LJ Round Table: Talkin' Blogs

Like rice and beans orpeanut butter and jelly, librarians and blogs are a natural combination. Blogs, as librarians have been quick to discover, are great tools for communicating information, citing sources (through URLs), comparing facts (like differing versions of the same news story), and giving it all context—through links to previous stories, for example.

But unlike a transaction at the reference desk, blogs needn't be neutral. In fact, many librarian-authored blogs are personal, opinionated, humorous, and scathing. Although typically written by one person, blogs—especially those by librarians—cross-reference each other, creating what Karen Schneider, the Free Range Librarian, has dubbed the "biblioblogosphere." Diving into this sometimes raucous online conversation is often more invigorating, rewarding, timely, and fun than any panel discussion at a conference.

At the recent American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago, LJ gathered a group of bloggers (see "The Bloggers," p. 40) to discuss the impact of blogging on library practice. Our bloggers ranged from LIS students to university professors, from those who blog for personal pleasure to others who view it as professional communication. We wanted to know why people blog, how blogs create social networks, and what part they play in continued learning.

Stephens: How has blogging changed your professional lives?

Farkas: I can't say this 100 percent, but I believe that it helped me get a job. There are more new librarians than there are library jobs out there, and I didn't have a lot of experience, so what did they have to go on?… With a blog, they can see that she's passionate about the profession. She's tech-savvy. She has thoughts in her head. It made me a known entity.

Smart: Professionally, it's been really great. It has led to a lot of speaking engagements and training and publishing opportunities.

Schmidt: My blog is highly related to what I do. That's what I like to talk about, my experiences. I guess that sounds really self-centered, but what else am I going to write about?

Stephens: One of the best things we can do is tell stories in our blogs about our professional lives, for other folks to read about what we've done, what works, and what doesn't.

Haefele: I've been blogging through my education. It has created and formed my entire professional life. I mentioned in a post that I wished to go to the Computers and Libraries conference but couldn't, and then Michael [Stephens] contacted me and said it would be really great if I could go. I went, learned a lot…and was drawn into a professional community straight off the bat. Another aspect is that the students are reading [my blogs] as an educational source. When I got back from the conference a guy who sat next to me in class said, "So, Chad, how was the conference?" I was puzzled; I never mentioned I was going. Turns out he had seen a picture of me at the conference on [Michael's blog].

Stephens: Do you have a code of ethics for blogging?

Smart: Yes, part of that comes from my background; I did my undergraduate degree in journalism. Getting your facts straight is something that I strive for. Having a clear editorial policy and determining what gets into the blog and what doesn't is also part of that ethic, too, particularly for what I do because there's a lot of vendor interest.

Schmidt: Do vendors shoot stuff to you?

Smart: Yes…. And they definitely read it. If you make a mistake, just own up to it. I've misused words on my blog and had to back-pedal and put out further explanations and do damage control. But if you don't do that kind of thing, you don't have any sort of integrity.

Farkas: At the same time, I don't like the thought of us being journalists, because I'm writing about my life. I'm expressing my opinion, and I'm pretty darn opinionated.

Stephens: I have my personal [code] that I actually posted. Part of it is the idea of playing nice. I don't think in my world I'm ever going to write, "Oh my gosh, the blank librarian, I can't stand her blog, it sucks."

Vokey: I also don't have a strict set of guidelines that I follow in blogging, though I do feel some tension, internal conflicts, when I talk about things that are about my specific workplace…. I negotiate that as I go along. But it's something I think about all the time.

Schmidt: What we're talking about isn't necessarily just about blogging, because if we're putting our voice out there saying things in any kind of format, we'd still have to be responsible. One of the things that I don't like to hear is people talking about so-and-so getting in trouble for blogging. It's not really because they're blogging; it may just be because they're acting inappropriately. It's not the blog; it's just a tool.

