First Challenge

How to use blogs in my personal life? I'm not entirely sure yet. I subscribe to a number of blogs and I love reading the knitblogs and seeing what other people are working on. I've always thought that a knitting blog would be a good idea - for no other reason than to have a record of what I knit. I keep thinking I'll remember, but we all know how that works. I've always hesitated to actually start a knit blog, though, because I know I won't have much time to keep up with it. I tried blogging once before and it died because I never had any time to keep up with it (Life With Our Poppet). Still, the thought of having a pictorial and text record of what I've made and what I'm making is just too tempting. Now to find the digital camera and try to remember everything I've made so far this year...

How to use blogs in the library? Now that's an easy one. I was lucky enough to attend the Internet Librarian conference this year and came back full of ideas for incorporating social networking software into the library's website. The most obvious place would be the home page. We already use a home-made ColdFusion application so that PR can update the home page with news and announcements, but a "real" blog would allow us more flexibility and more posting options and could integrate better with the page design. There are lots of other ways we could use blogs as well - for example department-specific blogs would be an immediate way to tell patrons about (for example) new periodicals, new databases or new audio-visual items. Additionally, any blog on our website would also be a great way to open a dialog with our patrons, as long as the comments are turned on.