The Library Blog - a Changing Role?

In the early days of our blog, we highlighted things directly coming up in courses or concerts. A Beethoven concerto? We posted links to useful material about Beethoven.  A concert series? We found links to the artistes taking part.  And so on.  But as time went by, it was obvious that people would be searching for that kind of info themselves.

We still post information that will help our students for particular assignments - eg, how to search our online resources. How to conduct a literature search, or how to cite references in your essay.  What goes in a bibliography.  New material for a particular course - such as the Dalcroze material we bought in recently.  And reminders about things that we've mentioned before, if appropriate!

Sometimes we also flag up events, external courses or funding opportunities.  If we're sent a bundle of leaflets, then we may find the hyperlink and mention it online.  Or we may flag up new publications, or things that will appeal to a wide cross-section of our readers, or initiatives and projects of library-related interest.

Knowing that more people use Twitter than visit library blogs, we tend to post links to the blog, via Twitter.  We also share our blogposts with teaching colleagues. If they think the info relevant, then hopefully they share it with students that they teach.  Whilst Moodle and the Portal have vital information for our students, we like to think that our blog has a complementary role, and also of course, it can reach out to a wider range of people, not just staff and students.

So in our opinion, the library blog is not dead.  We have our own niche.  We're glad you found us - do call again!

Determined Organists, or, How the Royal College of Organists acquired a Library

The Whittaker Library's music librarians have just been to Birmingham for the annual Annual Study Weekend of IAML (UK and Ireland), our professional assocation.  Karen was asked to author a blogpost about some of the sessions.  Here's the first, about the Royal College of Organists Library.

What Makes A Good Blog? Twelve Tips for Library Bloggers

WHAT MAKES A GOOD BLOG?

We looked at our blog traffic over the past month.  How many people actually visited, and were there any patterns?  Well yes, actually – there were!

1. The bottom line is, you have to keep posting.  If you don’t post, the visitors don’t visit.  The more you post, the more they visit. 
2. Schedule your blogposts! You can schedule in Blogger and Wordpress.  This helps take care of days when you know you won’t be around to post.
3. Be sure to share your posts on Twitter, and use something like Bufferapp to schedule tweets too:  http://bufferapp.com
4. Take care with headings.  Once you’ve uploaded your post, the hyperlink won’t change. So use catchy headings with words that Google can find; you can change the blogpost heading later if you need to.
5. Always add keywords/tags.  Try to make these consistent over time.
6. Know your audience – what makes them tick?
7. Know your product – we’re a library, so our main concern is to promote physical and electronic resources, not to mention our ever-helpful library staff! 
8. In a library context, e-resources attract interest.  So does copyright, interesting new stock, musicians’ health, music competitions, creativity, learning and research skills, and employability. 
9. Weblinks are good.  Readers want to know where they can find more.
10. Don’t try to write a scholarly essay, and keep the blogposts a reasonable length.
11. Have a conversational tone: expressions like “the musicologists amongst us” are not inclusive, and won’t really even attract the musicologists!  You want readers to react with, “Hey, this is for me!”, and not “Oh, stuffy academics again”. 
12. Be the same age as your audience.  No, that’s silly – obviously we’re kidding!  Your audience could be any age.  Students can be any age.  Staff can be marginally older than students, or heading for retirement.  You cannot be the same age as your audience, but you can try to ensure that your posts will appeal to as wide an audience as possible.