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The aim of this paper is to gauge how academic libraries treat publishing a blog.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to gauge how academic libraries treat publishing a blog.
Design/methodology/approach
As blogging becomes more popular, the question arises as to whether it should count as scholarship or a creative activity in academic promotion and tenure. To find out, the author sent a link to a questionnaire to several e‐mail lists, inviting academic librarians to answer a short survey.
Findings
In total, 73.9 percent of respondents indicated that their institution expects them to engage in scholarly activities and/or publish scholarly articles, 53.6 percent indicated that their performance review committees do not weigh a blog the same as an article published in a peer‐reviewed journal.
Research limitations/implications
As technology changes, policies will need to change.
Practical implications
Libraries may need to adapt to new forms of scholarship. Electronic scholarship needs a mechanism for peer‐review.
Originality/value
The paper is original – the author did not find any other surveys regarding blogging as scholarship in the library literature.
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Keywords
Alison McIntyre and Janette Nicolle
The purpose of this paper is to describe two case studies conducted at the University of Canterbury (UC) which demonstrate the potential of blogging as an internal and external…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe two case studies conducted at the University of Canterbury (UC) which demonstrate the potential of blogging as an internal and external communication tool. The internal blog was used to communicate and manage information for service staff across the library system, while the external blog communicated content and service updates to the academic community.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper relates the experience of setting up an internal and external library blog. Selecting blog software and staff training issues are mentioned. The advantages of blogging and the challenges of developing and maintaining readership are discussed, as are criteria for success. A survey of academic staff on their use of information and information technology was also conducted.
Findings
Blogs are a successful strategy for disseminating internal information to library staff working in public services. They provide a convenient medium for the transfer of day‐to‐day communication, facilitate best practice and create an archive of institutional knowledge. Blogs are also a valuable tool to communicate targeted subject specific library information to academic staff.
Originality/value
The experience at UC Library suggests that, although faculty are heavy users of the internet, this does not necessarily generalise to their use of blogs, and librarians need to take a leadership role in promoting blog technology as a way of transforming internal communication and external relationships with library users.
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Keywords
Haiwang Yuan and Rosemary L. Meszaros
Aims to provide a methodology to establishing a campwide‐blog service and the reasons why libraries might consider using blogging software in their institutions.
Abstract
Purpose
Aims to provide a methodology to establishing a campwide‐blog service and the reasons why libraries might consider using blogging software in their institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
A summary of the main features of the blogging software.
Findings
This article provides an overview of blogging software: what it is, how it works, and its benefits and offers a practical approach to implementation including training, marketing and policy development.
Originality/value
This paper is useful for information management professionals who seek greater understanding of blogging software implementations.
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Markus Schaal, Guven Fidan, Roland M. Müller and Orhan Dagli
The purpose of this paper is the presentation of a new method for blog quality assessment. The method uses the temporal sequence of link creation events between blogs as an…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is the presentation of a new method for blog quality assessment. The method uses the temporal sequence of link creation events between blogs as an implicit source for the collective tacit knowledge of blog authors about blog quality.
Design/methodology/approach
The blog data are processed by the novel method for the assessment of blog quality. The results are compared to Google Page Rank with respect to the Gold Standard, the BlogRazzi Bookmark Rank.
Findings
The method is similar or better than Google Page Rank with respect to the chosen Gold Standard.
Originality/value
The major contribution of this paper is the introduction of a novel method for blog quality assessment. Even though its superiority to other and more established methods cannot be proven in the context of this limited study, it enriches the toolset available for blog quality assessment and may become important for a deeper understanding of organizational learning.
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Keywords
Flora S. Tsai and Kap Luk Chan
The paper aims to explore the performance of redundancy and novelty mining in the business blogosphere, which has not been studied before.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to explore the performance of redundancy and novelty mining in the business blogosphere, which has not been studied before.
Design/methodology/approach
Novelty mining techniques are implemented to single out novel information out of a massive set of text documents. This paper adopted the mixed metric approach which combines symmetric and asymmetric metrics.
Findings
The results show that the novelty mining system can detect novel and redundant blogs in the dataset of business blogs with a very high accuracy.
Originality/value
This paper shows that novelty mining techniques can be applied to business blogs to help organizations filter redundant information, and that the cosine and mixed metrics approaches produce better results.
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Tom Goodfellow and Sarah Graham
The considerable cost of sending staff to a conference is often not matched by the benefits that the library then gains. The aim of this paper was to maximise the institutional…
Abstract
Purpose
The considerable cost of sending staff to a conference is often not matched by the benefits that the library then gains. The aim of this paper was to maximise the institutional impact of the authors' attendance at the ALIA Click06 conference in Perth, Western Australia by providing a blog of the event and encouraging interaction with colleagues during the conference itself.
Design/methodology/approach
The University of Sydney's “Blogs dot Usyd” service provided the platform for the blog, using WordPress software and holding the blog within the usyd.edu.au domain. Prior to the conference postings were done occasionally in order to build up interest in the blog. During the conference, postings were done several times each day using conference or hotel wifi facilities and internet cafes. Pictures were also posted to Flickr. Posts were a mix of informal/contextual and formal/informational.
Findings
The response from colleagues was very positive. Usage statistics show that a high proportion of the target audience read the blog with many of them using RSS. Some posts also attracted a number of comments, which often produced results that added value to our original posts. The authors were also surprised to find a high level of interest from the wider library community. In particular, Australian bloggers seem to be forming a strong community bond based around the librariesinteract.info communal blog. Producing the blog enabled the authors to meet with a number of peers, thereby increasing the benefits from the conference activity.
