Creating and maintaining a blog: the Archives Hub Blog

Creating and maintaining a blog - and - the Archives Hub experience Jane Stevenson & Amanda Hill

What is a blog?
Short for Weblog
Diary-type commentary
Individual / topic based
Personal reflections, news, events, reviews, analysis
Typical blog: text, images, comments, archive, links to other related sites, feed
Part of Web 2.0 – social, collaborative

First thoughts
It is easy to set a blog up…
but:
What is its purpose?
What are the advantages of doing it?
Will you make regular entries?
Over 70 million blogs; large number not used

Why create a blog?
Raise awareness
Build connections
Articulate your thoughts
Enable feedback (comment)
An accessible means of communication that takes very little time to set up
Keep in tune with current technologies

Why not create a blog
Nobody will read it…?
Pressure to blog
Need to keep up with…everything
Danger of indiscretion
Other avenues of communication are more effective
Better not to have a blog than one you hardly use

Blog approaches
Formal
repository news; organised events; announcements; critique
Informal
general news; comments; anecdotes; humour; discussion; personal experiences; raise ideas

Setting up a blog
Easy to create, edit and publish
Use of blog hosting service
Keep blog files on own system (FTP)
Maintenance usually through browser-based interface
Set up: register; choose template; a few settings …that’s about it for a basic blog
Proofread, spell check, cite sources, add plenty of links

Blogs and RSS
RSS/Atom feed for your blog
Syndication (process)
RSS/Atom (technology)
Feed readers display new posts
New items automatically discovered and downloaded
Many feed readers (Netvibes)

Maintaining a blog
Group blog
(works well with more informal blog)
Guest bloggers
Blog entries that encourage comments (may increase motivation!)
Visit and comment on other blogs
Check reactions to your blog (Technorati)

Archives Hub Blog

Why?
Part of Hub mission is to act as a centre of expertise on electronic cataloguing
Pride ourselves on being quick to react to new developments in technology within the service
Means we keep an eye on interoperability issues, new reports etc.
Mechanism for updating each other and Hub contributors on items of interest

How?
Set up blog using Blogger in February 2006
Very easy to do
Blogger offers option of hosting blog on our own website:
www.archiveshub.ac.uk/blog/

What happened next…
Experimental service
Announcements about Hub developments
Reports on conferences attended, reviews of publications
Special features

Benefits
Helps to build team spirit – a joint effort
RSS/Atom feeds of posts come as standard – content can be presented in ways that best suit the users
Sometimes get conversations going

More benefits
Raises awareness of Archives Hub beyond our usual constituency
Starts up new dialogues
Makes us more thoughtful about what we’re doing and why

Own hosting has some issues

Control freakery
See who is linking to your blog
See how authoritative your blog is
Even see how much it’s worth!

Creating and maintaining a blog: the Archives Hub Blog

by Amanda Hill on Jun 06, 2007

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Creating and maintaining a blog: the Archives Hub Blog Presentation Transcript