Creating and evaluating a subject-based blog: planning, implementation, and assessment

The Authors

Joanna Blair, Centre for Health Evidence, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Allison V. Level, Colorado State University Libraries, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

Abstract

Purpose – This paper seeks to outline the creation of a subject-based blog and to suggest unique evaluation techniques for library blogs.

Design/methodology/approach – The methodology involved an online survey, web tracking software, RSS feed tracking, and the use of blog search engines.

Findings – A successful blog was launched and statistics show a marked increase in visitors in the second semester when it was available.

Research limitations/implications – This article reports on a survey which is not statistically valid. The results, however, provide some insight into users of the blog.

Practical implications – The paper outlines several methods of evaluating library blogs and outlines successful planning for a library subject-area blog.

Originality/value – The paper provides information about setting up a relevant information service, and using web tools to evaluate the success of the service.

Article Type:

Case study

Keyword(s):

Academic libraries; Assessment; Communication technologies; Worldwide web.

Journal:

Reference Services Review

Volume:

36

Number:

2

Year:

2008

pp:

156-166

Copyright ©

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

ISSN:

0090-7324

Introduction

Librarians have traditionally acted as conduits of information. In the past it has been with tools such as library newsletters and web pages. When technology changes the medium changes but the role of information agent continues. Web logs or blogs are becoming a medium of choice for academic libraries. Wayne Gretzky is said to have remarked that good hockey players must learn to skate to where the puck will be. Good information professionals and librarians must be prepared to do the same and skate to where the information need will be and where information will most likely be read. As RSS feed readers become increasingly common, the authors saw the creation of a subject-based blog as an opportunity to efficiently deliver information to a specific university community.

This article chronicles the development of a subject-based blog at Colorado State University Libraries (CSUL), a land-grant academic library. The decisions surrounding software selection, project planning, assessment, and ongoing work on the blog are discussed. The authors then provide suggestions for setting up a subject-based blog.

Literature review

Articles describing blogs and their importance to libraries began appearing in the library literature early in the 2000s (Crawford, 2001; Fichter, 2001). Notess (2002a, b) has two articles that together provide the reader with a concise introduction to the world of blogs, RSS, and feed aggregators. Laning et al. (2005) gives a brief history of the blog, argues for the blog as a professional information source for libraries, and suggests criteria for determining the value of blogs. A good literature review with important articles from 2000-2004 is provided.

Laning et al. (2005) also includes an extensive list of blogs that they consider useful as professional development tools for libraries. The types of blogs include personal view or online diary, news/commentary, promotion/marketing, and professional commentary/ community of practice. A theme running through all kinds of blogs is the need to connect social networking, communication, or knowledge sharing (Nardi et al., 2004; Jackson et al., 2007; Kamel Boulos and Wheeler, 2007).

Academic libraries have moved away from primarily providing a physical place for information. In the new campus environment, the library is a gateway to information (Davidson, 2005). The library is also poised to foster the increasing social culture of web 2.0 applications. As Fichter (2007, p. 57) remarks:

… [t]he new internet culture is social, and social media is shaping your library's reputation and ultimately the use of your services online.

A notable blogging initiative includes the Georgia State University library program which rolled out a news/events blog and a science news blog (Vogel and Goans, 2005).

Reichardt and Harder's (2005) article is one of a very few that focuses on subject-based library blogs. The authors provide a brief background on the history of blogs. They then zero in on the use of blogs in science and technology environments:

The growth of weblogs has resulted in the evolution of their coverage from subject-general to subject-specific (Reichardt and Harder, 2005, p. 114).

Ramos (2006) discusses librarians who use blogs to direct subject RSS feeds to their liaison departments and Cooke (2006) discusses RSS feeds and their usefulness of medical news feeds in a health sciences setting.

While there is no shortage of literature on the usefulness of blogs and RSS feeds, there is a notable lack of literature on the assessment of blogs. Some suggestions can be found from the business world that include tracking the number of comments per post, looking at the traffic, and looking at the web-ranking (Maddox, 2007; Delahaye Paine, 2007). With a great number of libraries investing time and resources into blogging, this article suggests some simple tools for determining if the efforts are worthwhile.

