As part of the strategic plan development we went through at the end of last year, the library staff decided to go about watching trends and developments in library land more intentionally than we have been so far. Like most librarians, we do our best to keep up with developments, but we wanted a way to learn from each other and to make sure that we collectively watch topics that are of interest to the library as a whole. So each department came up with a list of potential “watch list” topics and then we narrowed it down to “only” 38 topics. Now all we needed was a place to gather all of our watching and learning in one place.
Enter the Library Watch List Blog. (I would link to it, but it’s password protected, so there’s no point.) We had an all-staff training session on basic WordPress blogging and then divvied up the topics so that even though we can each write about any topic, we also have someone responsible for each of the topics. And today, I posted to it for the first time (and I’m the 8th post).
I sure hope this blog takes off, not only because it’ll be a fabulous resource but also because it’ll give us a chance to learn collaboratively from each other while simultaneously practicing some social software use. It may be hard for some people, though. It takes a good bit of time, and blogging is completely foreign to some staff members (I know that I would have been pretty hesitant a year ago). Still, I think there’s a good chance that some people will really take to it, and I look forward to learning from my co-workers.
Hi Iris,
Great idea. Even having the conversation about trends to watch is worthwhile, even if nothing further came out of it. But looks like even more is coming from it.
Just a techie question, how did you password the blog so others couldn’t read it? I’m working on an internal communication blog using WordPress and want to put a passwording layer in front of it (I know how to do it once people get to the WordPress site).
Did you use WordPress functionality or something else? – I have this fantasy that there is a little password application that you can shove on top of any web site that you want “closed off”.
If you have the time, I’d really appreciate it if you could email me at domain: gmail dot com. User: sirexkat. It’s OK if you’re too busy.
Hi Sirexkat. Good to see you here. (I’ve loved your recent blog posts!)
I was not in charge of doing this, so I don’t know off the top of my head, but I’ll check into it for you and let you know what I find out.
Based on what I know of the way the rest of the college’s web space functions, I think that they’ve installed the wordpress blog onto a server that is set up for customized password protection. Hmmm, I’m just talking in circles. Here’s what I know now, and I’ll get back to you later with more details: we request blogs from our web group on campus, they have a blog request form that asks us what level of privacy we want (everyone, only Carleton people, only people from specified departments, only specific people that we name individually), and then they provide us with blogs set up to our specifications.
Here’s our blog administration site.
Just as an update, we continued with more discussion via email. If anybody wants to know more, just email me.