[Web4lib] suggestion box/blog

[Richard Wiggins]

Like any online project, I think it's important to define the goal before
you choose a process or a tool.  Here are a few thoughts:

-- A shared forum can offer big advantages: You have other users helping
solve problems, not just your reference desk, help desk, IT staff, or
whatever.

-- If you capture questions / suggestions and answers, then over time you
build up content that answers specific ideas previously brought up.

-- I'm not sure a blog is necessarily the right tool.  A threaded forum like
vBulletin might work better.  Of course, with plugins you can make a blog
appear more like a forum.  To what extent are you trying to foster
discussion, and to what extent are you really trying to simulate a physical
suggestion box, where customer puts in a piece of paper with a suggestion,
and the folks from On High either accept the suggestion, or explain why the
idea can't be implemented, and we're done.

-- I strongly believe you need to incorporate the notion of an FAQ in your
planning.  The vast majority of questions, complaints, or suggestions will
duplicate previous requests.  If you are spending staff (or public)  time
answering the same question over and over again, you're wasting people's
time.  The online world understood this in the 80s and earlier -- look at
all the FAQs on Usenet.  Reference librarians probably understood this for
decades, with paper pathfinders you could hand out.

/rich

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 4:06 PM, McHale, Nina <nina.mchale at cudenver.edu>
wrote:

> Hey, all,
>
> I've beeen charged to create a "suggestion box/blog" by my admin folks.
> Anybody doing anything cool along those lines? We already have a news
> and events blog, and patrons often post comments to this. We also have a
> somewhat rarely used (twice a month?) comments/feedback form.
>
> Nina
>
>