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Blog Policy & Procedures
Mission or Purpose:
The mission of MGPL Blogs is to advance the Library's mission to educate, serve, and reach out to MGPL patrons and users.
Goal:
The goal of the MGPL blogs is to provide timely and useful information about services and resources available to patrons at the Library and online, and increase interaction between patrons and Library staff. Blogging is an important marketing tool in promoting Library programs, web pages, new services, new collection formats, etc. and is aimed at increasing readership and usage of Library's web site and Library collection on site and online.
For the purpose of this policy, public blogs are those intended for a public audience. Staff blogs are those written exclusively for internal staff use.
Hosting:
Hosting solutions are determined on the basis of cost, security, features and ease of integration with the Library's Internet services. At this time the approved host is blogger.com
Blogs Management
- The department head is responsible for blogs maintained by her/his department. She/he may share and/or delegate editorial responsibilities for their blogs to their staff.
- The department head will gather relevant statistical data available for blogs maintained by her/his department, and will report it to the
Head of Automated Services and Technology for inclusion in monthly statistical reports. Statistical data will be used to identify areas for improvement on gaining blogs readership and defining topics most relevant to its readers. Statistics will not be available to general public, and will be maintained in accordance with the Library Privacy Policy. To ensure consistency of data collected, all Library blogs will use the same service for gathering statistics. At this time the approved tool is Google Analytics.
- The scope of the blog content, as well as frequency of postings, should be established before a blog goes public.
- The department head will make a decision on who can contribute to the blog.
- The director has overall oversight of library blogs.
- Technical questions should be forwarded to a staff who has been assigned official duties as blogs technical support.
Blogs Design:
- MGPL blogs will have a design consistent with Library guidelines for website branding by including the approved MGPL logo and page elements.
- Template choice will take into consideration the look of the required elements of the Library logo and sidebar content.
- Once the choice of template is published, it will remain the template of choice so as not to confuse the readers with the blog's new look every time they want to read the blog.
- To maintain a consistency of style and content, sidebar page elements will be in the same place and order on all blogs.
- The page elements will include the following:
- links to include Library Catalog and Library Home Page
- general Library information in the "About the Library" section
- general description of the blog and its bloggers in the "About Us" section
- links to other MGPL blogs in the "Blog Roll" section
- Other links to notable web sites may be added to the Links section if the consensus is that they would be useful to readers.
- Privacy and comment disclaimer statement must be included.
Posting Guidelines:
- Blog postings will be professional and reflect well on the MGPL community.
- Posts should reflect community interests and the goals of the Library and the Board of Trustees.
- Blog postings should be maintained for currency with a minimum of one posting per week.
- Bloggers and their content are expected to maintain the standards of the profession by checking facts, citing sources, presenting balanced views, acknowledge and correct errors, and check spelling and grammar before making a post live.
- Posts and comments should be written in accordance with the Library Privacy Policy and with consideration of patrons' and staff confidentiality.
- Bloggers are encouraged to seek advice of their department head if they have any questions about the appropriateness, relevance or any other issue of the blog entry before publishing it.
- Links to related posts are encouraged, but bloggers should post original content rather than reposting entire items from other blogs or lists.
- Pictures liven up blog entries and provide informational value to posts, so bloggers are encouraged to use clip art, pictures, other graphics, video, audio and animation files (all subject to Copyright Law).
- Bloggers are encouraged to put their "best foot forward" on MGPL activities.
- Patron comments posted to a MGPL blog should be relevant to the topic or to library events, services, programs or policies.
- The e-mail account assigned to each blog should be checked a minimum of once per day.
Comments:
- Commentary, opinion, and reaction to posts are welcome and consistent with MGPL's commitment to reaching out to its patrons.
- Comments are open to all but will be moderated by the blog editor(s).
- Comments should be relevant to the specific post to which they are attached.
- Comments can be anonymous but may be signed with full or partial name or pseudonym.
- MGPL reserves the right not to post any comment or to remove it at a later time.
- The following (Adapted with permission (3/7/07) from Computerworld's blog comments policy) will be removed by MGPL editors:
- Potentially libelous comments.
- Obscene or racist comments.
- Personal attacks, insults, or threatening language.
- Plagiarized material.
- Private, personal information published without consent.
- Comments substantially unrelated to the topic of the forum.
- Commercial promotions or spam.
- Hyperlinks to material that is not directly related to the discussion.
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