Comments on: Academic Library Blogging

By: Academic Library Blogging « Web 2.0 Group

Academic Library Blogging « Web 2.0 Group — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:30:26 +0000

[...] Web 2.0 Group « Has UoM Portal access been extended to staff? Academic Library Blogging September 2, 2008 Academic Library Blogging [...]

By: Jo Alcock

Jo Alcock — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:53:41 +0000

Thanks for your thoughts Emma, very good point about the suitability of forums for discussion.

We have used forums with some success on our VLE but unless we collaborate with a member of academic staff in order to tailor it to a particular group of students (e.g. final year project students) we’ve found that students don’t tend to use forums.

We have a “blog style forum” on our new VLE which we are using to improve communication with other staff, that seems to be working well – best of both worlds.

By: Emma

Emma — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:27:01 +0000

Getting discussion going on blogs is difficult & to be honest, I’m not sure it’s the best platform.
With a blog, it’s very much the “owner” & “commenters”. If you’ve got a forum, then everyone’s on the same level. Anyone can start a thread & anyone comment.
Forums also tend to have the most recently commented post at the top … not the most recently started, as blogs do.
So, here, for example, you’re going to know I’ve written this, but unless you’ve got a recent comments widget thingy – (which most don’t have), no-one else is going to know, unless they’re really obsessively counting the numbers of comments.

By: Amelia Luzzi

Amelia Luzzi — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:52:32 +0000

Just for inspiration, and in case you haven’t come across it yet, look up Shelf Talk (shelftalk.spl.org): a really good, cute, interesting (public) library blog.