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Anne Welsh, Information Officer, Bibliographic Services, DrugScope

Common deterrents to professional blogging are a perceived lack of material to blog about, and the amount of time needed to produce material. Drawing on the presenter's own experience and illustrated by clear examples, this presentation demonstrates how common library activities such as acquisitions, cataloguing and enquiry work can be transformed quickly and easily into blog entries. It asserts that the librarian's relationship with her/his user group is an advantage many professional journal editors would envy. Since all library activities are structured to meet the needs of its clientele, they provide sources of information that can be communicated to the library blog audience. Enquiry work can be used to generate blog entries in the style of frequently asked questions, while resource discovery / acquisitions work can provide entries about new sources of information. Cataloguing and indexing has traditionally fed acquisitions lists, and the blog can be used to communicate new acquisitions on the day they arrive. Many of these entries can be automated or semi-automated: most LMS can facilitate database reports from the catalogue to produce lists of new orders / additions to stock and from the library knowledge database to produce new resource lists or the answers to commonly asked questions. This presentation encourages course participants to draw upon their existing skills and knowledge of the needs of their user group to create an information service blog that will satisfy this existing group and attract a wider audience, both to the blog and to the information service as a whole. By the end of the presentation, course participants should feel empowered to write material for their own professional blogs.