Evaluating Web 2.0

Evaluating Web 2.0: user experiences with public library blogs
Michelle McLean - Casey-Cardinia Library Corporation
Paul Mercieca – RMIT University

Aims
While Libraries, especially public libraries, are heavily involved in develop of Web 2.0 environments, there is a need to understand how these environments are being used
Focusing on Blogs as an initial pilot investigation, we attempt to map client use of blog posts developed by CCLC
The results from this pilot can be extended to a larger investigation

The Blogs

CCLC Website

The need for the investigation
CCLC has invested in the development of the blogs, yet there was a need to understand their use and potential impact on the service as a whole
Some general trends were identified through current statistics and use logs
However there was a need to determine if the blogs
Meet the original goals and purpose
Were being used
How they were being accessed
And opinions of Non-users

Method
Survey administered Monday 24th August to Monday 7th September 2009
Administered electronically and in print
Promoted through
posts placed on each of CCLC's five blogs
highlighted feed on CCLC's homepage
Banner added to the top of the homepage
printed surveys were administered in the two largest branches and in one of the smaller branches.

Method
99 usable survey results were received
52 online and 47 in print
All results were exported (via an Excel file) to SPSS
Caveats
Pilot survey to identify initial trends of blog use within a single public library organisation. A larger participant sample will determine if the trends are statistically significant
Sample was self selected

Respondent characteristics: Gender

Respondent characteristics: Age

Frequency of use of website and blogs

Multiple blog use
Each blog has a specific information focus and is targeted towards different readers
An assumption was that blog readers would tend to focus on the blogs that are relevant to their information needs
However counts of the use of the blogs suggest that:
A total of 40 participants, out of the 99 survey responses (n=99) have used at least one blog on a single occasion
Those who have engaged with a blog tend to read more than one blog.
Of the 40 participants who have read at least one post, 24 participants (60% of the blog users n=40) have read more than one blog.
In considering the promotion of public library blogs
While use may be ‘casual’
There may be benefit in cross promotion of blogs

“Hidden” use
‘hidden usage’ of the blog posts was identified
While some participants were not directly reading the blogs themselves, they were accessing ‘blog feeds’
Through email / RSS feeds
Through posts being fed to the home page of the CCLC website

“Hidden” use ...
Email / RSS feeds
26 participants (26% of the respondents n=99) indicated that they had set up either a post feed to their email account or to an RSS reader
feeding to an email account was the preferred method as this was established by 21 of the 26 participants who had set up a feed
Of the 26 participants, 6 participants indicated that they had not (“never”) used any of the blogs
This suggests such participants had not actively visited the individual blogs, yet still benefited from the blogs as an information source to their email accounts.

Feeds to the CCLC homepage

Feeds to the CCLC homepage ...

63% of the respondents read the feeds that are displayed on the library home page, even if this was, for some participants, a ‘skim read’ of the content
Degree of follow through to the actual blog
46% reading the extended version of the feed
38% reading the blog post on the original blog

Demographic impact
The various frequencies of use of the blogs was recoded into ‘use’ and ‘non-use’
Chi-square tests were used to see if there was a difference in use by age and by gender
Age and Gender did not make a significant difference in use for most of the blogs
local history blog ‘Links to Our Past’ did show a difference for Gender, where males tended to use the blog site more than females

Benefits of the blogs

Results
Confirmed expected usage of blogs – use as CMS to disseminate content to users – being read for blog purposes
Unexpected result – amount of use, nearly ½ users had at least scanned content
Unexpected result – number of users who had done so through the library website – importance of our website feeds and dynamic content

Implications
Content of the blogs may have relevance to the library users, but the primary access point to this content is through the library homepage
Participants were probably not aware that the ‘news items’ were being fed from a blog infrastructure and thus this use is a ‘hidden use’ of the blog content.
While the relevant information could simply be posted directly onto the library webpage, the use of blogs allows:
Multiple contributors to post content
Content to be regularly ‘fed’ from a number of blog sources
Constant updating of the library home page.
Where there is interest in specific items, the reader can then link through to the original posting for further information.

Implications
More in-house promotion of blogs
Re-use and redirect users to blog content
More links to blog content from other online presences
More research needs to be done

Evaluating Web 2.0

by Michelle McLean

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