Many students may be friends with Lydia Moss Bradley on her Facebook account. But, not many students seem to know about her blog on the Bradley Web site called Lydia’s View.
Lydia’s is one of five blogs on the Bradley Web page at http://blogs.bradley.edu/. The others cover such topics as technology help, information and resources, the library and teacher education.
The blogs were developed a few years ago as a way to keep students informed about everything happening on campus, Executive Director of the Library Barbara Galik said.
She also writes the blog for the library.
“We started several blogs in Fall 2006 when we overhauled the library Web site to make it more interactive,” Galik said. “We wanted to share information with students in a format we hoped would start a dialog.”
The entries in the blog range from changes Galik would like to see in the library to announcements about events taking place there. There are also updates telling students how they can reach Galik with any questions or concerns.
Student response on the blog is low.
Galik said she thinks there is more than one reason for this.
“The nature of our blogs is more informational which does not lend itself to a lot of comments or feedback,” Galik said.
She also said there could be an issue with interest because blog upkeep takes time, “Another possible reason is that it is difficult to keep the blogs up to date, and many, including my blog, are out of date,” Galik said.
Despite the lack of feedback from students, the library’s Web site did receive an award from the American Library Association.
“We did receive external recognition as the College Library Web site of the month in February 2007 by the Communications Committee of Association of College and Research Libraries. They acknowledged specifically our use of blogs and wikis,” Galik said.
Along with the library blog, there is a blog written by the technology help desk with a few entries about ways to improve laptop performance and how to better utilize Windows Vista. There is also a blog written from Lydia’s point of view. It references many different events on campus such as President Barack Obama’s inauguration and Bradley basketball games.
But most students are familiar with the blogs written by their fellow students, sophomore elementary education major Jadda Castaneda said.
“I looked at them when I was a freshman and they helped me,” Castaneda said. “Now I only read them once in a while if I’m on the site for some reason, but I don’t check them regularly.”
The blogs on the freshmen admissions page are written by six current Bradley students. Some of them are affiliated with STARs, others are participating in study abroad courses.
“The idea behind blogging is just to show anyone that visits the Web site a slice of life at Bradley,” sophomore organizational communications major Kevin McClelland said. “We’re not really encouraged to write about anything in particular, we’re just asked to blog on a semi-regular basis.”
