Growing our Blog

Check it out! The GrandCENtral blog is growing and its form is developing. A few more housekeeping details, and it looks like we’ll be ready to go public as scheduled on September 1. So far, one member of the public has found it, and loves it! Staff posters are having a ball with images, links, and embedded video. By the time it debuts on the library’s web site, it will have a good archive and have some meaty entries.

Boss gave us permission to run with it, but wants to restrict permission to post to those who responded to her call for interested staff. Anyone else who has material that would make a good post can send it to one of us, and we will upload it. This policy will be re-evaluated down the line.

We decided to incorporate the Spanish posts into the main blog; some of the English posts will be translated, but other Spanish language posts will be original. We are looking for a way to describe the blog that will make it apparent that there is Spanish content. There is space in the “subtitle” area of the header that could be used for that purpose.

We like the “departments” that seem to be developing: A Finer Focus, which functions like a pathfinder, and Book Review, are the two examples. If we can maintain this consistency, we can help our readers identify content more readily. We decided to use those headings as tags, which will then group like posts in search results.

At our meeting this afternoon, we passed out an article outlining legal points we need to keep in mind. They pertain to copyright issues, use of images and deep links, terms of service, and a privacy statement. Boss will run this by our library’s counsel. When we have her OK, we’ll turn on the blog and our light will shine!

"Grand CENtral" is Taxiing

Take a look at the current state of the CEN blog, Grand CENtral. I’m so proud of the work done my my colleagues, and also of the trust placed in us by our supervisors. One more meeting, and we’ll probably launch ahead of our Sept. 1 target date!

Some of the issues we’re still working out:

• how often to post in order to distribute the load and avoid burnout,
• what to do with the Spanish posts: keep them in the main blog? translate everything? only some things? nothing- have them be unique posts? create a parallel blog with mutual links?
• where to put the link to the blog on the library’s web pages
• whether to post under our own names, or all post as “central”
• whose a** will be on the line if a post is questioned

Another thing we need to work on – though not necessarily before we launch – is to create a manual of style and management guidelines with the passwords, the e-mail address to post from the road or from the reference desk, information about adding and deleting authors, information about posting from an author’s private account vs the blog’s account, and style guidelines for formatting similar posts similarly, i.e. book review format should include … photos should be x pixels wide… average post length should be y words …