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OLA: The Blog People: Librarians Generating Content and Communication

ae-j — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 00:57:31 +0000

OLA Super Conference
Presenter: Michael Stephens, St. Joseph County Public Library

I finally got to meet Michael Stephens, after years of reading his blog and admiring his work! I was pretty-well sitting back and enjoying his talk for the most part, so this is mostly summary stuff.

Update: Michael’s presentation materials are here.

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- blog as tool, CMS, software, to generate web content.
- brief history of blog: hand coding began it, then Blogger and Livejournal in 1999
- 2000-2005: the tools made it easy to publish to the web, no html needed, no ftp; dozens of features, dynamic, quick, easy to develop

Taxonomy of library & librarian blogs:
- library-sponsored blogs (marketing, topical, internal, organizational, etc.)
- independent librarian blogs (frontline, innovator, commentator, etc.)

Newer trends in blogging:
- photo-blogging, flickr, podcasting, etc.

Rrecent research in weblogs & libraries:
- lawley, blanchard, clyde
- blogs as virtual communities
- trust in blog communities: high degree of self-disclosure, bloggers with internal evaluation system, medium of publishing in progress

Conversations and the cluetrain
- aadl
- talk to users, allow comments, get interactive, share book reviews, thoughts, more…
- cluetrain: networked conversations going on and we need to learn from them; speak with a human voice, see the face of the library, make the library human, transparency, communicate with market directly.
- catalogue as blog
- library wikis – great for subject guides. At SJCPL, librarians use MediaWiki to create and edit subject guides and patrons can “discuss” the pages.

Questions for further research:
- how have blogs changed communication between librarians?
- how does blogs serve the social purpose of the library?
- who comments on library blogs and why?

librarian-in-training blogs

ae-j — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:46:55 +0000

Joy, over at Wanderings of a Student Librarian is putting together a list of librarian-in-training bloggers. Go let her know if you qualify & aren’t on the list.

libraries, plucked

ae-j — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:58:34 +0000

Pluck, as most of you probably know, is an RSS reader that comes in both Web-based and downloadable varieties. What I didn’t know about Pluck is that they have this little “Feed of the Day” blog going, and (even better) they’ve recently tuned into the fact that libraries and librarians are tech-savvy like you wouldn’t believe:

As you peruse useful, interesting, and fun RSS-enabled sites, you’ll notice something rather extraordinary: librarians really are cool. That may sound surprising (not to librarians of course), but these masters of the information universe are perhaps best suited to finding, organizing, and serving up information in a truly useful way (read.: they serve water in small Dixie cups instead of using the Internet “information fire hose”). [link]

Today’s feed of the day is Shifted, yesterday’s was ResourceShelf, Tuesday’s was bwal.net (aw, thanks, Pluck!), and Monday’s was DocuTicker. All this heady library/librarian lovin’ just makes me trippy (in the best possible way).

for anyone who doesn’t care about the whats and whys

ae-j — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 21:54:00 +0000

Bloglines for Librarians in Three (and a half) Easy Steps.

new RSS article

ae-j — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 21:46:17 +0000

A new article up on LISCareer: “Keeping Up with RSS” by Andrea Delumeau. A good, quick read-through with lots of resources for the RSS newbie.

online conference

ae-j — Sat, 11 Sep 2004 01:07:44 +0000

Online Social Networks 2004 is an online conference about all things social-networkish, including blogs (of course). Two librarians (who are fast becoming the poster kids for blogs-in-libraries, wonderful!) will presenting on the topic, no doubt compellingly and elegantly, so you might want to consider attending.

Blogs, RSS, etc.

ae-j — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 22:03:23 +0000

Teri Vogel has a handy blog on the go that provides info and resources on blogging & RSS for info professionals.

15 new bloggers

ae-j — Sat, 01 May 2004 06:13:14 +0000

I gave a little intro-to-blogging talk to some colleagues today and part of the half hour was spent getting everyone to “roll their own” (an idea I blatantly filched from Steven) on blogspot. It’s a good thing to do, I think, especially since it’s so difficult to encapsulate everything a blog is (and does) with a mere definition. So much easier for your audience “get” blogging by, well, blogging!

haunting blogging?

ae-j — Sat, 27 Mar 2004 00:20:40 +0000

Slightly off-topic, and certainly not one for the bibliography, but I thought I’d mention it anyway: Interviewing: Beware Blogging Blunders. Just stumbled upon it while doing a lit search for something else. The authors deal with blog visibility and how your blog could come back to haunt you in a job application/interview. For those of us who subscribe to the Steven-Cohen-school-of-thought (blogs as professional development), this is not really an issue. Still, worth a read.

even more on conferencing

ae-j — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 20:37:41 +0000

Some more info on the libraries/librarians & blogs session at BloggerConII from one of the organizers [via librarian.net].