Stephen Bell makes a great point in his 2005 ALA poster presentation, “If Youæ± e Going To Blog, Blog It To Courseware“:
Do you already have a library weblog (blog) or are you considering using one to create awareness about library services and resources. That’s great because a blog can be a powerful marketing and awareness tool. Now, how are you going to get your user community to read the blog. Realistically, the library’s weblog is unlikely to be perceived as so vital that students and faculty will choose to follow it regularly by bookmarking the blog site or otherwise visiting it regularly. This poster session describes how a library weblog can be integrated into campus courseware (e.g., Blackboard, WebCT). Using software that converts blog content into HTML code the library weblog output can be directly added to students’ course sites.
I’ve described such RSS-to-HTML software in a previous post. And I’m going to try doing exactly what Steve suggests in our school’s Blackboard implementation. I’ll let you know what happens.