There are Real People in There? Blogging at the University of Worcester.

Communication has long been one of the major issues facing us in the library profession. Communication with our users, with our wider organisation and even amongst ourselves had been highlighted at the University of Worcester as an area in need of vast improvement, and in 2004 we took our first tentative steps into the Web 2.0 world as a potential method for providing the library with a much needed presence.

This paper aims to demonstrate our evolution from static web pages, delivering half-hearted and wildly sporadic attempts at news, to an institution fronted by an actual human voice. I’ll aim to show that Web 2.0 is ironically not about technology, but about the style of communication it encourages, and how we’ve been able to use these applications to return to some of the traditional values of librarianship in a truly modern, relevant way.