I’m a bit stiff because I spent the night twisted pretzel-like around our cranky old tabby cat, who at six pounds wields strange force. But before I stand under the shower for fifteen minutes to unbend my back, I just gotta talk library blogging policy.
As we get closer to installing blog software at MPOW, I’m rummaging and roaming around the biblioblogosphere in search of really good library blog policies. I’ve found a couple here and there . I appreciate how these two policies essentially protect the concept of blogging from being destroyed by a bad incident. If I had to take the policies a little farther, I’d suggest something on the order of not committing to a blog unless you have planned how to keep it up.
Experimenting on a small scale is always fun, and good things bubble up when that happens. Plus it’s a release valve for the early adopters who are waiting for you to hurry up and install the blog software already. But if you want it to succeed, a large-scale service deployment needs policy, procedure, education, marketing, assessment, and follow-through. That’s the slow, stodgy part of any serious roll-out, but without it, you’re not doing justice to the project.
I must now go find my favorite Christmas cardigan, my Santa socks, and my earrings shaped like little green Christmas-tree lights… though this afternoon I will spend several hours working on a presentation about our technology plan for the year ahead. Honestly, it’s a blissfully quiet time for tinkering with the ol’ PowerPoint.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Christine Schwartz on WoGroFuBiCo - 2007
- Comments Now Working - 2004
Hi Karen,
Though I don’t have any experience in drafting blogging guidelines, it might be useful to have a look at what some private corporations have come up with. Ironically, there have been quite a few blogs discussing corporate blogging guidelines during the past week with these two posts being quite comprehensive: “Sample Corporate Blogging Policies” and an update “More Corporate Blogging Policies“.
In addition, there’s a wiki on corporate blogging guidelines that is put up by a PR professional.
My colleague, Ivan, has also recently wrote about what constitutes a good blogging guideline and has some suggestions on how someone can come up a ‘good’ corporate blogging guideline.
Well, hope the links are useful to you.
Isaak Kwok
http://www.erizen.net
Why do you need policies and procedures?
First, in my world, policies are approved by the Library Board, are fairly immutable, and should really only address the really big picture or really critical issues like, say, filtering. Procedures are administrative and handled by the director and/or management team.
One of the huge “2.0” concepts I have tried (and successfully, so far) embraced is the idea of why make rules if you don’t really need them. Now, I know you are now in academia which can be much more rule bound than the free-wheeling public library arena, but I challenge you to re-think the necessity for rules.
It was interesting because one of the last discussions for the web committee at my last place of work was about the rules for posting photos to the Library’s Flickr account. I argued for no or minimal rules while others wanted to create a handbook. In this case, being the boss was great, I actually won!
Enjoy your day…I have enjoyed mine, doing “home” work upon my temporary return to CT.
Isaak, thanks! That gives me a lot of fodder.
Michael, I figured you would post such a comment and you’re half the voice in my head, as far as policy goes.
First, let’s knock procedure out of the discussion. Everyone likes procedures. Don’t you like to know where to find and activate the widget that energizes the doomaflatchy? Furthermore, we may have some specific procedures. For example, here’s one I’m thinking of for newsy items that are appropriate posting to the central library news blog: if you want the blog entry to show up in a news post, make it short (preferably 100 words or less); include time, place, date, and day of week; and put it in category X. (If you don’t think these guidelines are important, I can point you to “news items” on library blogs that are lacking these details.)
For Flickr, I can see not having too many rules. Then again, I know of one library Flickr account where one person used up the space with a deluge of dark, grainy, and uninteresting pictures. Follow your bliss… well, o.k. … but it’s a library’s best foot forward, and I’m not sure that helped.
For blogging, a policy can protect the library by providing a rationale for the library’s discretion in posting comments. I cannot tell you how many times bloggers have found that despite early, idealistic pronunciations, in a real, working environment, they need to deal with trolls.
I also think that the department responsible for creating the blogs for departments has a dog in this fight. A locally-created blog involves some effort on behalf of those who provide it–setting it up, providing training, putting it under the big tent of All That We Survey. It’s fair to the tech folks (who are doing many, many other things) to develop a procedure/policy/guideline that states that departments need to determine in advance how they will keep their blog updated.
But more broadly (and here is where this kind of policy may differ sharply from public library policy, which occupies a fairly abstract level) a policy can explain what the blogs are about: why the library is producing them. Such a guideline doesn’t need six months of provost-level review. It is possible to roll out a technology with a very sketchy draft guideline/procedure/policy making the rounds (and I refuse to get into hair-splitting about which is which).
It sort of goes back to “what if we didn’t do the ILS upgrade.” I know, heretical. Of course we’re going to to do the ILS upgrade (“we” being a much larger enterprise than MPOW), and I’m sure it will result in improvements. But I am still waiting for the curtains to be pulled back to reveal exactly what we’re getting from the months we are going to spend upgrading from Version Whatchamajigger to Version Umpty-Ump. I’ve been pointed to piles of URLs, and I have heard vague promises of improvements in the look-and-feel, but I’d like someone to hop on a stump and shout, “Because of X–that’s why!” That may be entirely unrealistic, but it would be a nicely defining moment.
Hi,
I started a corporate blog on French Property about 2 years ago. I know this is quite different from a library, but I suspect there are a few things in common. Here are my ideas:
1) There is not much use in having a library blog unless a fair number of people use it fairly often. Otherwise it is just an overhead.
2) There is also not much use in a blog unless it is useful to people (e.g. the library users).
3) Points 1 and 2 are related. If the blog is useful, people will come and also return. Otherwise not. So instead of starting with “we need a blog, how do we do it”, I think one should start with “How can we add value with a blog?”, “Is this value sufficient to justify the cost (mainly in time) of setting up and maintaining a blog?”, and “Is there a better way of doing this (e.g. a discussion forum)?” All these questions do is confirm if a blog is really the answer, and if so what the purpose of it is.
4) Having established that a blog is the right way to go, and decided on the objective, see steps below.
5) Choose blog SW and platform. Get someone to install.
6) Decide who and how content is to be added and updated. As you will know from your own blog, constantly adding new useful content is the most time-consuming activity.
7) Keep out spammers.
8) Don’t add just for the sake of adding. It is nice to go to a blog and see something new each day. However, if the something new isn’t that interesting it is just a waste of reader’s time and they will eventually turn off. Need to constantly add new value, but if nothing new then don’t add anything at all.
9) Decide how to publise your blog. If it is associated with a library, then paper notices at the library and a note on the library site are useful. Also search engines position if your clients can’t be effectively reached by the above two points.
10) Give thought to how to involve users. A 2-way blog generates more information and interest.
11) I haven’t really addressed the actual procedures here, but have tried to identify the points which I think the procedures need to be based on. Hope that somewhere in that there is something of interest.
Happy holidays, Karen! At OCLC we are working on writing blogging guidelines that are a little more helpful (eg, don’t write if you have nothing to say) and a little more clear cut (eg, do not discuss products and services…ours or others). With so many people blogging at OCLC now, we decided it is time.
And congrats in spades on the MFA.