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Building Digital Libraries: Role of Social (Open Source) Software

The use of blogging by academic librarians is a relatively recent development (Bar-Ilan, 2007; Zhuo, 2006). Unsurprisingly, there is debate over the use and value of blogging by academic librarians, and of blogging in general. Some see blogging as passé, a fad whose time has come and gone, e.g., Boutin, 2008, and now largely superseded by social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. There have been sharp criticisms of blogging, such as Gorman’s editorial (Gorman, 2005). Others counter that blogging can be a useful and effective means of interacting with patrons (Coulter & Draper, 2006), and that librarians should work to promote an environment where traditional and emerging forms of communication like blogging can coexist peacefully (Gordon, 2005). The authors of this chapter embrace the view that blogging can be a useful and effective means to communicate with patrons, but academic librarians have not fully exploited that potential to date. Blogging is one valuable way among many to reach distance education students, provide reference services, notify patrons of new materials, offer bibliographic instruction, and so forth. ABSTRACT