Background

Any project with a technological component requires planning and acceptance at an organizational level. Dearstyne (2005) outlines ten questions to ask before organizational blogging begins. The following are very applicable to libraries:

  1. What IT capabilities do we need to support blogging?
  2. What are the most impressive, provocative, or influential blogs in our field and what gives them those characteristics?
  3. What criteria or measures should we develop to evaluate … overall impact of blogging? (p. 40).

Adopting blogs at CSUL

In the Fall of 2005, blogs were an increasingly visible part of the library world and there had been interest expressed in blogs from several library departments at CSUL. A software committee was formed to select an appropriate blogging tool.

The committee determined that the software had to meet different needs. Public services faculty and staff wanted a searchable blog that had labels and filters to screen out inappropriate comments. The other need was for non-public blogs for knowledge management or for faculty and staff to collaborate on projects.

Several software packages were considered and Movable Type was purchased in December 2005 and installed in January 2006. The design and learning curve for the software took more time than anticipated especially with regard to customizing the appearance. The Biology, Agriculture, and Natural Resources (BANR) Blog went public in March 2006.

Planning for BANR

Creating and maintaining a blog is an ongoing project. Sustaining a blog requires resources and support. Blair and Cranston (2006) outline steps to follow when starting a blog such as identifying the scope, audience, and ideas for advertising. While the BANR blog software committee was deciding on software, the authors began following these steps and planning for the scope, content and launch of the blog.

The planning for the subject blog revolved around the following:

  1. Scope/vision. It was decided that the blog would be a subject-blog for researchers in the fields of biological sciences, agricultural sciences, and natural resources. The focus would be on informing users in these disciplines about new and existing library resources and selected web resources. Discussing the scope helped keep the blog focused and ensured that content selection was consistent.
  2. Primary audience. A primary audience was identified as faculty and graduate students in bioscience, agricultural sciences and natural resources. Identifying an audience helped to set a tone and stay focused.
  3. Name. The name needed to reflect the scope of the blog. Playing around with acronyms resulted in the BANR Blog – Biology, Agriculture, and Natural Resources.
  4. Highest priorities. It was important to identify topics that would be of interest to the audience and maintain the focus of the blog. The highest priorities for the BANR Blog is providing information about new resources available at the library, instruction on existing resources, updates on web based resources, and open access. This discussion point was helpful for deciding on appropriate categories (a.k.a. labels or tags) for the blog.
  5. This blog will NOT. It was useful to identify the issues that would not be covered. The BANR Blog would not be a portal for campus events or new publications by CSU researchers.
  6. Sites that should be monitored. News sources to monitor were identified including blogs, web sites, newspapers and listservs. A sampling of the sources include the blogs “Open Access News and Confessions of a Science Librarian”. Other sources include the Chronicle of Higher Education and the AAAS web site. Setting this list up beforehand and dividing up the monitoring duties decreased the time each individual spent monitoring. Establishing an RSS feed reader also helped manage the information sources and saved time when searching for a quick story to post.
  7. Best library blog examples. Looking at other library blogs provided some direction in determining a style that would be appropriate.
  8. Ideas for permanent links. The authors decided to link exclusively back to resources on the library web page. This ensured stable permanent links. Other permanent links included an “About Us” page and a link to a list of the sites monitored.
  9. Ideas for launching. The soft launch of BANR Blog lasted approximately six weeks. The soft launch provided time to tweak the design and maintenance schedule and gather feedback. The authors also wanted a minimum number of posts on the blog before the rollout so that the audience could get a feel for the blog and why they might want to visit regularly.
  10. Evaluation criteria. Establishing success criteria and evaluating how well the blog meets these criteria is always a useful exercise. The authors decided to monitor number of visitors at six month intervals to see if hits stabilized, increased, or decreased. A survey was launched in November 2006 to see what users would change or like to see added.
  11. Publication guidelines. The authors established guidelines for posting regularly and tried to be realistic about the amount of time that could be invested in a sustainable way. The BANR Blog's two contributors decided to switch responsibility for posting week to week. Either author could post anytime but on any given week one person is responsible for getting a post on the blog. This step ensured that at minimum one new post went up per week and that posting responsibilities did not take up too much of anyone's time. The authors decided to adopt a short, headline-style of writing. If the entry was longer than a couple of paragraphs, the full post would be cached behind a “read on” link. This style minimizes scrolling and allows the readers to browse several headlines quickly and pursue only those that are of particular interest.
  12. Editorial guidelines. Despite the fact that a blog is an informal means of communicating it was important to still be professional. The authors created a short list of standards (e.g. email, e-mail or E-mail) and made them accessible in a shared folder. The authors also adopted publication guidelines of a familiar journal.