Rosenberger: [My blog] started out of my virtual reference work…. I had to establish very early that what I was doing was totally independent and not related to my employers, but I've still had to be careful because the patron interactions that I'm talking about have occurred within the context of that job…. I eventually had to stop talking about a particular reference question since the reference work that I was doing, the transcripts, were the property of our clients.

Schmidt: We use blogs at Thomas Ford [Memorial Library] internally for staff communication, which has been wonderful, and my library web site is using Movable Type as a content management system. I set it up so more people could contribute and I would have to do less work.

Stephens: We have about 25 librarians and other staff trained to post to our blog so all of our most dynamic content goes there. We have an internal blog presence as well, but this is the external, the lifeline, where all of our news is shooting out.

Schmidt: We got a grant from the State of Illinois to digitize local history material…. Residents and past residents send us comments and basically annotate our data with more information about the houses that they lived in…it really has added value. It's been really good for community building.

Vokey: We also have an internal blog that was mostly an exercise to get people unfamiliar with blogging used to it in a very nonthreatening way. And it's caught on really well. We purchased Movable Type, and we're planning to use it to syndicate library news to our main page and also… we're going to use it with our subject guides so that each individual liaison librarian can provide news to his/her own specific pages.

Rosenberger: We need the conversation to be more two-way…newspapers are stashing away all their archives where blogs aren't able to link to them any more. We need permanent links to the content…. But we need to get to the place where it really is fluid, where [LJ] can link and say, 'Here are blogs that are discussing this subject.' But, we also need to go the other way, where we can look at a Library Journal story…or any other publisher's publications and be able to comment on that.

Farkas: Another issue I see between journals and blogs is [that] journals usually have either terrific successes or terrific failures described in them. You know, you don't have the little everyday things that your library is doing that someone else might find brilliant.

Kenney: How much do you know about your readers? Are you getting outside the LIS world?

Smart: I get readers in the RFID world …they often link to what I write about with libraries.

Schmidt: I get a lot of hits from outside the library world through Google, especially about instant messaging since I've written about IM hoaxes.

Farkas: I've had a lot of vendors reading my blog…. I've had a number of readers ask if I'll try their software and write about it.

Miller: Do you ever think about your connections to a tradition of radical self-expression?

Haefele: I wouldn't align myself with radical culture at all…. I think what we're doing here is, if anything, [in] the tradition of scholarly discussion and talking among colleagues.

Stephens: I never thought about this, but one of my purposes is getting folks in the profession to think about how they view the world and, one hopes, get them to change with the times, with the technology. Maybe that is my little streak of being radical.

Rosenberger: Publishing is intimidating for me. It's the whole, big, one-too-many communication thing…. For me it's being a part of a conversation. I'm sure publishing is that, too, but I just have never felt that way about it…. It's scholarly communication but not so formalized and more accessible.

Smart: As an academic librarian, I work in an institution where librarians are faculty and we are expected to publish. Blogging doesn't carry as much weight as, say, a peer-reviewed article does, but that's changing…. But when it comes to tenure, I have to say there are 500 hits to this site a day; it has led to this speaking engagement, so they can see a demonstrated impact.

Schmidt: I think different blogs serve different functions, so it might be hard to generalize. Someone might read a blog for a lot of quick links to certain places and someone might write more of a destination blog where there's a lot of content.

Haefele: I think there's still a series of, I don't know if you want to call them rules, but I like to see that writers take care in their blog, like spell-checking, and that they are passionate about making sure they communicate well. That's what makes it interesting to your readership.

Farkas: I like ones that provide original content.… I like the blogs where they're talking about what's going on at their institution, or they're providing software reviews or talking about their life but in a universal way. That's what makes a blog useful.

Stephens: I look for a mission statement …something that says what the blog is about.

Farkas: Updating is important. Keeping it fresh.

Rosenberger: Blogs that jump out are the blogs that connect me with things that I'm interested in, that I would otherwise have no chance to hear of.