The Idea

So here's the idea we had for this blog.

We encourage every liaison and provider to contribute to this blog. We want this to be an open forum for all those who want to participate. There are no minimum post requirements. No grammar rules. No content restrictions (though keep in mind, while you may want to share with us all that you had the best waffles ever for breakfast this morning, the rest of the AskUsNow! staff may not be so quick to agree).

We've also made sure that there is a feed for those of you using aggregators to keep up with the world. (though if you're like me, you've got too many feeds to keep up with!)

Contributors
The way it's been envisioned (for now) is that Partner libraries would get one log in to share among liaisons and providers (to make it so not all 300+ individuals would have to sign up) but people who wanted to or already had blogger log ins could use their log in.

You should have already received an invitation to sign up for and contribute to the AUN staff blog.

I haven't ever done a community blog before so bear with me as we fumble through the set up process.

The way this blog was envisioned was that each partner library would have a log in to share among the liaison and providers so that 300+ librarians wouldn't have to sign up). Others who already have blogger/gmail accounts are welcome to use that as well.

Although the invitations were sent to your individual email accounts, if you have a general account you'd like to use for your staff contributions, that's okay. Just let me know and I can delete your other invitation and add another one.

Content
We're going to let you guys define the content for this blog. Discussions, ideas, links, comments, whatever you can think of posting, please do.

Not official AskUsNow! business? That's okay.

Miscellaneous
As this is a collaborative effort, please let me know if anyone has any ideas on any aspect of this blog. Currently, as I've never done a community blog, we're doing this Indiana Jones style. (There's a scene in the first Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indy and Marion are hiding from the Nazis, and she says, "Do you have a plan?" And he replies, "No, I'm just making it up as I go along.")

Nuts and Bolts
Once everyone has access to the blog (currently, until we get our feet under us, only the liaisons know about the blog) and starts posting, there will be some currently unforeseen issues that will need to be addressed. We'll deal with that later. Here's a short briefing of some initial things to know:

Posting
Posting to this site is just like typing into Word or typing an email. Each post gets a title, a body, and some labels. If you need some assistance getting started, feel free to contact Julie, or take a gander at the Blogger Help (which actually does help).

Labels
These are the categories (or tags) that posts will be filed into for easier access. Also, you can subscribe to a category feed so you can have sent to you only the information that's important to you.

Currently, we only have the "general" label but once more people start posting, more content will lead to more labels. You can add as many labels as you want to a singular post, but remember to keep them relevant so others can easily find content. You can also choose to add labels that have already been used to see if there is one that works for your post.
Read more about Labels in the Blogger Help.

Keeping track of who's who
If multiple people are posting under the general library account, signing the post would be nice so we can see who wrote what. If you're using your own account, your nickname will appear on your post automatically.

Privacy
For now, this blog can be read without a password which means anyone has access to it. I've made sure it isn't listed in the blogger directory and will soon be adding a no crawl code to make sure it stays out of search engines, but we wanted to keep this open until further notice.

Only those registered can posts but currently anyone can comment.

We will change these settings in the future if need be.