Ref Logs Now

Internal web logs can rejuvenate reference

By Emily Barton and Arlene Weismantel -- Library Journal, 10/1/2006

The reference desk at Michigan State University (MSU) had settled into a routine, but when recent library school grad Emily Barton collaborated with Arlene Weismantel, the head of reference, on using a web log as the internal memory for reference, the project took off. What follows is the postmortem web log conversation about the implementation of a new communication tool for staff at MSU during the 2005–06 school year.

The idea by Emily Barton

I had a lot to learn when I began my job here at MSU fresh out of library school. Like at many libraries, the reference staff used an email distribution list and a notebook at the desk to share questions received, helpful resources to answer common inquiries, searching tips, and so on. When a student came to the desk, I would have to search through my email or the notebook trying to find these helpful hints. For assignments given well before the due date, it was difficult to find the information in my email, and sometimes I had already deleted the relevant messages. In library school, I used blogs as a way to communicate for group projects and suggested that they might work as a communication tool for the reference department.

Re: The idea by Arlene Weismantel

When Emily suggested using a blog to communicate reference desk information more effectively, I was intrigued. I liked the blog because it would serve as a searchable archive (you can search by date, category, word, or phrase) so we can refer back to our work when the same assignment pops up a year later. Another benefit is that many blogging software tools are freely available on the web, so the only cost to setting up a blog would be staff time. It could also serve as a training tool for new staff members. I thought this would be a good chance for all of us to become educated about blogs. I had never used a blog before and thought this was an unacceptable gap in my technical knowledge!

Choosing the software by Emily Barton

I consulted with our systems department about choosing blog software. We wanted free, open source software if possible so that we could modify the code and fix any bugs that popped up. We knew of several free packages that seemed to fill our needs, including Movable Type, WordPress, and Blosxom. I also referred to a resource comparing blog software: www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm.

Our systems department decided on WordPress. It's one of the most commonly used blogging packages, so community modifications (in the form of plug-ins) are readily available. Some concerns with WordPress are that maintenance can be cumbersome and the software must be installed again each time the library wants to create a new blog. When choosing software, avoid those programs that are not protected from blog spamming. Be sure to choose blog software that has good spam protection, to prevent those who would fill your blog comments with advertisements and useless information. Akismet is the best of breed spam preventor option for those using WordPress.

Tweaking the blog by Emily Barton

The reference desk blog needed some tweaking, meaning template programming in PHP [a programming language] before it would work for us. The WordPress default blog theme is not easy to navigate. For example, something as simple as finding your way back to the main page from a comments page is not transparent. Therefore, I made quite a few changes to improve navigation to make it easier for the staff to use. We didn't want the Reference Desk blog to be openly available, so in order to safeguard patron privacy, I limited the IP range to library staff computers, thus blocking access for all other Internet users. The reference blog can be read by all library staff, but only the reference staff have passwords and access to post or comment to the blog.

Training the staff by Emily Barton

I offered several different types of training sessions. I demonstrated the blog at a reference meeting a month before it was ready to be launched because I didn't want people to feel that the blog was sprung on them at the last minute. The staff provided me with feedback, and I made changes based on their comments. One notable change was adding a plug-in so that the staff would be notified by email each time a post was made. Next, I held a hands-on training session and provided the staff with a detailed guide that they could follow during the session and use for reference. I also offered individual sessions for those who either couldn't attend the hands-on session or wanted a refresher. The variety of training sessions made it more likely that the technology would be used successfully and accepted.

Re: Training the staff by Arlene Weismantel

Blog policies need to be established and communicated to the staff as well. Protecting user privacy and confidentiality is integral to the mission of the MSU Libraries. Since this blog was intended to serve as an archive, I stressed that information that might identify the patron should not be included.

Re: Tweaking the blog by Arlene Weismantel

Reference staff are keenly observant and very analytical. Emily received many suggestions to improve the blog. She provided estimates of how long each improvement would take and was candid if she didn't have the programming skills to complete the task, requiring us to ask the systems department for help. Our relationship with the systems department is strong, which helped us immensely. I made some decisions about what usability changes would and wouldn't be made, like previous- and next-entry links, given that tackling some of them would take what I thought was an unreasonable amount of time for a relatively small improvement in usability. I spent a lot of time asking, “At what point does perfectionism become the enemy of innovation?”

