Week 3: Best Practice in Professional Blogging

I hope everyone was able to enjoy their long weekend this week. I've always found it odd that people would celebrate Victoria Day with lots of drinking, given that it's a holiday based on a Queen who wasn't exactly known for excess. :P

First things first, my blog list: I don't visit a lot of blogs, so I don't feel I have many examples of blogs to share. The ones that I do visit are:
Engadget - a tech. news feed
Joystiq - a gaming new feed
Overhead at Western - which is now infamous, I'm sure
Librarian Avengers - a pretty amusing blog about our wonderful field!

I found Scout's "Blogging Strategy 101: A Primer" to be interesting, though a lot of it did seem to be "common sense" advice to me, but maybe I just have a mind of a marketer or P.R. person. To me, it just seems logical to only use a blog if it's relevant to your mission and audience and also to make the blog relevant and choose an editor who understands blogging and can communicate organizational ideals to the public. That said, it is an entirely useful resource for anyone who does want to ensure that they "do blogging right". Certainly, I do agree that lots of blogs do it wrong and could really gain from checking out articles like Scout's.

Similarly, Nielsen is quite right that usability is of vital importance to professional (or even public personal) blogs. As others have pointed out, Nielsen makes some odd design choices with this article, though maybe it is for the sake of readability and compatibility. I personally found this list to be more informative, which probably points more to the fact that I am in some sense more marketing/communication driven then usability. Of course, since these things are all connected on the web, I found it most illuminating to see the more technical ways in which an administrator can make his or her web presence more usable.

Of particular interest to me is the issue of blogging ethics. I'm someone that's long been concerned with issues of ethics and especially business/professional ethics. Karen Schneider points out some excellent examples of what not to do when you're blogging in a professional manner. Even when you're blogging on a personal level, it's important to at least avoid gossip and slander and to try and get your citations and links right. Rebecca Blood notes the similarities and differences between bloggers and professional journalists in her article and does an excellent job of making a case for the need for ethics in blogging practice while cyberjournalist.net offers an impressive "Blogger's Code of Ethics" which explains just how bloggers can be ethical while keeping their own voice.

Darlene Fichrer's "Why and How to Use Blogs to Promote Your Library’s Services" is something of a continuation from last week's readings, only it goes more into the "how" aspects of ethics and usability. I found many of her suggestions to be inspiring and innovative and she also provided some great examples of blogs, which are useful for any librarian who is interested in starting a library blog. When writing a blog for a library, of course, it is vital that the blogger recognize that he/she/they are representing their organization rather than themself. In this sense, the blogger must take the utmost care in presenting information in a professional and ethical way: being sure to list proper citations, use conventional grammar and spelling and making every effort to keep "personal" views or issues separate from the library's blog.

I, personally, am not too hung up on good grammar for a personal blog, as it only really reflects badly upon the individual in that case, but I certainly am not a fan of seeing grammar or spelling butchered constantly on a blog/web site. In fact, I must say that without even reading Schneider's article, I can say that blogs that are poorly written are generally blogs that I do not revisit. Not that I'm particularly grammar-elitist, but if I am going somewhere for information, then I at least expect the author to be coherent enough that they give the impression that they know what they're talking about! :)

I think multi-author blogs are a great idea for libraries. Since librarians seldom have one consistent voice, and our experiences and specializations can vary so much, it would be excellent to be able to draw upon different peoples' experiences when keeping a library blog. Of course there can be pitfalls such as a lack of consistency in style and a lack of that "personal" touch that blogs are known course, but is a workplace-centered blog really supposed to represent a person's self anyway? Should it not represent the organizational identity, which, in my opinion, is the collective experience of everyone who works for that organization. To me, grammatical style (and the inconsistency therein) is the only major roadblock to a library blog appearing similar to any other blog. Since it's nice to use simple and direct language when blogging professionally, I suspect there wouldn't be too much distinction between the writing styles of the authors, and even if there were, I personally would've perceive it as a bad thing: unless of course an individual's "style" was poor grammar. :P

In regards to the case study (and I promise I'll be brief as this is getting quite long now!), I once against was fascinated by the differences between the various blogs and how you can really create an interesting and unique web presence with the use of a blog. My least favourite blog was actually the St. Joseph County Public Library GameBlog, which I felt was not particularly well-aimed at its target audience. As gaming has become more social on the internet, so too has the competitive socializing aspect of the gaming community. I was really surprised to see very little of this sort of information posted on the blog (for instance, GamerTags (Microsoft's way of giving gamers bragging rights on their web profiles) or even things like top scores or challenges for gamers to try and exceed. For a gaming blog, they seem like noteworthy lacks, though given that it is a public library's website, perhaps they are trying to protect the privacy of their clients.

I, personally, really liked the MabryOnline teacher blogs. Although it can be difficult to see such information posted online, I guess I feel like this would be public information anyway, and none of it is personal. Having worked for the last few weeks with Transport Canada and been told an indecent number of times what sort of information we shouldn't let get out there, I guess I don't really see any of this information as harmful to anyone, so I can see it as a useful resource for parents, students and teachers. Maybe I'm just naieve, but one of the best things that has come out of the Internet "age" to me has been the ability to transfer written information in a very fast way, and this blog is certainly an extension of that. Gone are the days where kids can fib they don't have any homework. :P

I guess that's all for me for this week, though I'm sure you're glad to read that! Thanks for reading, everyone!