Library blogs

Yesterday I posted a comment to a Guest post by Roddy MacLeod on the UK Web Focus blog about UK Library Blogs - what do we think we are doing? I explained briefly what I think I am doing with the SINTO blog. Roddy's post and the other comments make some interesting points about blogs and what they are achieving with the emphasis on academic library blogs. Most library blogs have been set up for the same reason as this blog - the technology is there and it seems to have a potential for marketing the service so why not suck it and see! Blogs are not the whole answer to the problem of how we keep our users informed of what we have to offer but they are part of a package of solutions.

The point was made that many students (and I suspect many librarians) are not familiar with RSS as a way of keeping track of a number of blogs. This was covered in our Social Computing course and will be covered again when this course is run again in May. I have recently subscribed to Bloglines for my RSS feeds and the concept works. I can quickly pick up on who is saying what in my field of interest. For more details look at the social computing page mentioned above.