Launch of the BANR Blog

Blog sites, like other web pages, can fall victim to the “blink and you miss it” first impressions phenomenon. In the Lindgaard et al. (2006) study, researchers found that visual appeal can be assessed within 50 milliseconds. This means that even if a web site is highly usable and provides very useful information presented in a logical arrangement, this may fail to impress a user whose first impression of the site was negative. The extent to which the strength of the first impression and a subsequent confirmation bias can be shown to generalize across different websites and across users would suggest that the impact of the feeling evoked by the first impression should not be ignored (Lindgaard et al., 2006, pp. 115-116).

For the launch of the BANR site it was important to have a product that was eye-catching and included a number of posts. This allowed users to see several informational posts and presented them with a visually appealing site with good subject-based content.

To get the word out about this new library resource several avenues of publicity were pursued. Announcements went out via email to the CSU faculty in selected departments. Since blog or blogging might not have been familiar to all, the announcement discussed an “online newsletter” to convey the news and information perspective of the project and steer away from a conceptual view of blogs as mostly opinion pieces. Other announcements went to the graduate student newsletter, sharing similar information and advertising a workshop about blogs in an academic environment taught by the BANR Blog creators. The workshop also covered how to set up an RSS Feed. The BANR Blog was a “library highlight” on the CSU Libraries homepage for two months. After the targeted announcements were circulated, an article in the Today@CSU online newsletter was posted. This added a second layer of publicity campuswide. Articles from Today@CSU are archived, so anyone searching blog, blogs, BANR, etc. will still be directed to the article.

External advertising was also done by including information about the BANR Blog in the online directory Blogging Libraries Wiki at www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links/index.php?title=Welcome_to_the_Blogging_Libraries_Wiki BANR was listed as a new blog on the professional development blog, Library Stuff www.librarystuff.net/2006/11/26/newish-librar-blogs/. Postings about the blog were also sent to library listservs for science and agriculture. BANR is geared to the CSU community, but the external notification was provided so that other universities would be aware of the CSUL blogging efforts. The contributors appreciated the work done by early bloggers at the University of Tennessee, SUNY Binghamton, York University, and others.

After the initial publicity, the contributors continued to pursue opportunities to alert the audience. In library instruction sessions and in handouts the BANR Blog was mentioned and often showcased. When asked to speak at departmental seminars, the blog is featured as another way for faculty and students to keep up-to-date on research tools and resources.

Evaluation methods

There is not one standard metric for the evaluation of a blog. Unique challenges exist when counting visitors because users may be using RSS feed readers to read blog entries and not visiting the site at all. One suggestion for evaluative criteria is to see if the blog is linked by other blogs (Laning et al., 2005). This set of criteria however seems to be dependant on the readers of the blog also hosting similar subject blogs and this is unlikely to be the case for a subject-based academic library blog. Jackson et al. (2007) looked at usage statistics and participation through comments to evaluate the value of internal corporate blogging.

Several tools were employed to determine BANR Blog traffic and get a complete picture of usage. Two traditional web trackers were used – WebTrends and AwStats. The use of the RSS feed was evaluated using Bloglines and Feedburner. The blog search engine Technorati was also used to find links to BANR from the “blogosphere”.

Web trackers

Two web trackers were used to gather web statistics on the BANR Blog. WebTrends is the standard software used to track web statistics for all CSU library web sites. This software was used to track visitors and number of hits to the site. For fall 2006, WebTrends showed 7,065 visits and 15,804 hits. In spring 2007, the statistics were about doubled with 15,388 visits and 26,762 hits.

