Blog Post 1: Blogs & wikis in special libraries

Over the summer, I interned at the editorial library at The Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach, Fla. During my three-month stint, the editorial library had a blog that three of the researchers posted to pretty regularly. They posted information about new resources, vetted tools they found on the Web that may help the reporters and reminders about tools the library already had access to for articles of a seasonal nature that come up every year. It’s hard to keep track of all the useful sources you don’t use on a regular basis. I think the blog was helpful in that sense. I don’t recall seeing very many comments to postings, but I’ve sent an e-mail to my mentor there and will update this posting with her response.

In the meantime, this article, “The Enterprise Blogosphere” (you may need to log in to EZ Proxy with your Dominican I.D. number to access it) from InfoWorld.com examines the use of blogs and wikis in a corporate setting. It proposes that blogs and wikis have opposite intentions. Among providing best practice tips for using blogs and wikis, the article suggests that blogs provide a platform for an individual voice whereas wikis encourage collaborative dialogue by allowing people to edit and delete posts. Depending on the intended role of the tool and how it’s set up, either can benefit the library’s users. Just as we evaluate components of our collections, we should also evaluate the technology tools to make sure they will enhance our service to our communities.

Have any experience using a wiki or a blog in a corporate or special library setting? Let us newbies know about it.

Posting debut

Wow, I've created a blog for my LIS 753 class at Dominican University.