Blogging Policy - Exported from Google Docs

A blogging policy can clarify:

• Why you are blogging (purpose)
  
• Who will be blogging
• The roles of the blog administrator, blog posters, and anyone else involved on the IT side
  
• Who is the intended audience
  

• "Best practices" of blogging, both content and style
  

Blogging Policy for UCSD Science & Engineering Library (last update March 7, 2007)

Policies may need revisiting Spring 2007, when/if library blogs move from Movable Type to campus WordPress software

Purpose and General Description

• The S&E blog is a vehicle for timely news and information of interest to users of the S&E website.
• The 3 most recent posts will be pushed out to the S&E homepage using feed-to-javascript conversion. There’s also a link to the complete blog as well as an RSS feed if users want to add the feed to their RSS reader.
• The S&E reference providers are expected to provide the blog content. SuHui is the blog administrator, responsible for accounts, configuration and creating new categories (which can be proposed in our web meetings). Teri can assist users with training, best practices and suggestions for content.
• The comments feature has been disabled.

Subject Categories (entries may fit in multiple categories)
Categories will be listed after each entry and accessible through the MT archive

• Classes and User Guides – our classes and new web guides
• Exhibits - ours and exhibits on campus
• News & Events – our news and events and UCSD events of interest
• Books & Encyclopedias – emphasis on online, but can be used to promote print
• Journals– emphasis on online, but can be used to promote print
• Database News – trials, new databases, updates
• Known Problems and Down Time - database, ejournal, and other system down time
• Science News & Hot Topics
• Faculty News – faculty publications and honors
• Tech Tools – tips and gadgets
• Good Web Sites – things that we’re adding to Sage that we’d like to mention again, for example.

Best Practices – Content

• Do not copy entire postings from other sources
• If you are directly quoting, identify it as such using italics and quotation marks
• Please give credit to other sources. If you’re posting about something you found on another blog, you can give them a simple hat-tip at the end of the entry (h/t: Site and URL).
• If possible, try to trace links back to the original source, as opposed to repeating what someone else is blogging.
• If you need to update an entry, that’s fine. All of us should have rights to update any entry.
• If you’re not ready for an entry go live, you can leave it in draft mode. You can also take a live entry and put it back in draft, then rebuild the site to make it disappear.
• To update an entry and reset it so it appears at the top, change the date of the entry to today. You cannot push a live entry out on a future date by postdating it.

Best Practices – Style

• Titles should be brief: 6 words or less
• Writing style should generally be brief, informal, conversational. Contractions and bulleted lists are fine. Correct spelling and basic grammar are also important.
• If the entry is going to be rather long, enter the beginning in the main entry box, and use the “full entry” box for the rest. Users will see a link to read the rest of the entry.
• Using a more personal tone should be done with care and discretion. Commentary on how one can use a resource is one thing, but avoid personal opinions.
• Hyperlinks can be inline (and should be inline if they’re long): i.e an article in this week’s Science or written out: i.e. go to Roger – http://roger.ucsd.edu
• Avoid statements like “click here.”
• Our version of MT almost no WYSIWYG editor, so anything beyond bold/italics/underlining, uploading images and embedding hyperlinks will need to be handcoded in HTML. This includes lists, tables and alignments.