PLA 2006: Community Building Through Your Web Site: Library Blogs and RSS Feeds

Jenny Levine and Michael Stephens presented this beautiful session during the last slot of the conference. The turnout was tremendous considering how late in the conference it’s being presented.

Michael Stephens started the session by asking how many people were blogging the session and a good half dozen people raised their hands. Whoo hah! He then shared some statistics about the popularity of blogging and then discussed blogging. 

What is a weblog? It’s a software tool, a content management system. It’s organized chronologically by date with the newest information at the top. It self-archives by date. It’s updated regularly with relatively short entries sand includes many hyperlinks. Each post has a permalink: a unique URL to take you directly to that post. Most blogs provide RSS feeds that syndicate the content and let you read posts in a separate reader (an aggregator). Posts contain titles and text, sometimes graphics as well. Side menus contain links (to the library website, older posts, archives). Blogs may include other features like categories, about pages, contact information, and more.

What do we need in order to blog? Blog software, some server space, maybe a tiny bit of programming, some time, and something to say—fresh content (taken from Blake Carver). Create a what’s new blog: programming and materials, events, news and current events, what’s hot in your local community.

The community of library and librarian blogs is known as the biblioblogosphere. Library sponsored blogs include:

• Marketing blogs (news, new materials lists)
• Topical blogs (local book club, genealogy)
• Photo blogs (attaches a human face to the library, using Flickr to manage the photos) 

Michael advises that to figure out what to blog, you look at what other libraries are blogging about.

Jenny Levine began her session of the talk encouraging libraries to open up comments on the library’s blog. She showed us Ann Arbor Library’s Director’s blog, as well as some specific posts. One post about a problem the library had because of overdue notices not going out to patrons which was diffused by a staff member saying fines would be waived for patrons who had that problem. One post was a patron expressing a concern about the environmental impact of a new branch, to which a library board member replied.

Why don’t libraries solicit comments online? Because we’re scared of what patrons will say. Things to think about… Will you allow any comments to go up automatically or moderate them? Will you have staff members paying attention to comments made on the blog and responding? These are conversations between the library and the community that can happen if only we’ll let them. Jenny also showed us the library’s teen blog—one post had 451 comments. Another of their blogs includes book recommendations, with patron comments discussion the books.

Jenny also showed us the blog of the Flossmoor Public Library, a small public library where a librarian posts and solicits patron input. She also showed the Thomas Ford Memorial Library blog from Western Springs showcasing local history, which resulted in numerous comments from local residents.  Jenny also showed some examples of allowing comments on library catalog entries—for users to discuss the books and other materials. The Riverdale Illinois Library created an e–newsletter as their blog.

She emphasized that blogging is so easy—you can do it for free, with little or no staff training.

Then we moved on to RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It lets you create content in one place but display it in other places like aggregators or other websites. It gets you found in places you wouldn’t normally be found. The feed itself displays as code, which you are not meant to read. The aggregator (like Bloglines) interprets the code and shows you the new stuff from the sites you’ve subscribed to. She emphasized that with the library website, you’re requiring users to come to you. With the RSS feed, you go to the users directly on their turf.  

What if the catalog has RSS? You can get a feed of everything that’s added to the catalog in a specific subject or author or keyword. Send people the news of the library. Your e-newsletter. Your book club discussion selections. Try to get the headlines from your blog onto other people’s websites: schools, government sites, community groups.

Jenny showed us an account called Suprglu. You can patch the feeds from different sites together onto one page. Get community feeds match them up onto one page…weather, local news, library news, new books at the library. (Sarah’s note: What a fabulous tool! I have to play with this now…so very, very neat).

Jenny highlighted Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor who has his own blog and displays his library check-outs and holds on his blog. She also showed a livejournal site that grabbed the library’s book recommendations feed and displays it on their own site. Another library patron displays all the music he has checked out from the library on his blog.

Michael suggested The Cluetrain Manifesto as a tool to use to think about what our libraries can do in the online world. The book’s authors urge companies to speak with a human voice to their customers. It’s about having conversations and being transparent.

Michael ended with Six Things We Can Do Now:

1. Read weblogs and checkout what other libraries are doing. Keep tabs on new developments. Go to http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net.
2. Start your own “What’s New” blog at your library. Update it often and create an      environment of dynamic content. Turn comments on.
3. Appoint a “trend reporter” at the library who watches what’s going on and reports back to staff. Form an Emerging Technology Committee.
4. Train your staff to use an aggregator to read RSS feeds. Use Bloglines  or BlogBridge.  There are many other choices as well.
5. Advocate for RSS to be built into the products we pay for. It will allow us to place more content out in our communities and makes the library discoverable.
6. Learn about Library 2.0. It replicates user-driven and user-centered services online. Google the term to find out more.

Jenny recommended using feed2js as a way to create RSS feeds for existing webpages.

The presentation can be found at http://www.tametheweb.com/pla