1. Case Study: JISC-PoWR Blog
Marieke Guy, UKOLN Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library – ILI Workshop 15th October 2008
UKOLN is supported by:

2. Background to JISC-PoWR
JISC Preservation of Web Resources project
Focus on digital preservation issues of relevance to UK HE/FE Web management community
5 months (May – September 2008)
2 partners: UKOLN and ULCC + friendly lawyer
Aim is to raise awareness amongst the Web manager community of the need to incorporate preservation strategy into key stages of the web management process
Identify, share and seek to embed best practices!
3 Workshops: London, Aberdeen, Manchester,
Key resources: briefing papers, case studies and handbook
Blog -

3. The JISC-PoWR blog Launched on April 30th 2008 Used WordPress (hosted)
Popular, easy to use
Useful widgets, no in-house expertise needed
JISC Involve service (
Templates allowed customisation of side bars
Used as a dissemination channel for the project activities and forum for discussion

4. The Launch Initial posts Explained blog’s rationale and scope
Ensured there was documented policy e.g. Creative Commons
Introduced the team members who would be posting on the blog
Invited comments on posts, encouraged discussion
Initial posts went through a peer review process
Set up team area (Google docs, discussion list, internal documents etc.)
Alerted other bloggers to site (to encourage traffic), mentioned it on organisational Web sites, posted to lists

5. Monitoring the site
The Technorati search engine can provide valuable information related to your blog
Who has linked to your site?
What are they saying about the site?
Useful to follow up

6. Ranking and Authority
Authority: number of blogs linking to a your blog in the last six months
Rank: how far you are from the top (the smaller your rank, the closer you are to the top).
What is your ranking and authority?
Who has added it as a favourite?
Top tags

7. Statistics
Blotter ( provides an automated graph of your Technorati statistics
Useful tool
Helps spots unexpected peaks and troughs
Such objective statistics may be useful
For spotting trends
For gaining an understanding of how blogs work
For making comparison with one’s peers
For getting statistics at little effort for reporting purposes
But there are also many limitations (blogs may have focussed audiences, blog aggregation, statistics may be flawed, …)

8. Thoughts on the Blog #1 Very useful for sounding out ideas
starting discussions
Sharing ideas and getting feedback
alerting people to events and resources
Making contacts
Creating a community
More formal than most blogs, no one personality because many voices (RM vs WM)
Important to find an new angle on something rather than just repeat
Good to respond to comments

9. Thoughts on the Blog #2
Use of a conversational writing style makes it easy to write.
Open up your comments, get them ed to you but don’t review - bottleneck
Blog comment spam can be a problem, so an automated spam filter is needed.
Maximising impact is important, so making information available in many places is valuable
Blended blogging: is great – blog on a topic before talk and get suggestions; blog afterwards and get feedback
Widgets can enrich the blogging environment

10. Questions
Any questions?