It's important to note that libraries have the option of using Blogger, a freely available hosted application that requires no installation, knowledge of servers, or programming. Controlled vocabularies and categories are starting to be rolled out for Blogger, however, which makes it even more useful in a library environment.

The response from staff by Emily Barton

I received varying reactions to the reference blog after it had been up for a month. Many staff blogged regularly and used the archive feature to track down previously posted information. Others found it difficult to break away from using the reference email distribution list. Libraries are often early adopters of technology, and our staff are often confronted with new software. Some were more than happy to try something new and required little more than a brief demonstration before becoming regular bloggers. Others were less than enthusiastic and were reluctant to invest much time in what they felt was a potentially short-lived technology.

Re: The response from staff by Arlene Weismantel

The MSU Libraries' culture is dominated by email. Almost everyone has their email open constantly, and it often functions like instant messaging software with conversations taking place in semi–real time. So it didn't surprise me that some got annoyed about signing into the blog to post reference information. The primary reason to implement the blog was that it could be a better searchable archive than our email distribution list. When we were scratching our heads at the desk thinking, “I know this question came up last semester, but I can't remember the best sources to use,” the blog would be far more helpful than an email that either couldn't be found or had been deleted. It took some people a while to settle into the new routine. When an email came through that would be beneficial to our blog archive, I asked the sender to please copy and paste the text into the blog.

The reference blog was a good way to provide an opportunity for the staff to gain some hands-on experience with software that had definitely shown its staying power by 2005. Back in 2002, Steven Stone wrote an article for Kentucky Libraries titled “The Library Blog: A New Communication Tool,” in which he described how a blog replaced the reference department's word processing file where frequently asked questions and answers were kept.

Blogs and more blogs by Emily Barton

By August 2005, just about when we launched, nearly 80,000 new blogs were being created every day, with 14.2 million in existence, according to the State of the Blogosphere Report published in February 2006. The MSU Libraries have created many more blogs since the first reference blog. When I started my job there was not always a lot of communication among departments. In 2005, I also had suggested that we start a blog called Heads-up! to serve as an internal newsletter with information about projects, grants, scholarly and professional activities, awards, etc. The blog format makes the newsletter very easy and quick to produce. Unlike our other blogs, Heads-up! has one author, and there are no comments posted in response to the news items. The information is sent out through email and archived in blog format, so people don't have to sign on to the blog unless they want to look at the archive. The Heads-up! archive is regularly accessed, though, largely because personnel announcements are included. We designed another blog to keep track of all the questions received at all public service desks throughout the library system for three two-week periods during the summer, fall, and spring semesters. We recorded every encounter from “Can I use the stapler?” to “I need to find research on airflow through elliptical pipes.” The question-recording blog featured check boxes so that people could identify their service desk, i.e., Veterinary Medicine Library, Main Library Copy Center, Email Reference Service, Circulation Desk, etc. In retrospect, we should have included a controlled vocabulary so that the person entering the data could assign a category to the question identifying the discipline or type of question, i.e., literature, math, history, directions, office supplies, etc.

Keeping track of questions by Arlene Weismantel

The information gathered in the question-recording blog was used by the Reference and Information Services Review committee with the goal of improving the way we provide service to users. We discovered that the types of questions asked at the information desk were not significantly different from those asked at the reference desk and ultimately decided to merge the two desks in a central location in the main library. The web design group also reviewed these questions when redesigning our site in order to move from navigation based on the library's administrative hierarchy to patron-based navigation. Of course, both the question-recording blog and the original reference blog are a great source of practice questions for training purposes.

That said, we've only just begun to analyze the information collected in the question-recording blog. It was relatively easy to download the data into an Excel spreadsheet so we can code the questions for discipline, level of difficulty, etc. We expect to learn a lot more from the information.

The future of blogging at MSU Libraries by Emily Barton

Staff are now blogging regularly to communicate internally and with the public, and we consider our experiment a success. Now that we have a better idea about multiple blog support and categorization, we're focused on choosing another platform. Following the change in software we will need to customize it, create training guides, and begin training the staff on the new software. It may seem like starting over, but we're past the hurdle of demonstrating the value of internal blogging.

Freedom to grow by Arlene Weismantel

After using the internal blogs, many other librarians jumped on the bandwagon and began implementing blogs for patrons and professional organizations as well. We now have news blogs on branch library pages, and one librarian moved his newsletter to a blog format. Supporting librarians when they are willing to take risks and experiment with new ways of doing things provides us with great new tools. It also makes the MSU Libraries a fun and interesting place to work.