Over at Library Stuff, Steven Cohen ponders the possibility of using patrons as bloggers/marketers for the library. If, as David Rothman suggests, "librarian blogs preach mostly to the choir," perhaps a user-centered blog would be a better tool for marketing a library's facilities and services.

What does that mean for law school libraries? Perhaps law faculty and student "evangelists" should be drafted to write about the library. After all, their experiences certainly reflect more accurately the needs of other patrons than do a librarian's. And they may even raise concerns in their postings that never occurred to librarians. Assuming the librarians listened to these concerns, faculty/student blogs could lead to an improvement in library services.

Now, I'm not totally sold on this concept, mind you. For one, most faculty probably consider themselves far too busy to spend time writing for a library blog. (Perhaps they should have their research assistants blog for them.) As for students, they're certainly more familiar with the concept of blogs, but in most cases they're simply unaware of the many services available to them in the library (which is, of course, our failure as librarians to effectively market what we already have).

Nonetheless, it's something to ponder. I think there might be a good, workable idea buried in there somewhere.