libraries + blogs = ? September 13, 2006
Posted by karen t in Uncategorized.trackback
Rebecca Blood’s article outlines the shift from filter-style blogs to the more recent journal-style of blogging that emerged with the appearance of Blogger. It’s interesting to note that the Wikipedia entry on “blog” doesn’t reflect the same history. It talks about the blog evolving from the online diary. So as a librarian (in training!), one of the issues that this raises is “authority of information”. I graduated from my first term of the MLIS program with the idea that some sources of information are more authoritative than others, especially when it comes to the Internet. I still think this is true. But in reading blogs lately, I’ve begun to realize something. There is no one truth or authority. Everyone has biases (including the so-called authorities). To me, it seems that next to allowing anyone to state their opinion in the first place, the most powerful part of the blog is the comments section.
In another article, Rebecca Blood talks about the “participatory media” that has emerged as a result of blogging. The beauty of this participatory media is the notion that everyone can express their views, listen to all opinions, and then make up their own minds about what they believe. And in many cases this is played out in the comments sections (for example there is quite a discussion on the talk page for the Wikipedia entry on “blog”). Does this mean that I’m going to ignore all of the “authoritative sources” that we’ve come to know and love? No, but there may be a real benefit to looking beyond those sources to see what else is out there. And isn’t this what information literacy is really all about?
This brings me to the second point I’d like to make about libraries and blogging. I think it’s great that libraries have blogs. However, in the spirit of Web 2.0 and Community 2.0, one of the best things about the blog lies in its ability to facilitate an interaction. Otherwise it is little more than a static bulletin board of facts for people to read. So if libraries are going to use blogs, then part of the challenge should be to find ways to encourage a two-way dialogue that will make the library users feel that they are participating in the library’s on-line community and making contributions. The Ann Arbor District Library blogs seem to have had some success with this. The Madison-Jefferson County Public library blogs not so much…although I thought it looked pretty good and had interesting information on it. It might be interesting to look a little more closely at the reasons for the difference in the public’s interaction with these blogs.
I agree that the commenting feature is one of the strongest aspects of blogs. While we don’t need to accept everything we read as “authority,” comments provide a good way of raising our own awareness of what people are thinking, what the issues are and wherre the controversies lie.
I couldn’t agree more. For a library blog to work, there must be an ongoing dialogue between the library and its users.
Do you think that maybe because some of these sites that we looked at this week have taken on the look of a web page, that people don’t realize yet that they are actually blogs? Perhaps libraries need to point out that comments are welcome. I also thought it was interesting that some of the blogs did not have a “comment” area.
That’s a good observation. It isn’t always obvious how these blogs differ from the posting of news or announcements on a web page. In fact, when I was reading through one of the FAQ pages, the library itself didn’t seem to make a distinction!
Hi Karen,
I’m the web librarian at MJCPL and I wholeheartedly agree that one of the best parts of blogs is the conversation. I also agree that our website doesn’t have much online conversation.
I think the main difference between Ann Arbor and Madison is the community. Ann Arbor is a tech savvy university city. Madison is an absolutely wonderful rural community.
Folks here are busy raising kids and working to make ends meet. I don’t blame them for not taking the time to respond to our blogs. They are admittedly more informative than thought provoking. Nonetheless, I feel strongly about putting ourselves out there and pursuing the interaction — whether we get a response or not. Happily our website is well used and our patrons heavily use our comment form and offer us feedback at the library.
While, I think there are stark differences between our two libraries, I would love to see a study of blogging libraries and what they have done see to attain greater interaction. That’d be cool.
cheers,
Jerr