Weblogs as Customer Communication Collaboration Tools Blogs at

Weblogs as Customer Communication & Collaboration Tools: Blogs at APL Christina K Pikas Computers in Libraries March 22, 2006

Agenda §Our Process §Our Current Blog §Other Internal Blogs §Lessons Learned §Future Work 2

Our Process: Our Environment §Centralized IT management §No library servers, techies §No lab-wide effort §We are the content people §Immediate management proinnovation 3

Our Process: Need §Need for newsletter §Intranet portal design is inflexible §Moving to all digital/online > need new communications channels 4

Our Process: First Try §Librarian Proposal §Potential uses §Requirements §Suggested Software §Techie - Picked another software, that did not meet requirements 5

Our Process: End of First Try § Librarian § Coded template § Created content § Marketed § No statistics § Server taken away, content backed up 6

Our Process: Second Try §Head of library group found friendly techie, group to host §Purchased MT license §Librarian § Set up blogs § Created branded templates § Created marketing tools 7

Current Blog §Statistics via § Apache/Webalizer (2 k visits/month) § MT internal §E-mails received requesting inclusion §Linked from department pages 8

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Other Internal Blogs §Mix of software hosts §Under the radar §Do not receive comments – authors get e-mail, phone calls, stopped in the hall §Do not have subscribers, mostly get traffic from search, visits 10

Future Work §Topical blogs §Internal lab-wide summit for social software §Possible hosting of other department blogs §Surveys to determine other directions 11

Lessons Learned § Do the best you can to get a stable host § Do not assume customers and IT know/get blogs § Back-up, consider ways to export/import posts § Lots of contact information § Get it advertised on the pages your customers visit! 12

Contact Information Christina K. Pikas, BS, MLS R. E. Gibson Library & Information Center The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Voice 443. 778. 4812 (Baltimore) 240. 228. 4812 (Washington) E-mail 13 Christina. Pikas@jhuapl. edu