23 Things asks you to set up a blog and, for assignment purposes, here I am doing just that.
I've done this before, though. This past spring, after going to Computers in Libraries, I set up a blog, just to see what was entailed.
It was a lot of fun but, after a while, I stopped posting to it. Why? For the same reason I think that individual blogs produced by the Howard County Library staff are an idea that is more than a bit iffy.
The reason? Time.
Initially, I tried to write a post once a week. I'm one of those people who actually enjoys writing (witness this “short” blog entry). So, unconstrained by deadline pressure, space, or anything else for that matter, I quickly discovered that it was very easy for me to spend several hours on each of my blog postings.
For me, what fun. For my employer, what a waste of company time.
Upon realizing this, having learned from my enjoyable experiment what I needed to learn, I stopped posting to my blog. I did one more post, though, just this past week. I did it to reconfirm the conclusions I had come to this past spring. Sure enough, I managed to spend well over three hours on one posting. You can see it here, if you like: Joe Says
I had a ball but the simple reality is that few employers, including ours, can allow their staffers the kind of open ended time that maintaining a blog can entail.
But this technology is powerful and we do want to make use of it. So how do we do so? In some ways, time will tell, but I believe I know a good starting point.
Rather than have Howard County Library staff create whatever little blogs our little hearts may desire, we might start with departmental blogs, aimed largely (though not exclusively) at the public. Good examples might be a blog set up by the Fiction Desk at Central or, perhaps, by the children's librarians (either by branch or as a group).
Each staff member might be allowed, or even required, to contribute book news, reviews, program information or what have you on an appropriate group blog. Their work would be signed, both so that they could receive credit for their work or, in less happy cases, be held responsible for it. The department head responsible for the blog would function as it's gatekeeper, being responsible for reviewing contributions prior to their being posted.
I'm sure this is not the only way we can make use of blogs but I think it would be an effective and safe way to start. By taking the step of creating and operating departmental blogs, we can gain the kind of experience that will tell us what sort of next steps make sense.
