Blogging Section of SLA-IT

New LISNews Site

New from Blake Carver the man behind LISNews & LISHost:

I started a new site, LISWire - The Librarian's News Wire (http://liswire.com), and I'm doing my best to spread the word. You can probably guess what the site is all about from the name, but there's also 2 mailing lists, and a bunch of RSS feeds. Robin Blum and I are running the show and are looking for press releases and other news items of interest to librarians to get things going. You can sign up for an account and submit things you'd like to announce to the library world. I'll be cross posting most announcements to LISNews for a little while until we see how much traffic we get at LISWire.

I wonder if this means LISNews won't have press releases anymore - or if this is going to be in addition to that?  Either way - I'm subscribed - are you?

Peer reviewed blogging?

I just read this over at Judith Siess' OPL Plus blog and thought it very interesting:

http://www.researchblogging.org/

From the site: "Research Blogging helps you locate and share academic blog posts about peer-reviewed research. Bloggers use our icon to identify their thoughtful posts about serious research, and those posts are collected here for easy reference."

Imagine web 2.0 with peer-reviewing - I'm thinking a mixed blessing.

c.

IBM Reveals Five Innovations that Will Change Our Lives Over the Next Five Years

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22683.wss

"Your cell phone will be your wallet, your ticket broker, your concierge, your bank, your shopping buddy, and more..."

Yes, but what will your library be?

c.

Just in case you're feeling old

Lilia Efimova over at Mathemagenic has an interesting post on 'Why it's good to be a digital immigrant'.

I especially like the thought of picking and choosing from the fruits of the land rather than accepting everything as something I need. For instance, I like the status in Gmail and don't feel the need to Twitter. (Even though I think it's a little cool.)

c.

Cloudalicio.us

http://cloudalicio.us/

Watch tag clouds and how they change over time. Someone oughta do this for LCSH and MESH - I have a feeling the patterns wouldn't be too terribly different.

Email as if you were texting

Having recently been on vacation and traveling, the pain of a number of days away from the email box is still fresh. So, when I came across this I desperately wished many of my correspondents had deployed the method.

http://three.sentenc.es/

'The Problem
E-mail takes too long to respond to, resulting in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it.

The Solution
Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.

three.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be three sentences or less. It’s that simple.'

They also have 2, 4 and 5 sentence versions, which I didn't totally get, but I really liked the 3 sentence idea. You can say a lot in three sentences. I just did.

(sorry, couldn't resist.)

c.

Should you be a "Sentence Spartan"?

Everyone is trying different techniques to manage the amount of time they spend in email.  Tom Peter's blog quickly points to a few options and outlines a strategy called three.sentenc.es.  That strategy could make writing and reading email go much more quickly!

Google Trends: Library Catalog

Have you see this: http://www.google.com/trends?

Ok, you probably already have, but go look just for fun (and because I had a thought about it and it's fun to look at -- people search for some strange stuff). In a nutshell, the Google trends show you what people have been searching Google for. I'm sure they use it in their crazy ad sales bit which drives their bottom line.

We have this nice SirsiDynix system that shows me what people have been searching for, but what do I use it for? Interesting reading when I remember to check it. Not so effective, I know. But it occurs to me that this is really good data that other organizations (in this case Google) are using to drive the bottom line that I (and doubtless many of my colleagues) are ignoring.

So, do you have such data? If so, do you do something with it? Can you tell me so I can start doing it?

c.

Safe music for podcasting

PodSafe Audio is a website where musicians can upload music under the Creative Commons license for use in "Podcasts, Mashups, Shoutcasts, Webcasts and every other kind of 'casting' that exists on the 'net." Therefore it is a website where podcasters can find music to use in the 'casts without worrying about copyrights. Good deal !Just make sure to remember to not resell the music and to give credit to the artists!

March of the Librarians

Video from YouTube filmed at the ALA Mid-Winter Conference.  I laughed outloud!

Interview with Michael Habib

On January 30, the ALA TechSource blog published an interview with Michael Habib. Michael graduated recently  from the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-Chapel Hill.  Many know him because of this "Academic Library 2.0 Concept Model" from his master's thesis.  Michael published a draft of this chart on Flickr, which received notice.  This link will take you to the final version of that graphic.  Wondering how physical and virtual spaces interact?  Look at Michael's chart for the answer.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The topic of search engine optimization (SEO) came up during the IT Division Board meeting (I think as a possible program topic for the future). 

There is a blog called SEObook.com that I've been following (http://www.seobook.com/) and I promised to post the URL for it.  There are likely others...and if you find one that is useful, please let us know.

I also mentioned that Steve Arnold (Arnold IT) had some information on his web site about SEO.  You can view that information here. 

One important thing to realize about search engine optimization is that it is important for those sites that rely on search engines to drive traffic to them.  There are some web sites that many not need SEO because they don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry finding them through a search engine, but instead use other methods to drive qualified prospects to their sites.

Steve Abram's post on his SLA activities

Association President-Elect Stephen Abram has written a post on his SLA activities since June as well as what he'll be doing over the next six months.  It is a very good post and worth reading.  Thanks, Steve!

New library news podcast

Marv K. has launched a new, hopefully regular, podcast called LibVibe. The podcast features a "review of library news headlines in an upbeat, professionally-produced format". Marv K. describes himself as a reference librarian and former broadcast radio personality.

