Creating a Library Blog
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com
Jason Curtis
Electronic Resources
Librarian, SECC Library
26 April 2007
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

Why have a library blog?
Supplements our bi-monthly newsletter
(Knowledge Source) and allows us to post
content between issues
Supplements our library guides and leaflets with
short snippets that we might otherwise have no
outlet to share
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

Why have a library blog 2?
It would allow us somewhere to syndicate
feeds from other Library 2.0 services we
might use
Provides us with an additional channel of
communication with ‘tech-savvy’ users and
allows them to post comments
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

Blog Main Page
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

How we did it
We used Blogger (www.blogger.com), a free
service that is very popular
The template was adapted to mirror our
newsletter’s colour scheme (as well as that of
the National Library for Health)
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

How we did it
We added links on the left hand
side to other sites
Each post is labelled so that
posts can be found by topic
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

Creating content
Blogger allows permission to be granted to
other people to post, so a team can
contribute to the blog
All our posts are looked at by one other
person in the team to check for accuracy
We are aiming for a friendly but professional
tone to our postings
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

Drawbacks and problems
Getting members of the team to contribute
can be hard and it may be difficult to keep up
Photos can be added to the blog, but
documents need to be hosted elsewhere
Usage is fairly low so far
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

Syndicating content
Content is ‘syndicated’ to our website and on our
Intranet pages
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

Monitoring usage
We use Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) to
monitor usage and see how people are coming to the blog,
where from and much more…
Note: An explicit privacy policy will be required as
Google collects information about your users
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

Our blog and NLH My Library
Our blog’s RSS feed is listed in the HLSID directory so
users can see the link when they use the NLH My Library
feature (www.library.nhs.uk/mylibrary)
Eventually, the NLH will automatically add this feed to the
My Update facility as it does with feeds created with the
HLSID news feature
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

Further developments
It is easy to add RSS feeds from other sites
into the template of the blog, either those
created by NLH, or those we create from
services such as del.ico.us or LibraryThing
It is also easy to embed PowerPoint using
SlideShow, or videos using YouTube
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com

Conclusion
Although usage of the blog is currently
limited, we will continue to develop it and
look at how we can promote it by using the
content elsewhere (by syndication or other
means)
www.sathlibraries.blogspot.com