Weblogs and Libraries

Citation

Barker, P. (2005), "Weblogs and Libraries", The Electronic Library, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 143-145. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470510582835

For a variety of reasons, during the last few years, weblogs (or “blogs” for short) have become an important electronic resource. Amongst the many uses that they have, some of the more popular ones include knowledge management, communication with others, ongoing commentary, debate, personal reflection and sources of news and information. Blogs are increasingly finding useful applications within all sorts of organisations; this book explores some of their uses in libraries. The material in the book is organised into eight chapters and an index.

The author starts off (chapter 1) by explaining what blogs are and how the phenomenon of “blogging” has arisen. She then moves on to consider blogs as “sources of information” (chapter 2); this raises the important question of evaluating blog sites and their content. Some guidelines for the evaluation of “information weblogs” are presented and then the author lists some selected examples of “respectable” blogs for different subject areas – for example, social sciences, technology, books and reading, and so on. In chapter 3 the author discusses the difficulty of “finding weblogs” that are relevant to particular interests and subject areas. She outlines a number of different approaches including directories, search engines and meta sites.

In chapters 4 and 5 the author turns her attention to her own field of interest: information science and libraries. This part of the book commences with a discussion of the scope and potential of weblogs in these areas and then presents reviews of particular sites that illustrate the various developments that have been taking place. This is followed in chapter 5 (Weblogs created by Libraries: the State of the Art) by a description of the results of a research project that the author has undertaken in order to explore the role and uptake of weblogs in libraries. The project used a methodology based on “content analysis” in order to identify which countries were producing most blogs, the kinds of libraries that were creating them, their content and the purposes for which they were being used.

Chapter 6 (entitled “Creating a Weblog – the Options”) is the largest chapter in the book. It starts off by listing and describing the four main ways that libraries might use to produce and host weblogs. A useful summary of the advantages and disadvantages of each approach is then presented. Having discussed the basic principles of the different methods of creating a blog, the author goes on to describe particular tools that might be employed for their creation (Blogger, Greymatter, LiveJournal, Moveable Type, Radio Userland and many more); various free and for‐a‐fee hosting services are also discussed. The chapter concludes with a useful section on Rich Site Summary (RSS), which is a widely used format for sharing (or syndicating) content on the web.

Having designed and produced a library weblog, its ongoing development depends upon the successful realisation of a number of important management issues. These are discussed in chapter 7. The chapter commences with a discussion of the importance of “strategic planning” as related to weblog development. However, what is said could equally well apply to any other computer‐based project – such as web site development. Some of the necessary management issues covered in the subsequent parts of this chapter include managing interactivity, ongoing maintenance, budgeting, promoting the blog and evaluation of the weblog.

There is a lot of useful information in this book. Each chapter has its own self‐contained reference section – and so, there is no “collective” bibliography at the end of the book. However, having said this, the very last chapter (chapter 8 – Sources of Information about Weblogs) does perform this function by providing lists of references that could support “follow up” activities after (or during) the reading of the book.

Overall, I think this book provides a very useful introduction to weblogs and blogging both within the context of their use in libraries and for more general use. The book is well‐written and has been well‐researched. It contains a valuable collection of links to sources of information about weblogs and provides many useful hints and tips regarding the pragmatic issues involved in blogging.

Note: Laurel Clyde recently wrote a viewpoint (“Weblogs – are you serious?”) describing some potential roles for and the uptake of weblogs in libraries. This appeared in The Electronic Library, 22(5), pp. 390‐2, 2004.