Blogs for small businesses

Something of interest for the entrepreneurs and small business employees among us. AllBusiness.com is a website that caters (mostly for free) to the needs of small businesses. The offerings include a whole series of blogs on different aspects of the business world (PR, RH, taxes, work-from-home, working mothers, strategic planning, finances, etc etc).

One of the bloggers, Denise O'Berry, also maintains a directory of small business blogs.

Newsroom wikis

I posted a recap of that SLA session on the Information Technology blog.

What?! You didn't know the Information Techonology had a blog? Well yes, this new baby saw birth just before the annual conference. It's a great place to get the latest info about the Division and other topics that interest us. Happy reading!

PubSub Community Librarian List

Via a post by Carolyn Sosnowski on the 2006 SLA Conference blog, this PubSub Community list of librarian-authored blogs, complete with ratings. The list is prepared by Steve Cohen of LibraryStuff.net.

What is PubSub? PubSub is a matching service that instantly notifies you when new content is created that matches your subscription. Using a proprietary Matching Engine, PubSub is able to read millions of data sources on your behalf and notify you instantly whenever a match is made. By capturing and analyzing data about the blogs, PubSub comes up with some stats that can rank them.

My own blog is not really shining on there so I bet get posting :)

Libraries, MySpace and Facebook

Some libraries, some public and some academic, are creating presences on social software systems like MySpace and Facebook. Why not? Go where your users are.

The Chronicle of Higher Education published a story in the May 19th edition (available electronically now with a subscription), The Library at CUNY's Brooklyn College Makes Friends on MySpace.

Meredith Farkas, of Information Wants to be Free, published an insightful post on the subject (and complete with links at the end) on May 10th.

Be careful, this is the kind of stuff that will give you ideas galore...

Update: Brian Matthews just published an article on the subject in the latest C&RL News: Do you Facebook? Networking with students online, C&RL News, Vol 67, No 5., pp. 306, May 2006.

Haven't got the chance to read it yet. But if you do, let us know what you think.

Small Business blogging

Pajama Market is a blog about small business blogging. They also feature a small business blogs of-the-day complete with review of the featured site.

Computers in Libraries Presentations Available

This is probably old news by now, but I recently returned from teaching library workshops in Ecuador and still have whole a lot of catching up to do.  A number of presentations/handouts from Computers in Libraries are now available.  For several years, I've desperately wanted to attend this conference.  I have found the online presentation materials to be quite useful, and I enjoy reading the many blog postings out there which summarize and discuss some of the sessions.  It's almost like being there (almost!).

It's almost like being there...

This is a personal musing as much as anything, but as I sit here reading feeds and enjoying a so-so lunch (it's bad when Cheez-its are the highlight of your brown bag), I can't help but be whipped up in the hysteria of what new product Apple's announcing in a few minutes.  I'm really disappointed that I have meetings all afternoon, so it could be hours before I know what this thing is.  I've been following this for days.  A new video iPod?  An iPod boombox?  An Apple tablet(no, but I'm giddy at the thought)

This is just another example of the community we create by utilizing blogs, RSS, and other tools.  What an exciting time it is.  Now I've got to go check Engadget for updates...

Podcasting links

Learning Communities Chair Ty Webb sent this email to the IT Division sla-dite list last night containing interesting podcasting resources. I'm reproducing here with her permission.

A while ago, I sent a message about gadgets that referred to Hope Tillman's presentation in Toronto.  In that conference session, Hope talked a little about Podcasts (audio file on a blog or website, linked by an RSS feed).   If you're interested in exploring this technology, here are some sites for you to look at:

Podcast directories

www.ipodder.org

www.podcastalley.com

www.itunes.com

Hosting and technical advice

www.libsyn.com

www.ourmedia.org

CastBlaster creates podcasts and RSS feeds for you

www.castblaster.com

Thanks Ty!

CEO Blogger's Club

The CEO Blogger's Club is a group blog whose 97 members are CEOs of a company and are bloggers on their own. The blog has two langage tracks, English and French. They also have face-to-face meetings in some regions.

Is your CEO blogging (or does he/she use a ghostwriter)? Should he/she start tagging? Check Club member Linda Zimmer's recent post on Tagging: Into the Mind of the CEO. Of interest to everyone though really.

Syndication for Higher Ed

For those of us in academia, a relatively new blog on all-things-syndicated in higher education by Thomson-Peterson: Syndication for Higher Ed. This blog wants to explore emerging practice in RSS, podcasting and blogging on Higher Ed websites.

Performancing

This web site (blog) contains helpful hints and tools for bloggers.  For example, on blog posting is "Drag and Drop Blogging with Performancing Firefox."  Tools being developed by Performancing are being noticed in the blogosphere, so this is a site worth adding to your blog reader just in case something comes up that meets your needs.

11 Techniques to Increase Page Views on Your Blog

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/12/07/11-tips-to-increase-page-views-stats-on-your-blog/

This is a very good blog posting with obvious (and perhaps not so obvious) ideas.

Designing a blog's navigation

Claire Campbell, a contributor on Performancing, talks about designing the navigation of a professional blog. In summary: design for the future growth of your blog; and Sections, Categories, Tags and Stats are your cross-linking and navigation tools.

Performancing is a blog focused on commercial, professional blogging.