NHAIS NOTES BLOG

by Charles LeBlanc, Supervisor
NHAIS Services Section
NH State Library
(603) 271-2310 www.nh.gov/nhsl/nhais

As you are by now aware, there is a new kid on the block: The NHAIS Notes Blog. A link to this blog (http://nhais.blogspot.com) may be found under the subheading Web Links on the ABOUT NHAIS tab of NHU-PAC. The NHAIS communication process has always seemed to me a bit slow and too dependent on others. For the longest time I attributed the lack of a better process to my shy and humble nature, but that excuse is just that, an excuse. The next excuse for not reaching NHAIS users quickly was that available technology was too cumbersome, slow, and controlled by others. Well, this second excuse, in addition to being an excuse, has fallen by the wayside with the advent of blogs. The primary reason I see for using a blog is the flexibility and speed of communicating NHAIS and NHU-PAC issues to you. From our side of the blog, we are not hampered by the need to find the person who can change an official web page, nor do we have to worry about spam.

A secondary reason for the blog is that it does not run on any of the State's equipment. When, in the past, there have been major outages and disruptions to users, especially with the listserv computers, we have had no way to let our users know what was going on. This problem has been eliminated by using Beta Blogger, a commercially available blog service. This I hope will result in uninterrupted communication lines between us.

From the recipients' side, after the initial subscription, one never needs to go to the blog again, unless one so chooses. This makes the process of reading the blog as simple as reading e-mail. The subscription process is flexible. You can sign-up for messages as a daily digest (the drawbacks with this approach is that you could miss timely system update information); as e-mail each time a new post is added to the blog; or as an RSS or Atom feed. The choice is yours! Naturally you can bookmark the blog and visit it anytime you wish. In fact, if you want to you can bookmark a particular topic, like "Bobbi's Tech Tips" and then you can go directly to what has been posted on that specific topic. The live feeds from other New Hampshire library blogs are a feature that you will only get by visiting the actual site now and then, so you may want to click through from an e-mailed posting now and then to see these feeds. Again, the ball is in your court, you can play either way.

Communication in the other direction, from you to us is, I think, simple with the blog. There is a live e-mail link to the NHAIS Help Desk at the very bottom of the blog. All that is needed is a simple click on the address and your e-mail client will take care of presenting you with a blank e-mail message with the "to" address in place. If you have suggestions about improving the blog, please send them to Mary Russell. Her e-mail address is listed at the top of the blog.

The NHAIS Notes Blog is a means to improve communication while at the same time keeping the process as simple and efficient to use as possible. I hope you will take advantage of this new process because it's cool Web 2.0 technology, and from my point of view a simple, efficient, and easy way to keep apprised of NHAIS issues.