Blogging Plan

The months of August through November are the busiest time for me during my work year. In addition to my full-time duties of collection development, reference and liaison librarian activities, I often teach more than a full-time professor’s teaching load when considering the number of class sessions per week during September to November for courses in First Year Seminar, Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, Nursing and Nutrition. I also create, distribute, explain, and guide approval of the end-of-fiscal-year budget reports and the library’s materials budget and department allocations of that budget for the upcoming fiscal year. I often feel that I have 2 ½ full time jobs during this four month period!

Therefore blogging often takes a back seat during this time of the year. Any blogging plan must be flexible and realistic given my heavy workload in the Fall.

I will post a mix of list, link or commentary posts. Due to the time and coordination involved, I will not pursue guest blog posts during this timeframe. The format will be based on the topic of the post, and the available time that I have that particular week. Most of my posts will contain links to relevant stories of interest, with commentary or discussion points. I will welcome comments and discussion to all of my posts. I will post links to each blog post on Twitter and Facebook.

I plan to post at least one blog post per week during the Fall. I may be able to increase this frequency in the Spring and Summer when I tend to have more time available. I will set aside some time each Friday afternoon to review content and write posts. I can also make use of the scheduled blogging features available in WordPress. This allows me to write blog posts in advance and post them at specific times. I learned about the feature and used it in the course.

I will gather content through readings and other blog entries that I read throughout the week. I collect blog posting ideas and save them in a “blog” folder in a personal Evernote account.

Possible topics include:

August 9	Use of QR Codes in Libraries. Could include a poll
August 16	Evaluating images in biased reports: based on an environmental report that misused images
August 23	Student preferences for paper or etext. Could include a poll
August 30	Growth of tablets and impact on research strategies
September 6	Outrageous journal prices and relationships with vendors. Include links to Harvard story
September 13	Flipping the library classroom
September 20	Use of cell phone in libraries. Commentary post supporting use of phones and against some library policies banning them as reported in American Libraries magazine
September 27	Finding unbiased health information. Commentary about webmd and their commercial interests that may bias the information they provide or highlight