More on the CLA Blog
February 17th, 2005The Librarian in Black provides an update on the California Library Association blog initiative:
“The California Library Association’s new blog now has its feeds posted…The site is also now named “News/Weblog” instead of just “News.” Oh, and will you look at that? Some nice librarian has posted something on the blog about what RSS is and how to use it to aggregate content 
Whether or not the site will remain open to all, or become a members-only feature has yet to be determined.”
Great news. Now onto the “members only” situation. I think that this is a bad idea. Some librarians want to ‘be a part” of the association but can’t afford to. The blog will still enable them to keep with the state association issues without having to receive monthly updates elsewhere. For a field that strives on the openness of information, having a social software tool behind closed doors is counterintuitive and counterproductive.
Also, think of the blog as a marketing tool to entice new members to join the association. Don’t isolate your news and blog posts behind a “members-only” shield and expect others to know what the association has been up to. It just doesn’t make any sense.