@kathryn: your project sounds v. interesting. i’d love to have a look at your survey instrument…

you’re right about the bookmobile and telephone. i just think that when we have so much click-to-publish technology at our fingertips, we should take advantage of it (i’m thinking getting ‘published’ in some way was possibly not as easy/accessible around the time the phone had its greatest impact on changing the face of reference). i’m not talking peer reviewed, printed publications - any kind of writing, really: blogging, news-y articles, contributions in wikis like library success…

to look at a more ‘formal’ or ‘traditional’ forum: take the recent vala conference, for example. there wasn’t a huge deal there for public libraries, and that’s nobody’s fault but our own. we’re doing great stuff, but we aren’t particularly good at self promotion. how much more would we all get out of these big conferences if we contributed to the programs?

as for publishing as a luxury: this is interesting. to me, a stretch of uninterrupted time to write at work would indeed be a luxury. it just doesn’t happen, and not for lack of support for these sorts of endeavours from management, nor for lack of enthusiasm on my part. there is just so much other stuff to do, and in a lot of ways, i’d rather write at home so i can potter around and have clear headspace in which to do it.

for me, more than being a luxury (and i know it is a luxury, of sorts, that my personal and professional life affords me the space to write), writing is a professional responsibility, on three levels: to my self (because it makes sure i stay engaged and keep on learning), to my organisation, and to my profession. it’s also something i do because i love to do it.

what i find luxurious (and i think this is a shame) is when i get to work on a project where there is a considerable body of professional literature of some description from which to draw inspiration, background, data…

the reasons for a lack of published studies are certainly many. i think, as you suggest, that one of the reasons is very likely that we’re too busy doing our jobs to get writing (apologies - i didn’t make that point in my original post). and there’s certainly a lot to be said for intuition and professional judgment… i don’t mean to devalue that at all.

i just hope that libraries are doing some thoughtful, meaningful evaluation of their 2.0 projects. and for my own selfish purposes, i’d love them to publish their findings!

thanks to both of you for a couple of thoughtful and thought provoking comments.

The survey is designed to work out their existing blogging skills and the support they need, and to work out the template features, widgets and plugins I’ll need to set up. I am also asking them at the end “Which things would you consider when evaluating whether the blogging trial was a success for you?”.

I want to embed evaluation as part of the pilot project, so will be surveying participants at the point of getting their blog (June) and three months later when the trial ends. I will be looking beyond the participants’ opinions to things like time cost, reliability of the software, load on IT etc.

As for publishing - I’m in two minds. I’m guessing that the telephone and the bookmobile (which is often held up as the ultimate Library 2.0 service) were introduced in libraries without published studies or evaluation. I’m also guessing that many of the small, busy libraries who are introducing blogs are using their intuitive professional judgement and knowledge of their communities, rather than taking time out to use more formal methods or even think about the luxury of publishing.

I do think that we need published, valid studies of what works and what doesn’t. Like you, however, I am unsure what a lack of published studies means.

Good luck with your blogging project.

There are, as you note, other measures (most of them only available for the blog owner), which is one reason I’ve avoided ever suggesting that any library blog is a “failure.” When a library blog repeatedly coaxes the readers to comment (as a few have), and there are no comments…well, that says something. But most library blogs don’t do that.

I think some of the metrics you suggest, most of them unavailable to an outside observer, are distinctly worth considering–and that it’s worth discussing the results.

But then, I’ve said for a while that Library Success would be even more valuable if it included “Learning Successes”–that is, failed programs that help us move on. I don’t see that happening, and (with one or two major exceptions), it’s never been much of the literature.

Ryan. . .

I’m also not 100% sure of how this was said at the Unconference – I think it might have been presented as a quote of someone else, so I don’t know the original context, but it seemed like people took it at face value, and I don’t remember anyone challenging it. But whatever the exact wording was I definitely remember reacting to it.

What I don’t get is that fundamentally as librarians we (are supposed to) recognise that different info needs, contexts, subject areas etc dictate the use of different search strategies, tools, info sources, evaluation of results etc. And we then have the opportunity to help users understand this and teach them the skills to make their own decisions about what constitutes good information and good information sources for their needs.

But are we only OK with this within the bounds of our own collections? Step outside of that and we’re happy to (terrified not to?) support blanket dismissals of amazingly useful info sources? I find this attitude sooo frustrating and I think it damages our credibility.

I’ll certainly drop by your blog and see if you’re online to chat (I’m a long time reader, btw). I’ve also sent you an email with some more detail, which I hope will be of interest.

Would love to catch up during the unconf next week.

Have you published on the project at all? Very keen to hear what you guys are doing.

Macquarie and Murdoch University Libraries have implemented an IM based chat reference server using Jabber client. We used a MAMS grant to develop a routing system using Shibboleth, so that students are routed to the correct institutions’ librarians - and enquiries are flicked on to the next librarian if it it not answered quickly enough.

There will be a paper about it at VALA, but if you are interested we can tell you more about it.