Great idea! We do have a single web page that lists all the library blogs
(http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/). I'll feature this as a homepage news item, and also see about getting a permanent link to it ... but first need to check & make sure all these blogs are public.

Featuring relevant blogs on subject pages seems like a good idea also.

Following up on the previous comment ... I'm told that the page I referenced is not a list of "ready for prime time" news blogs. But some of these blogs do have significant value, and I'm sure there are ways for us to bring this content to a wider audience.

I think it is a great idea for staff to see the list of blogs. However, I am not sure a user looking to stay current on Science & Engineering news (http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/sel.php) really cares about Classics news (http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/classics.php) and vice-a-versa. When would they know to go to this page? If I wanted Science & Engineering news would I go to a page listing blogs or the Engineering Library page?

I think we need to remember blogs are tools to provide information and not interesting outside of the information they provide. Except maybe to us.

Well, I think the easier it is for library patrons to find our blogs the better. I can easily imagine a library patron (economist or engineer) starting from the main library home page and discovering a blog of interest that way. Browsing, in addition to searching, is a valid discovery tool.

There are examples of this at other (state) institutions:

NCSU Libraries:
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/

Georgia State Libraries
http://www.library.gsu.edu/news/

We have a library news section also. Why not just list our subject blogs there?

The point I am trying to make is the library should be making every effort to emphasize new technologies and give them prominence. There should be clear and obvious links on our main page for IM reference, blogs, wikis, and anything else new and web 2.0?ish.
.

I would like to provide access to all the library's news sources in one spot. Although classics news might not interest an engineer, this campus is so interdisciplinary that it's easy to imagine some crossover interest - an engineer interested in water resources, for example. Although some users might think to go to a specific library's website for news, this might not occur to others.

IMHO the key point here is that these are news sources, not that they are blogs. The listing could include HTML news pages as well ... though it would be useful to flag which ones are blogs, to attract folks interested in RSS subscription capability (and as a subtle way of promoting this technology to staff).

News means new stuff - owners of blogs or pages with no content less than a couple of weeks old should be queried and should need to make a case (or add some fresh content!) to be listed.

Anyway, I will be following this discussion, but also working on this aside from New Directions.