[Web4lib] Blogs and responding to patron concerns/complaints

[Susan Basye]

Hello.

I have a blogging question that I hope someone will be kind enough to help
me with.  Our university library has a news blog right that I've been
working slowly with for the past few months (I inherited it in its current
form).  It needs a lot of work.

http://weblogs.uni.edu/libnews/

We use it to post news announcements right now and it doesn't allow comments
(I hope to change that soon though).

I suggested to our dean that we could use a blog to respond to patrons'
questions or complaints about library services.  Right now they can send
these types of things through a form on our web site but patrons do not
usually put their e-mail on the form so we can respond directly to them.
Instead we have typed up a response and posted it on a bulletin board in our
lobby that no one looks at.  I thought that if patrons could post their
concerns and complaints to a blog that the dean could then respond on the
blog and the patrons could then see the response.  It sounds pretty good in
theory I guess.

I am having trouble finding any examples of libraries that allow patrons to
post blog entries. I searched the list archives for this topic and came up
with very little.  

If your library allows patrons to post blog entries I'd be interested in
hearing how it is working for you.  If anyone has any comments in general on
using one blog for news and patron comments  versus using two separate blogs
I'd be interested in that as well.  

Thanks for your time!

Susan Basye

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Susan Basye
Administrative Operations Coordinator
Rod Library
University of Northern Iowa
1227 West 27th Street
Cedar Falls, Iowa  50613-3675

(319) 273-2737

susan.basye at uni.edu