Blogged Down (9)

The time between library entries is partly due to the sparseness of viable content. Yet the cause also must spring from those in charge of the blog. If run by a committee, what is common property is no one's, and updating falls victim to lack of leadership or maybe shared procrastination.

A one-person-one-blog approach brings a fresh set of issues. The blog may be set at a low priority, so what gets done is only after a long wait. Too, the person may just lose interest, forget, or quit the position.

It is unlikely the library will receive complaints about an unrefreshed blog, for by then all remaining readers have given up.

Blogged Down (8): Time, and Time Again

Even that minority of readers who are interested enough in a library to visit its blog may yet be discouraged by the interval between entries. The user who periodically comes to the blog and finds nothing has been added may either think that the unwelcome mat has been put out or may space future visits ever further apart. As time lengthens between blog entries, the situation evolves from the chronological to the geological.

Blogged Down (7): What Else?

Aside from library hours and announcements about new resources, readers will find these categories on library blogs:

• bibliographic instruction for course assignments
• debuting employees and retiring ones
• equipment out of order and services unavailable :-(
• faculty publications (hopefully they are part of the library collection)
• fines and other circulation matters that directly affect library users
• gratuitous statistics
• happenings on campus
• news about libraries, the book world, and technology
• old acquisitions (i.e., special collections)
• pathfinders innocently masquerading as blog entries
• pertinent resources
• reading lists
• redesigns and relocations in the library building
• scholarly concerns such as researching, citing, copy-editing, and copyright

Blogged Down (6)

Beyond library blogs' emphasis on hours is their periodic trumpeting of longer periods of time. Somewhat like wannabe Chase's Calendars they didactically announce when a month is dedicated to a subject and expand on this with related resources.

This can be anything from January's California Dried Plum Digestive Health Month to December's Safe Toys and Gifts Month.

Blogged Down (5): NEW!

If any category could vie with library hours for blog popularity, it has to be new! materials--new! databases, new! books, new! subscriptions, new! new! new! (Maybe the blog does not echo with this hypnotic exclamation point gusto, but "new" is a pivotal word. Even commercials brandish it.)

Yet when it comes to notices about new! employees infrequently is there something. New! retirees are marginally likelier to receive attention, usually in the form of a going away celebration.

Blogged Down (4): Yours, Mine, and Hours

Since the hook for blogs is content, what makes up blog fodder?

A seasonal list of library hours, for one. This is very reliable in popularity and uncontroversial. Just the facts, m'am.

Yet there is a problem. A blog consists of timely (a coincidental pun) entries, and a person who wants to know library hours may have ado to journey through a blog to locate this. For the deliberate searcher, it is better for hours to live on the library's homepage.*

*A favorite novel with a gratuitous quote: "From a corner the morning hours run out."--James Joyce, Ulysses

Blogged Down (3)

What prompts a reader to seek a blog? I can think of four categories, none cut-and-dried, nor exhaustive, nor bullet-proof.

(1) To be entertained*
(2) To learn something about the world, if it is only to re-assure your own view**
(3) To listen to a blogger, particularly a friend or personality***
(4) To be usefully informed--this appeals to self-interest****

*A library blog that entertains is an oxymoron.
**The library blog may touch upon the world-beyond-the-library on occasion, but not enough to attract that kind of reader.
***Since library blogs are typically corporate or impersonal, the hook of a friend or personality is missing.
****So a library blog must exploit its niche as being relevant to students and other library users.

Blogged Down (2)

For all the conversational hubbub about library blogs, there are many abandoned ones. For example, do some random clicks at blogwithoutalibrary. That a deplorable number of links have become archival fodder show that corporate aspirations alone cannot sustain a blog.

Blogged Down (1)

Librarians spill lotsa ink about the advisability of having library blogs--institutional blogs written by library workers designed to capture the eyeballs of unsuspecting users. Yet at least in academia the real audience is minute, I imagine. Likely constant readers are libraryophiles, highly motivated students (notably in library science), some professors, and the library staff (eating their own dog food).