Practical implications
The further use of blogs as staff communication tools during conferences and similar events should be encouraged. This could be linked with staff development activities such as training in blogging and RSS.
Originality/value
The blog differed from most institutional blogs in that it had a tightly defined target audience, a predetermined period of existence and a very tight focus on a single event.
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The purpose of this paper is to show how blogging has grown as an online phenomenon.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show how blogging has grown as an online phenomenon.
Design/methodology/approach
Examines the way that blogs have become a phenomenon that embrace private authors who go online to write personal diaries through to representatives from different types of commercial, political and voluntary organisations who utilise them for a range of information exchange, debating, promotional and support purposes.
Findings
As blogging grows as an online phenomenon its impact in areas such as news, politics, and social networking is being taken ever more seriously. While the internet has been held up by governments as holding great economic and political promise, acting as a vehicle that can enhance public services, empower and engage citizens, and trigger new ways of doing business, the reality in terms of how it is actually applied can be poles apart from the ideal.
Originality/value
The paper provides an overview of blogging and introduces the papers in this special issue.
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Keywords
Mohamed Mohiya and Francesco Caputo
HR Blog is one of the social technologies systems to allow employees to voice the issues they experience. However, employees’ trust becomes an emerging issue to use HR Blog. This…
Abstract
Purpose
HR Blog is one of the social technologies systems to allow employees to voice the issues they experience. However, employees’ trust becomes an emerging issue to use HR Blog. This paper aims to investigate the impact level of employees’ trust in using HR Blog and identifying the causes affecting employees’ trust in using HR Blog. Social exchange theory (SET) was adopted as a vehicle to assist in identifying the employees’ trust causes. SET found serves the aim of research because it posits that the relationship between employees and HR Blog is built based on reciprocity, two-way of exchange.
Design/methodology/approach
The research adopts a qualitative method, namely, semi-structured interviews. The total number of conducted semi-structured interviews is 46, 38 interviews with HR Blog users and eight interviews with the management of HR Blog.
Findings
The present research found that HR Blog is distrusted by the vast majority of employees. The causes of HR Blog distrust were: functionality (mainly the placing the filtration process); lack of feedback and attention to employees in HR Blog; lack of providing tangible outcomes of HR Blog; and absence of HR Blog informative materials and clear guidelines.
Originality/value
This research lies in the fact that it is one of the first studies that focus on employees’ perspectives to empirically identify and investigate their trust factors affecting the use of HR Blog. The study achieved its aim in terms of gaining a better understanding of how to gain and restore employees’ trust to make HR Blog a trusted and effective system in the workplace.
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Lei Hou, Lu Guan, Yixin Zhou, Anqi Shen, Wei Wang, Ang Luo, Heng Lu and Jonathan J.H. Zhu
User-generated content (UGC) refers to semantic and behavioral traces created by users on various social media platforms. While several waves of platforms have come and gone, the…
Abstract
Purpose
User-generated content (UGC) refers to semantic and behavioral traces created by users on various social media platforms. While several waves of platforms have come and gone, the long-term sustainability of UGC activities has become a critical question that bears significance for theoretical understanding and social media practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a large and lengthy dataset of both blogging and microblogging activities of the same set of users, a multistate survival analysis was applied to explore the patterns of users' staying, switching and multiplatforming behaviors, as well as the underlying driving factors.
Findings
UGC activities are generally unsustainable in the long run, and natural attrition is the primary reason, rather than competitive switching to new platforms. The availability of leisure time, expected gratification and previous experiences drive users' sustainability.
Originality/value
The authors adopted actual behavioral data from two generations of platforms instead of survey data on users' switching intentions. Four types of users are defined: loyal, switcher, multiplatformer and dropout. As measured by the transitions among the four states, the different sustainability behaviors are thereby studied via an integrated framework. These two originalities bridge gaps in the literature and offer new insights into exploring user sustainability in social media.
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Carolina Yukari Veludo Watanabe, Eduardo Henrique Diniz and Eusebio Scornavacca
This paper aims to identify the role of blogs in helping women victims of intimate partner sexual violence to restore their self-integrity.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify the role of blogs in helping women victims of intimate partner sexual violence to restore their self-integrity.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors’ research uses an interpretive stance, supported by motivational and “self” theories to analyze 33 blogs reporting the experiences of women in Brazil who suffered sexual violence perpetrated by an intimate partner.
Findings
This study identifies the reasons why women who suffer violence from intimate partners write blog posts. It also develops an analytical framework that bridges the gap between the design and use of IT-artifacts and the context of sexual violence from an intimate partner. Women who suffer violence from intimate partners look for blogs in order to find a safe space for expression, a knowledge hub and a social support network. Blogs play a pivotal role in supporting the journey of reconstructing their self-integrity.
Research limitations/implications
The results help to understand the role of blogs in helping victims in vulnerable situations trying to restore their self-integrity. It also contributes to improve the design and functionality of such platforms as an important resource for social support networks.
Practical implications
This study shows the positive impact of blogs as a tool to support victims in the process of restoring their self-integrity.
Social implications
This study aims to promote the use of digital artifacts such as blogs as a complementary instrument to fight violence against women.
Originality/value
The analytical framework used in this paper helps to understand the role of IT-artifacts in the context of sexual violence from an intimate partner.
Details