Use of Blog in C U T Library

In this blog ,I will be discussing on the the effectiveness of Blog in the Library of Curtin University of Technology, Australia.

 Michael Stephens  writing in the July/August 2006 issue of Library Technology Reports, “Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software” characterized blogs this way:

A blog is a Web site that:

·     is organized chronologically by date (newest entries are usually at the top):

·     self-archives by date (done by software);

·     is updated somewhat regularly with relatively short entries:

·     includes links, more links, and still more links;

·     uses a unique URL (called a “permalink”) for each individual post;

·     provides an RSS feed that syndicates the blog’s content:

·     does all the dirty work of creating pages and archives

 

Darlene Fichter has underlined the importance of blogs in university libraries in promoting and marketing library services. According to Fitcher, university libraries can make maximum benefit by using blogs in the following areas.

·        Promote Library Events:

·        Support Your Dedicated Users:

·        Engage Your Community:

·        Support Your Community

·        Building New Ties

 These interesting and interactive attributes are embeded in to the blog of Curtin University of Technology Library , Australia. It can be seen that the vey design  of this library blog is attractive.There are several categories in that blog that permits readers to know more about library services .

They are listed below.

·        All

·        Book reviews (9)

·        EndNote (18)

·        Information Literacy (49)

·        Library News (75)

·        Library Services (57)

·        New or trial resources (36)

·        Opinion@Curtin University Library (5)

·        Suggestions (21)

Additionally, this blog has an archive of blogs for the several months and this permits readers to browse through these archived blogs. Different features of this blog helps library users to feel that they are in the library and the personalized style of content make them feel that some of the library staff is talking to them.

I am just citing an example of one of the entries in the latest blog, which depicts the user friendliness of the blog.

Reference Collection Favourites: Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands

Bacardi, Bic, Levi, Speedo, Cover Girl, Nivea, Gucci, Mighty Dog, Spam, Jif, Doritos, Gillette, Swatch, M & M’s, Twinkies, Velcro, Wrigley’s, Dom Perignon, WD-40, ChapStick, Fruit of the Loom, Yoplait and Zippo. How did these brands originate? How were they developed and marketed? How were the products innovative? Why were they successful?

You’ll find such basic background information about these and other well-known brands in this two volume encyclopaedia (Volume 1: Consumable Products and Volume II: Personal products). Each volume has indexes of Companies and People, Advertising Agencies and Brand Categories.

Marketing students will find this historical information useful but will also need to find more up-to-date information from the brand or company’s website and recent journal, newspaper articles and company data from searching databases such as Business Source Premier, ABI Inform and Factiva.

Shelf Number: R 658.834303 ENC

The print Reference Collection is located on the low shelves on Level Two of the Robertson Library.

Contributed by the Business Librarians, Research and Learning Services.

Posted by Constance Wiebrands

Library users are informed about the location of the new volumes reviewed and even the shelf number of the volume.

 I will just cite one more entry in the blog to show that how it is useful to users.

11 March 08

 

02:06:09 pm, Categories: New or trial resources

Science & Engineering New Resources – March 2008

See our weekly lists of new resources in the Library collection

Mining, Geology and Spatial Sciences	Agriculture and Environment
March 7 March 14	March 7 March 14
Science, Mathematics and Computing	Engineering
March 7 March 14	March 7 March 14

contributed by Kate Conway.

Posted by Kate

This type of blogs really help users in several ways as noted by Fitcher. 

  

williams and Jacobs have observed that the key to the popularity of blogs, it seems, is the scope for interactivity. While, initially, a blog may be treated by its maintainer as little more than a ‘news space’, it is not uncommon, over a period of time, for a distinctive style to emerge, in the course of writing entries and responding to feedback, that reflects the personal character of the blog’s creator. Significantly, rather than alienate a readership by exposing one’s personal traits and idiosyncrasies, this adds to the very popularity of a blog.