Are users interested in library blogs?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present the Hungarian liblogosphere and to analyse their comments. Most of the library blogs target users and are intended to form a virtual community around them. This research analyses comments and tries to identify those people who read blogs and communicate through this channel. Since the emergence of web 2.0 paradigm Hungarian libraries have developed several sites trying to build virtual communities. Most of the sites built by libraries could not become as popular as librarians expected. We selected 10 library blogs targeting users and analysed all entries and all comments in a 3 months period. We tried to identify those who write comments and observe if virtual communities came up around blogs. We also identified the most popular topics of blog readers. The most surprising result of the blog analysis was that there are hardly any users who write comments. Virtual communities have been built just around a few blogs. It seems that the Hungarian liblogosphere is much more the librarians’ common virtual playground than an attractive tool for our users. We could not collect data on real readers just make conclusions from the comments. Further research should observe who are the real readers of library blogs. It is an original research.