– mike

If anything, we need to encourage more posting by more people in more areas on more topics.

The current practice of monthly emails sent to the former LISt readership with links back to the blog hopefully suffices to get the word out those who aren’t getting updates via email-subscriptions or RSS (or are new to LIS).

As one component of a larger suite of communication methods, the hope was that it could be an easy to use, web-based platform to keep each other and our users informed about our work, and one that would allow for open discussion and interaction. The team has completed the task of setting up a single blog for LIS, and will continue to offer support and training for using web-tools. It is now up to LIS to decide how to best use the blog, if at all.

The blog is only one form of communication, and I can’t imagine that it will replace the need for using other web-based platforms, email, face-to-face, or phone. All have their place.
The web team would like to propose to the Area Directors that we devote time for a discussion about LIS communications at the next All LIS staff meeting.

As a manager in LIS, I find the blog to be a useful and easy way to communicate updates, changes and developments within my workgroup – without flooding email in-boxes. Also, when I forget what so and so said about this and that, I can easily find it again by searching the blog!

As an employee, I find that blogs are a perfect way for me to stay informed about issues across LIS and Campus, and allows me to easily participate in professional and personal forums. Using a feed reader allows me to control when and what I want access to, reduces the overload in my bulging inbox, and saves me lots of work checking websites for updates. As an information and technology organization, I think it is the personal and professional responsibility of all LIS staff to learn how to navigate and use the tools that our users use, and for LIS Administration to promote the use of these tools by using them and by offering training in their use.

Then came email – it was a lot easier and it used fewer resources, so it was used more frequently, and we became better informed. (Some may say “too well informed.”)

In my view, a blog is simply the next step in this progression. It has the advantage of informing those you may not otherwise think to inform (like Ken, above) and is no more troublesome to check than email messages, particularly with RSS functionality. I have to say I really do not understand the resistance on the part of some.

As for 2 separate LIS blogs – internal vs. external, I can agree that it adds to the confusion. But Areas and workgroups within LIS should be able to have separate, private blogs you have to login to (and have permission to see). If the info is something that can be shared widely, then someone can make a post for the main LIS blog that is suitable for general consumption. Once you share something outside your area or workgroup, its practically public knowledge anyways. Yet to carry out our work, we need a place to debate our work before results go public and a place to share what we are working on with just our immediate workgroup and supervisor.

-Joseph

In my personal opinion, public facing websites are a poor choice for private communications. I would suggest the use of the lis@middlebury.edu email address for discussions that need to remain within our department or face-to-face meetings. For the same reason, I suggest placing documents that need to remain within LIS on MiddFiles, rather than hosting them on a protected page on the website, blog or wiki.