A second tracker, AwStats was set up because it tracks additional information regarding how users access the site. In 2006 94 per cent of accesses were from direct addresses or bookmarks. An additional 4.3 per cent of accesses were from search engines and 1.6 per cent were attributed to specific web sites. The breakdown of specific web sites was particularly helpful to evaluate the effectiveness of some of the advertising strategies. For example, the ad in the campus newspaper only generated nine hits.

Tracking RSS subscribers and feedback

Bloglines. Bloglines is a popular RSS feed reader that tracks how many Blogline users are subscribed to a particular blog. In October 2006, there were six Blogline subscribers to the BANR Blog and in April 2007, there were five Blogline subscribers. This has implications for ongoing advertising and may reflect users adopting other feed readers such as Mozilla/Firefox and MyYahoo.

Feedburner. Feedburner is a tracking service for RSS subscribers. By replacing the automatically generated RSS feed with one from Feedburner, the Feedburner service is able to track the number of times that the RSS is accessed per day and calculates the number of subscribers. The BANR Blog signed up for Feedburner in November 2006. Feedburner was only tracking one subscriber in the Fall of 2006 but by April 2007 BANR had 60 subscribers. Oddly, Feedburner was only tracking one Bloglines subscriber compared to the five subscribers that Bloglines listed as subscribed. This discrepancy underscores the importance of using more than one evaluation tool.

Technorati. Technorati is essentially a blog search engine. Technorati also maintains a directory of blogs and allows blog owners to create their own description and tags for their blog. This tool also ranks a blog's popularity according to how many other blogs link to it. It is a valuable tool to find out if anyone is linking to your blog which indicates that the blog is being read. Not surprisingly, the BANR Blog did not rate very highly. A search for the BANR Blog URL showed that BANR had seven links from four unique blogs. The low numbers are not surprising since BANR serves a select group of individuals who do not regularly communicate through blogs. This tool, while useful, would be more meaningful for a blog with a broader audience.

Feedback/comments

The use of comments is another common means of tracking success of a blog. In fact the comments feature is one of the selling points of blogs – readers have an opportunity to comment and express their opinions. However, a quick tour of some of the academic library blogs listed on The Blogging Libraries Wiki (2007) shows that many blogs have the “Comments” feature turned off or all posts show “0 Comments,” as is the case with BANR Blog.

This is not surprising since academic library blogs are more like newsletters than opinion outlets. The authors have received e-mail when there are technical problems with the blog and that also indicates readership.

Survey

The authors conducted a survey (see Appendix) of BANR Blog readers in November and December 2006 to complement the web statistics tracking data. Unfortunately, this survey had a poor response rate and with a sample of just five respondents. Of the five respondents there were: two graduate students, two undergraduates, and one retired faculty member. All of the respondents were accessing the survey from Colorado. The authors concluded that they were reaching their intended audience since all of the respondents self-identified as part of the CSU science community.

Only one respondent learned of the blog through advertising. That individual heard of BANR through the graduate student newsletter and had been visiting the blog irregularly since July 2006. The other respondents were first-time visitors and had discovered the blog because it was featured on the library homepage. This opens up the possibility that perhaps the authors need a clearer, more prominent path to the blog. This data also indicates that another, more aggressive advertising campaign may increase readership.

The respondents were asked to rate the importance of each of the blog's categories. A score of 1 indicates low importance and 5 indicates high importance. The average importance of each category was determined from the average of the scores assigned to the category by the respondents.

Obviously, the biomedicine category stands out as unimportant to readers. The other two categories that are at the lower end of the spectrum are Bioinformatics and Open access. Informing the CSU community about open access issues was one of the original goals of the BANR Blog. The authors decided to keep “Open access” as one of the topics with the hopes of educating readers. We also decided that Bioinformatics was worth retaining since it is a field that is growing and is becoming increasingly important in many subject areas. Biomedicine will no longer be tracked.

