Does your library have a blog?

Sophie Brookover has written a fabulous article about libraries whose staff communicate via blogs. She devotes equal time to blogs that are written by staff for library users and blogs that are written by staff for other staff.

Brookover makes an important point in her article about how blogs shouldn't be used in place of face-to-face communication but should, instead, be used to augment conversations already happening at your library.

It seems like old news to stay that your library should be reaching its users by way of the blogosphere. But it isn't. And as every student, parent, grandma, and sports fan starts blogging, it's important for your library to be there too. Programming information, new materials, or explanations of policies can be great things to blog about and can make your library more accessible to users.

But we don't just blog to reach our users who are already using blogs as a means of communication. We blog to reach people for whom the idea of blogging as a means of communication is new. By putting a blog on our library's web page, we engage the user who might not know about this form of communication. And, once engaged, we challenge them to look beyond the world of information they know is available online.

It's just another reminder, I think, that libraries can (and should) reach people on both ends of the technologically savvy spectrum.