Used mostly as an informational tool for collection development purchases, the IRC blog replaced not only my IRC "what's new" web page, but also numerous email notifications to faculty regarding said purchases (specific requests still get email). Furthermore, it saves me countless hours by not having to compile and post end of term book lists. But I digress. This morning I added a DVD, used the labels for this post option, and checked out the blog. Pleased, I went back and added labels to the most recent 50 posts. I viewed my efforts, clicked on the post links, and am now quite enamored with the post labels. My organizational librarian soul is hooked.
Why use these labels instead of Technorati or other tags? Because the IRC blog is basically an in-house tool, I do not particularly care if anyone outside of the AU community views it and nixed that tag option. I am not trying to increase readership from the blogosphere as it is not that kind of blog. If they find it (and people have done so), great. What I am interested in is making the blog more effective for my users/patrons. Since the post labels link within the blog, any post tagged "juvenile books" will link to all subsequent posts tagged the same. Each item within an individual post is displayed with its call number and linked to the catalog. The blog sidebar has a catalog search widget to facilitate locating other like titles or just searching from the blog. Now, the 50 most recent blog entries themselves are linked.
No, I'm not saying I will go back and tag all 370 posts remaining ...
(I just finished spell checking and it's pretty cool, highlighting the suspicious words and providing options on mouse-over.)
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