We had a very productive meeting in the reference office today as instructors from all three libraries met to put together a class schedule for Winter. Would not want to steal Doreen's thunder at your Monday meeting, Jane, but there was alot of energy at the table and some innovative sessions will come out of it.

Speaking of "having an idea not work out, and ... moving on to the next one", I think we need to evaulate the usefulness of this blog at some point. A shockingly large number of staff members have told me that they never use it and I'm not sure that it is generating discussion as we might hope.

Respectfully, I would say that we have to give the blog more time to become established and that we have to continue to encourage other staff members to use it. If they tried it, they might like it...
It is *much* too soon (in my mind) to think of giving up on the blog.

I confess that I am also a bit disappointed by the number of staff who have privately told me they have not once looked at anything on the blog, and I am a tad frustrated when I've posted something and the people I meant it for are those who didn't read it. However this is still new, and we are still trying to get things going. I agree that it is too early to "give up" on the blog. Personally, if the blog is valuable for even 10 percent of the HSL staff, I think that is well worth keeping it going.

What I think is happening is this. Firstly, many people are totally overwhelmed with all the changes in the organization, and are struggling with time management (along with much else). This makes it hard to do anything that requires you to go to it, rather than coming to you where you are. Secondly, many of the people who are not using the blog are those who are still coming up to speed with the new focus on technology, and who haven't found ways to make the new tech come to them.

We need to give this group in our community time to adjust, need to make time for them to take a breather, catch up with everything thats going on, have a moment of leisure to explore the new tech and build the skills. Pushing it at them isn't going to work, especially when everyone seems to be under so much pressure, both time-wise and other-wise.

At the same time, there are things that can be done to help make the new tech more accessible for folk. First, remember that this is a transition time. Anything you really want heard should be posted through multiple forums -- both blog and e-mail, for example. Second, encourage people to take the RSS class and learn how to get the blog posts delivered directly to them. Third, while waiting for the HSL main page, let's get an HSL staff web page going, even if it is just a simple set of links and not particularly pretty. On that main HSL staff web page, set up RSS feeds for the blog and whatever other Web2.0 services we set up. This would allow people to go to one page and see the headlines, pics, web links, whatever we decide to have there for our staff. These are all things we can do NOW to make life easier for the entire group.

I think re-evaluating the blog is appropriate. However, the blog was opened for use on October 24. Even in the short time since that date, there have been 43 posts, 60 comments, and 22 different contributors. I don't think that's all that bad.

There have been some thoughtful comments and good suggestions, and I hope we will see more. One thing I'm noticing is that different posters have different expectations for the blog.

My expectation was not that the blog would replace email for official communications, but that it would be an open place for comments and discussion, an exchange of ideas, and an opportunity to experiment with new technology. Part of the experiment is determing how it works best for us and what role it plays. If nothing else, those who are actively reading and posting are getting value from it, and there's little or no cost to maintaining it now that it's up and running.

What are your expectations?

I would not expect that everyone in the HSL would want to blog all the time, but since I personally very much enjoy hearing other people's opinions (my favorite section of the newspaper is the one called "Letters to the Editor"), I was hoping that enough colleagues would agree that this is a wonderful way to chat on both important and more frivolous issues and that we could exchange views on a regular basis. I have never actually blogged before, but now that I am getting used to doing so, I am enjoying it more and more and even sometimes trying to prevent myself from being a "piggy" blogger and blogging too much and answering my own blogs--if you will. Actually, I think that 22 different contributors in less than 6 weeks is a very good return.

I didn't at all mean to suggest that I feel we should give up on the blog right now. I just wanted to put out the idea of evaluating it. This discussion is part of what I think needs to happen.

Evaluation is a great idea, Gillian, and should be an integral part of all new testbeds. I hope you'll continue to think about this and will join the discussion when we start to define how we'll do that evaluation.