In case you haven’t noticed, since LISt turned into a blog, we’ve stopped using LISt to publish the notes from our AD meetings. We’re now wondering if anyone misses hearing about the topics we’ve been discussing. One thought we’ve had is to morph the LIS Restructuring Blog, which is a secure blog that only folks in LIS can access, into a LIS Notes Blog, where any/all groups that have regular meetings and wish to share their notes with others can do so in a secure, semi-private space.
This post asks three connected questions: One, should we get back into the habit of publishing these notes? Two, in general, would a single place where all these notes could reside be a welcome thing? And three, does a blog sound like the right place for storing this kind of information?
Please use the comments below or send me an email.
— mike
1. Yes, I found it useful to know what was being discussed at the top level.
2. Yes, having a central spot for all groups – committees, teams & otherwise to post would be useful as a general communications medium.
3. A blog would be okay – that would keep the postings in chronological order.
1. Yes, definitely!
2. Probably a good idea to have things centralized.
3. The blog is fine with me personally, but I’ll be blunt: I know of some folks who are … intimidated by (or refuse to use, or have an aversion to, or just plain don’t like) blogs. (And you probably won’t hear from them that they don’t want important information available only on a blog.)
Arabella, I wonder what’s really behind the aversion to blogs. Is it the association that the name has with what happens in the free-for-all blogosphere? If we called the space a notes website and just happened to use blogging software to make it easy to manage the site, would that help? What is the alternative?
1. Yes – please publish AD meeting notes.
2. Yes – single place to reside is good. What about work groups that already post dept meeting notes to their own dept blog? How to minimize having to post in two places? Links? Blogrolls? Adding any blog to a blog/feed reader is an easy way to stay connected. How to avoid blog silos?
3. A blog is great format for easily and quickly disseminating info across an organization. Can a private blog have an RSS feed? What kind of permissions would be set up? Who can view? Write? Comment?
1. Yes, I like seeing the AD notes, especially when Terry does them :)
2. Central place is ok – currently lots of meeting notes are on snowleopard (very easy to save a word doc on own computer then save to snowleopard – adding to blog an extra step). Also the server has been very stable – can easily go back in time. How long will we stick with wordpress b4 we switch to the next great technology/platform?
3. blog format – fine as long as each group has its own catagory so can quickly see just that groups notes. (Can there be a link to another blog for notes such as circs?) I still want to get an email (or put it in LISt) whenever the AD notes are posted – I’m fine with following the link to the blog. I don’t want an RSS feed – I’ll ignore it – email gets my attention.
I really can’t answer the question ‘what’s behind the aversion to blogs?’ It’s definitely easier to just get an email in your inbox with the AD meeting notes – no links to click, or headline links that one needs to click to read the entire entry, just open the email and read the minutes. I don’t really know if there’s more to it than convenience for the reader.
1.) Yes, I like seeing the AD notes.
2.) One place would be preferred.
3.)I am one of the people that would prefer email over blogs. I find it much more convenient mostly due to the extra clicking Arabella mentioned in her post above mine. The Blog also just looks too cluttered for me. What’s the deal with all the tags in different sizes for instance? They take my attention away from the important information.
I’d like to see the AD notes reintroduced. Having an idea of what stuff is coming up and what high level planning is going on is something I thought was useful in the past. I also think having these in a central location, such as a blog, is a good idea and we can probably work out a way to deliver the blog content via email to those who would rather receive it as such.
What I’m wondering is why we would need to post this information in a blog other than LISt? I can’t recall anything in past AD notes that wouldn’t have been appropriate to share outside of LIS – mostly they were reports of conference attendance and “here’s what we’re thinking about doing next” notices. Any reason we’d need to keep that behind closed doors? Why not just put the AD notes as a post in LISt with an “AD notes” catagory and do the same for other team/committee notices?
Frankly, only having to subscribe to one RSS feed for LIS, or receiving one periodic email, is preferable to spreading this stuff out across multiple sites.
Also, just throwing this out there, but Word 2007 supports publishing to a WordPress blog directly from the client and Outlook 2007 allows you to add RSS feeds as an email folder. Might be helpful for those who want to use web tools without using a browser.
Adam Dobucki suggested I set it up as an RSS feed. I have done so and think I will prefer it that way. Now I don’t even need the email! :)
I agree with Ian that just adding it to LISt would be fine.
I would like to throw in my vote for keeping these notes in a central blog. I much prefer getting updates such as these through my RSS reader rather through email. I prefer to keep my email usage to time-sensitive conversation and use RSS for things that I should read “when I get to them”.
Keeping these notes on a blog has the additional benefit of allowing links from future notes and discussions into the archives, rather than just saying something like “continued discussion of x from last meeting”.
Please note that the current version of WordPressMU that we are running does not allow access to RSS feeds from ‘private’ blogs. This issue will need to be resolved if ‘private’ blogs are to be useful forums for discussion.