hints & tips – using a blog to promote library services...
TRANSCRIPT
Hints & tips – using a blog to promote library services and to provide training
Tuulevi Ovaska
University of Eastern Finland Library, Kuopio University Hospital Medical Library
A blog
• Informational and interactive website (web log)
• Form of social media
• Blogging is considered natural for information professionals and libraries – disseminating information to users
– report about new acquisitions and services
– marketing tool
– educational tool
The blog
• blog called Vinkkejä lääketieteen ja lähialojen tiedonhakuun (VLLTH, Tips for medical and related information retrieval)
– a pilot project during a period when UEF Library was forming its communications plans
– http://uefkirjastotiedonhakult.wordpress.com/
VLLTH blog
Categories
Example of a blog article (Tip of
June: Customize PubMed)
Comments
Search
Other UEF Library blogs
• Kirjanmerkki (Bookmark) disseminating information about new acquisitions only in Finnish and intended especially for the KUH staff (http://kyskirjastokirjanmerkki.blogspot.fi/)
• Verkkoaineistouutiset or News on e-resources http://uefverkkoaineistouutiset.blogspot.fi/
• UEF library staff IFLA WLIC 2012 blog called Matkalla IFLAan (see http://matkallaiflaan.wordpress.com/
VLLTH categories and tags
• During the pilot period of between February 2012 and October 2013 there were 42 posts in 4 categories.
– Databases (10 posts)
– Frequently asked questions (15 posts)
– News (13 posts)
– Training (4 posts)
categorizing = classifying
Databases category
• Promoted
– a diagnostic tools database and an image database
– databases Scopus and Trip
• Introduced
– new collections of ebooks
– tools in PubMed
• Often headed as “the tip of the month”
FAQ category
• What do we need all the databases for when we have Google?
• Why isn’t the full text opening?
• What is Open Access?
• What is PICO?
• What is the difference between a search term, a key word and a thesaurus term?
• Why should I search the Cochrane Library?
• Etc.
News category
• Invitations to participate Library’s user survey
• Announcing new Impact Factors
• New e-book acquisitions and journal subscriptions
• Changes in databases
Training category
• Marketing library training sessions
• Promoting importance of information skills
Tags
• 147 tags in all
◄ 20 most used tags
tagging = indexing
Finding the blog 2
Finding the blog 2
• Visitors using search engines found the blog by using e.g. these search terms
– pico question
– katsausartikkelit (review articles)
– deep web
– biolääketiede tietokanta (biomedicine database)
– ihotaudit+kuvat (skin diseases + pictures)
Finding the blog 3
• Top referring websites
– University of Eastern Finland
– Kuopio University Hospital
– Moodle
– Terkko Library
Statistics of usage
Statistics of usage
• 3166 views
• Most popular day 68 views
• Home page 1807 views – PICO 225 views
– "Having trouble in getting hold of a medical text book?" 143 views
– "What do we need all these databases for when we have Google?" 96 views
• Accessed from 23 countries
Meaning and relevance of library blogging
• Library blog
– can be used
• together with the (more static) library website
• to supplement online learning platforms
• in conjunction with other social media tools
– for
• sharing information
• disseminating news
• marketing
• education
Relevance of blogging in Finnish
• Library blogs should be relevant to library users
– important to blog in the users’ language with the terminology they understand
• Library blogging in other languages than English has not been widely studied
Merger
• In autumn 2013 the VLLTH blog was merged with the UEF Library blog http://ueflibrary.wordpress.com
• Based on the experiments during the pilot period it was decided that the UEF Library
– should have one blog
– on one platform
– with several categories
One blog
• For users
–more straightforward to follow the library’s activities in one single blog
• For bloggers
– a smaller task to maintain one blog together than several blogs by one author
Implications for practice
• Libraries must
– test new tools rapidly
– base long term decisions on tested tools
• Blogging can be used for several purposes
– information dissemination
– news sharing
– marketing and promoting services
– training and education
Implications for research
• Literature review on library blogging in different languages
– more knowledge
– useful information for practice
– sharing good practices
– international cooperation