Monday, May 14, 2007
Should library Blogs allow for comments?
I decided to start this week's course work by examining the case studies. One thing that I noticed straight away when viewing the Georgia-State University Library Blog is that their patrons cannot post comments. The Georgia-State University Library addresses this issue in their article "Building a Home for Library News with a Blog." They state that: " because these blogs are part of [their] library's Web presence, the administration [had] concerns about allowing patrons to "talk back," thereby adding content to the library Web site anonymously and possibly irresponsibly." I find this interesting.... isn't the point of a blog to communicate with other people? A Wikipedia search for the term "blog" mentions that "the ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of most early blogs." A blog is a form of social software, but the fact that the Georgia-State Library Blog does not allow their users to respond seems to take the "social" aspect out of the term. I think that this is a major flaw in the University's Blog. It seems to me that an easy solution would be to make students who wish to post a comment sign in with their username and password. I doubt that students would post inappropriate comments if they were aware that they would be held accountable.
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5 comments:
I completely agree with you on this one - this library is cutting out half the usefulness of their blog. They might as well have a frequently-updated web page instead of a blog. Of course, if it was intended for intra-library communication and just happened to be available on the web, that would be a different situation. But a blog that is intended only for one-way communication to patrons is not a blog at all.
Hi Alexandra
I agree about Georgia State, and your posting about no comments not being useful. I, too, had a similar concern. One thing I learnt from my experience is to open yourself up to collaboration and exchange, you must take the good with the bad, and have the trust in your community. Otherwise you will always have a static website, and a disjoint from your users. Yes you may have spamming or people using the site inappropriately - Gerry, last week, mentioned having guidelines for blogging - which is one way to address this. The bottom line is, that the benefits of discussion outweigh the negative aspects. The ability to post comments allow libraries to connect with the community; right away you can see the benefits or reaction your library and services are having on your users.
I agree with the comments about blogs being for communication, but from the standpoint of Georgia State, their blog is successful. They were looking for a way to automate their library and subject specific news, and that's basically what they have done. Everything is archived, students can subscribe to RSS feeds,and the software is easy enough that all the librarians, even the ones unfamiliar with web based applications, can contribute.
The term 'blog' may be a misnomer, but they used blogging software to build it,so it's kind of like a blog...I guess. "Better to have blogged and not commented, than never to have blogged before"?
I would not be surprised to hear that the librarians are happy to have the 'no comment' function in place. Just the act of retrieving the articles and then ensuring that the news they provide is authoritative is probably quite time consuming. Imagine if they had to respond to comments as well.
In my own opinion, I look at it as librarians building a collection of electronic materials, especially since all the posted articles end up archived in a searchable database.
I wish there had been mention in the article that Alexandra linked to about what the students and faculty are doing with the information. Who knows, it may be a faculty-librarian collaboration, and students are expected to read one or two articles from a subject specific list and then comment on it in class. Or not!
The bottom line for me is that the librarians at Georgia State worked as a team to build this, and they are happy with it. It is serving the purpose for which it was built. For us, the problem may be more a semantic one...is it really a blog? The second question is "Does it matter'?
Just to add to my earlier comment, I think that the need to log in to post comments (the same way it works on blogger) should satisfy the library's fears about inappropriate comments. Especially if they post a policy indicating that a) comments do not express the opinions of the library and b) the library has the right to delete any comments that they deem inappropriate and the commenter can be sanctioned in some way, depending on the seriousness of the offense.
The idea of anonimity on the web seems to create quite a bit of discomfort for many people. Cyberbullying on facebook has starting to become a real problem for schools, as students are setting up "anonymous" accounts in order to insult or gossip about other kids without consequence.
This just shows that social software is a tool: it can be used to hurt or help. I can understand the reasons why the library would decide limit the comment function, but they must realize that by avoiding the "dark side" of blogging and comments, they have to cut out a large part of what makes a blog useful to users.
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