Bothersome blogging

Are you library-lorn? <a href="mailto:LJfeedback@reedbusiness.com">Maybe LJ can help</a>.

-- Library Journal, 11/07/2006

Dear LJ:

One of my staff has taken to blogging. While the library encourages staffers to be active online, this person seems to think that no one else is going to read what she writes. She discusses work, of course, including other staff and problem patrons using some pretty stiff language, and I’m afraid she’s seriously going to offend someone and the library is either going to get pulled into a lawsuit or a union problem. The blogger writes at home on her own time, and the library doesn’t have a policy in place preventing staff from speaking publicly about the workplace, but I think this is a ticking bomb. What should I do?
—Ready To Explode

Dear Ready:

This is tricky territory, and the library field is littered with the corpses of managers and staffers who couldn’t handle it. “Freedom of expression,” the mantra of the public library, library associations, and the profession, is also the main attraction of the blog. The hypocrisy of the yawning gap between librarian lip service to this freedom and library practices to curtail it is legendary.

To get to the point, most libraries have policies in place to inform staff as to who “officially” speaks for the library and its services and policies. You need to write and issue such a policy immediately! On the other hand, staff do not sign away their First Amendment rights when they take a library job. If a member of a library staff blogs on her or his own time, computer, and connections, there is little you can do to stop it. So when you issue the new policy that spells out who is the “official” library spokesperson be sure to have several meetings to explain to the staff what they can or cannot do in the name of the library.

Creating blogs on the library’s website, and letting staff openly express themselves there, is a great signal that staff are trusted to know enough to speak and write well for the library. If you find some who don’t know enough, you tell them and teach them. If they still don’t get it, you tell them to look for work somewhere else. The most important thing is to listen to staff, trust them, empower them to speak, and teach them the what and why of library policy so they can speak effectively about it. Sure, let a thousand flowers bloom, but be sure you teach which seeds should be planted.—Library Journal