WebJunction

Joe Sipocz and Michael Stephens, the brains behind the SJCPL blog project.

If you’ve been following the buzz, you know that blogs are diary-like online repositories, often of a personal nature, and usually imbued with the personality of the “blogger” who maintains it.   The extraordinary rise of blogging as a social, cultural, and technological phenomenon might well qualify as a fad.   But there’s good evidence that the blogging medium might be more than the Pet Rocks or Beanie Babies of the young millennium. 

And if you’re wondering whether blogging can apply to your library’s services, consider this:

The SJCPL Web Log (Blog) will keep our patrons informed and amused with information about upcoming releases in the worlds of publishing and entertainment, local and Web resources as well as news about programs and events throughout the library system. The blog is authored by SJCPL librarians.

Like a political manifesto, the Saint Joseph County (IN) Public Library’s mission statement for its library blog spells it out with clarity and fervor: “Our blog is good, it’s going to be worth your while to visit it, and we create it ourselves.”

The main library and eight branches of the SJCPL are located in and around South Bend, Indiana, a city of 100,000 that is the home of at least two legends: the University of Notre Dame and 2004 national spelling bee champion David Tidmarsh (how do you spell “autochthonous”?).  The library is a bit of a legend itself, having been named once again by the HALPR rankings to the Top Ten list of best libraries serving populations of 100,000-250,000.*

Of course, it takes more than good spelling or good ratings to make a library blog that’s a useful and targeted vehicle for delivering library services.   But Joe Sipocz, head of collection development, and special projects librarian Michael Stephens have an approach that makes their blog more than just blather. 

But where would this content come from?  A bit of reflection on the habitual “ranting and raving” (in a good sense!) of branch librarians about current bestsellers provided the key.  The library blog would be a way to share the staff’s enthusiasms directly with a wide public audience.  The natural enthusiasm with which library people approach their daily work would ensure that the blog would be an infectious and lively way to spread the word that the library is a meeting place for the community—both literally and virtually.   As Joe and Michael envisioned it, the blog would be a “cyber-branch.” More than a Web site, it would be a place where patrons could congregate and share.

Internet innovation is a tradition at SJCPL: their Web site dates all the way back to 1994 and was in fact the first public library site in the United States.  You can see the current incarnation of this venerable online institution at www.libraryforlife.org.   But what you see today has been radically transformed by the blogging experience—the entire site is now consistent with the look and feel of the blog.

When SJCPL first launched its blog in May of 2003 (with an homage to Harry Potter and the Mountain of Boxes), much of the posting responsibility fell to Joe Sipocz.   Though already a blogger himself, he wanted to engage the rest of the staff in the work as soon as possible.  The library’s administration quickly got on board; as Michael Stephens puts it, “there are some really forward-thinking folk upstairs.”  Meetings with department heads (the response: “yes—when do we start?”), development of a 90-minute training session on the basics of blogging, and an HTML cheat sheet were enough to start the enthusiastic flow of content from all parts of the library.

Some of the other staff already had blogging experience when they started posting on the library blog—but even those who didn’t have warmed quickly to the task.  Regular posters include representatives from reference, local history, children’s, periodicals, collection development, the branches, publicity, and AV.  Joe offers a key piece of advice to staff for their blog posts: “Don’t agonize—just write about what you’re already working on.”

The title of the blog, “SJCPL Lifeline,” plays on the larger theme of “your library for life”—but also points out the intention of making the blog an essential part of library users’ lives.

So what about the nuts and bolts?   With its long tech experience, SJCPL has management of the blog down to a science.  They’re using Movable Type blogging software, with the service hosted at lis.org.  Since the library was already quite Web-savvy, the additional costs of launching the blog have been minimal: the software was not expensive, and time spent by staff in creating posts is minimal, since they are posting on subjects closely linked to work they’re already doing.  As with nearly all blog packages, Moveable Type provides automatic RSS syndication, so patrons have access to feeds from the blog within news aggregators.

Down the road, the library’s goal is to incorporate additional RSS functionality into the blog.  They’d also like to start “photo-blogging,” giving people visual clues to what’s happening at the library.  This is the logical extension of the marketing orientation of the library’s blog activities.  And, as the technology improves, it will provide the capability for patrons to offer their own comments—but the proliferation of “comment spam” makes that impossible just now.

Michael doesn’t feel that a library’s size should be a barrier to its exploration of the blogging concept for itself.   “Blogging is one of the most effective things a medium or small library can do to reach a lot a people without spending a lot.  I urge all libraries to do this!”

You can contact Joe Sipocz at j.sipocz@sjcpl.organd Michael Stephens at mstephens7@mac.com.  For more discussion on the subject of libraries and blogs, see the WebJunction article on Blogging, RSS, and Libraries.

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