[WEB4LIB] Re: weaning staff from email to weblog

[K.G. Schneider]

Several ideas.

First, if the issue is archiving discussions, email lists can do this. So
I'm not completely sure why the blog format is promoted over email. 

Second, staff may not always WANT their every comment archived for easy
public access. (Of course, their mail is probably archived somewhere, but
not easily accessible.) Have you ever asked a question that felt made you
look dumb? Is it easier to ask that question one-on-one, in person, or in a
public forum where everyone can revisit your comment forever and ever? Some
discussions are going to happen one-on-one or in small groups, and that is
not a bad thing. 

Third, staff may like the convenience of getting email in their inbox, and
prefer email for that reason. If the blog has feeds and you give them RSS
aggregators, that could (partly) fix that problem. They may really get to
like using RSS. I notice that Liz Lawley has set up her blog, MamaMusings,
so that new comments generate notification through my aggregator, and if
you're looking for people to participate in threaded comments on a posting,
that feature would be good to implement. 

What you may need to do is step back and ask where blogs work, where they do
not, how to provide them, and what group dynamics are involved in their
adoption. Clay Shirky recently published a great article about email and
flaming that gets into some high-level discussion about online dynamics: 

http://shirky.com/writings/group_user.html

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com