The last survey question invited respondents to make content suggestions. Three respondents answered this question. Suggestions included ecology, environmental science, environmental policy, environmental education, biological conservation, ecological grants and other funding, natural resource management, environment and climate change resources, hydrology, and watershed hydrology. This dovetails well with the high importance placed on the “Natural resources” category.

Authors' self-evaluation

Use of categories. The authors examined the number of times that a category was applied to posts to help determine if the category is appropriate for the blog and if the authors are meeting the goals originally set. As of April 18, 2007, there were a total of 78 entries that were divided as follows:

Through this exercise, the authors realized that they needed to assign categories more carefully. They noticed while examining the category “Databases” that some entries were missing the tag “Databases” and had only been labeled “Web resources.” The authors also missed out on many opportunities to cross-reference “Web resources” with categories like “Biology” and provide other suitable subject-related access points. The examination of the labels highlighted the need to give greater attention to this feature.

The responses from the survey showed that respondents were most interested in ecology and environmental science. This offers an opportunity to add those categories or step up the natural resources entries.

Time spent

The amount of time spent maintaining the blog met expectations. The authors were aiming for approximately one hour a week per person. Some weeks may have taken more time than the one hour quota, however, the research was professional reading which was beneficial and contributed to other aspects of the job of a science librarian.

Conclusion

The assessment of the BANR Blog proved that it is worthwhile to continue the blog. Reaching 60 RSS subscribers is particularly compelling. However, due to unexpected staffing changes at the library, the project may have to be scaled back or the focus areas collapsed.

The survey suggested that there was no audience for the biomedical subject area and that there is demand for more information on natural resources and ecology resources. As a result of this input, the future direction may move in this direction and target information in one area instead of three.

Another finding of the assessment was that advertising has to be continuous in order to recruit the next generation of readers. Furthermore, advertising should be directed as there is evidence that campus-wide marketing attracted very few readers. Future efforts will focus on getting the word out in orientation classes, instruction sessions, and meetings. Another promising marketing avenue is attempting to include a link to the blog in high profile web pages such as the library homepage or on individual class WebCT sites.

One of the positive aspects of the blog that appeals to the authors is that it is an archive of accomplishments. If a faculty member or a library administrator visits the blog only once per year they will find a record of the journal and database additions as well as new teaching resources and events. Another positive outcome of blogging is that other librarians at CSU Libraries have adopted the medium and are now using it to meet their clients needs. The library newsletter is now published online as a blog. Moreover, the authors were able to present a course to the campus community titled “Blogging in an academic environment”. This raised the profile of the library as early adopters and as the department with blogging expertise. Workshops like this also offer the opportunity to instruct on the use of RSS feeds and increase subscribers.

All library projects benefit from a time of evaluation and reflection. This is especially true as we strive to keep up with changing technology and the changing ways that our clients consume information. Bar-Ilan (2005, p. 305) states that:

… [p]rofessional blogs are excellent sources of secondary or tertiary information. Most information (apart from occasional extensive discussions of topics) can be easily found elsewhere, but these blogs concentrate and filter it, and they can be viewed as one-stop information kiosks or information hubs.

The library blog is designed to save time for our clients but there needs to be a cost-benefit formula for the librarians who spend their time doing the filtering in order to create the blog content.

References

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Appendix. BANR Blog Survey

Q1 In what State/Province do you currently live?

Q1.2 In what country do you reside?

Q1.3 Please specify your position:

Q1.4 How did you hear about the BANR Blog?Morgan Library WebsiteToday@Colorado State (CSU publication)Grad Student FYI (CSU publication)Search Engine (e.g. Google search, Yahoo search)Other

Q1.5 Are you subscribed to our RSS feed?

Q1.6 How often do you visit the BANR Blog?.

Q1.7 How many other blogs do you regularly follow?

Q1.8 When did you first learn about the BANR Blog?

Q1.9 What content do you find most relevant?1=not relevant 3=somewhat relevant 5=very relevantAgricultureBioinformaticsBiologyBiomedicineDatabasesGovernment resourcesJournalsLibrary resourcesNatural resourcesOpen accessWeb resources

Q1.10 Is there content that you would like to see added to the BANR Blog?

Corresponding author

Joanna Blair can be contacted at: jblair1@ualberta.ca