and style of the blog need to develop and remain consistent throughout the blog.
Schneider notes that this is especially important when the blogger is representing a library and is the 'standard bearer' of librarianship for the world.

Darlene Fichter gives some good advice for anyone wishing to start a library blog and advises that the blogger should understand the audience and decide if they would like short newsy items or longer in depth items. Maybe a combination of the two would work the best. The content and scope of the blog needs to be decided especially the key messages. Is the blog trying to promote awareness of the services and resources, encourage use of the virtual library, provide book news and information or is it trying to reach certain community groups?

In the case of the Darien Public Library blogs it seems that all of the above is accomplished.
The blogs are well maintained, interesting, well organised, posted to frequently and come across as a single voice despite being authored by several different staff members. A well developed policy with rules and regulations established and adhered to is the key to a successful library blog. Each person posting to the blogs represents the library in a professional and authoritative manner.

One of the aspects I liked about this blog was that it provided a 'behind the scenes' look at what librarians actually do and posted photos of staff taking part in a fiction collection development
workshop and the use of publisher's catalogues as a tool. Another photo showed a staff member celebrating after she had published an article in Library Journal. There is a general lack of knowledge within the general public as to the roles and responsibilites of librarians and all too often we are seen to be circulation clerks and nothing else. Blogs offer a chance finally to change the view of the stereotypical librarian and bring us all into the twenty first century of the technological age and show the world exactly what are roles are and elevate our expertise to its rightful place.

The Darien library reaches out to the community in many ways from requesting user input for a new identity, posting financial statements on line, reports of staff meetings, photos of trustees and even providing podcasts of interview with various members of the construction crew who are building the new library as well as the architect and town officials.

This blog has the three ingredients that Darlene Fichter emphasized, that of inspiration, motivation and dedication. It is a very interesting blog and extremely informative and makes one want to continue reading and revisiting the site.

The visual layout of the blog is very important and it needs to be appealing. The blog from the Garfield County Public Library is disorganised, unattractive and not very user friendly. It is not apparent who the blog is aimed at and whoever does look at it will not be encouraged to look further especially when they see blurry YouTube pictures on the site. Many of the categories have not been updated since March 2007 and the one that had posted an item which was about Denver Public Library having a countdown to the release of the next Harry Potter book. This is not very informative to the users of the Garfield County Public Library and does not encourage readers to further explore the site. The photo of a railway line going off into the bush seems to be a little strange too.

The next three case studies highlight the new ways that blogs can be used for different purposes. They all appear to be successful in their own way and reach out to a limited audience and clientele.
The Mabry online site is a blog for teachers, staff, students and parents of a particular school. The teachers can post lessons, homework, student accomplishments and activities and events held at the school. Students can set up RSS feeds from particular teachers and keep up to date with posts. It appears that no one can make comments and also anyone reaching the site can read anything posted. There is no login required.
The St. Joseph County Public Library Gameblog is directed towards a very small clientele of the community who play online games. This blog would not be of any interest to anyone not into online gaming. This site does not encourage library visits, does not appear to support the library and does not need to be connected to the library so I am wondering why it is associated with the library.
For anyone contemplating applying to the Virginia Commonwealth University it might be worthwhile to check out this Library suggestion blog. This blog encourages comments and criticisms on various aspects of the library. Most of the comments are negative and criticise the collection, the general untidiness of the library with garbage laying around, the shelves being disorganised and books not being shelved, the unclean bathrooms, the computer and wireless problems and the 'quiet' floors being too noisy. One positive point is that the staff have attempted to reply to each of the comments but must feel overwhelmed at the negativity.

Maybe public libraries could also use this method of blogs to conduct surveys and encourage both positive and negative comments from users. Readers of library blogs can only reply to or make comments on something already posted. However if there was an opportunity for readers to post a comment on a 'free for all' post in which they could log in and voice an opinion on anything library related, this could prove a useful way to uncover any suggestions and problems.