I don't know if we've mentioned the OPL Plus blog on here before - but I find that it often has great posts that not only apply to One Person Libraries - but special libraries. This week's post was a list of five most notable legal sites.
This is certainly a blog to add to your reader as a special librarian.
If you would like to receive updates of this blog by email, you can now use the new Feedblitz tool to register your email address. Just look at the top of the right-hand column.
While this isn't big news, many libraries are using WordPress these days, Web Developer, RayAna Park has written a great explanation of the technical details associated with implementing WordPress at Jenkins.
I had initially thought that incorporating WordPress into our current site design would be the most difficult task. However, after dumping the contents of the old Jenkins Webblits (our homegrown blog) into the new software, it was easy to wrap our existing templates around the blog.
This post may be of use to other special libraries considering to do the same (or similar) thing.
Some surprising results from the latest edition of Primary Research Group's Corporate Library Benchmarks survey.
"Cory Doctorow, uber blogger from Boing Boing, SF [science fiction] writer and serf to the Magic Kingdom, describes how to create a blog that people read."
http://oedb.org/library/features/top-25-librarian-bloggers-by-the-numbers
A nice bunch of education people who think librarians are important have compiled a list of the top 25 librarian bloggers. Their algorithm is based on Google, Alexa, Technorati and Bloglines. Don't feel bad if you're not there, and maybe you'll find something you haven't been reading.
c.
Disclaimer: This is going to be a bit of a rant, but I'll try to control myself.
What I hate, hate, hate is searching for the RSS feed links on a really cool blog that I love so much that want I to add to my Google home page. I check the top, I scroll to the bottom, I look on the left and the right, I look for the nice, easy to see orange buttons that say RSS and I CAN'T FIND THEM.
This is infuriating.
So, I did a search, looking for blogging standards. I can't find any. Why can't they all just agree to put it in the same place? Make it aways orange? Why can't we all just get along?!?!?
Sorry. But we're librarians - can't we agree on something?
c.
5 new blogs you say? Well I don't know much about what's new out there, but I can point you to 5 new(ish) to me blogs.
Wow, what excitement. Drum roll please...
In addition to all the feeds I read from the biblioblogosphere, I dig Gawker and other guilty pleasures. As a result, my picks are rather eclectic. I thought it would be fun to move beyond Libraryland (for the most part) and share some that might be of personal use to you. It was difficult to choose just five:
Palm Addicts -- great source for Palm OS news, reviews of new Treos and other handhelds, software recommendations and shortcuts, plus tips on Palm-related sales and freebies
Amazon Bookstore Blog -- multiple authors share reviews of favorite books, as well as author interviews, what's coming soon, general book and author news
Zen Habits -- motivational blog with tips for time management and productivity, as well as practical tips for keeping your house clean, saving money, losing weight
Eat Like Me -- on the losing weight topic, this is a blog worth adding to your aggregator. The author, a registered dietician working for Self magazine, photographs everything she eats, describing how it fits into the Food Pyramid. Plus she answers reader questions and gives tips and recipes for eating healthier.
Kentucky Chapter of SLA -- for you SLA members attending the Leadership Summit in January 2008, this will be a place to get good local arrangements information (we have a wiki, but I'll be posting some restaurant reviews and need-to-know stuff here as well.) Plus we're a fun little group and enjoy sharing articles of interest here.
Have a great blog day!
Happy Blog Day, everyone! Law firm librarian here with some picks for blogs from the legal world. (Insert "Law and Order" music here.)
1. Law Librarian Blog
A member of the Law Professor Blogs Network, it contains lots of useful research links and presents issues of interest to those who do research in the legal milleu.
2. Law Professor Blogs Network
Speak of the Devil...this is a good starting point to see a list of blogs by law professors. From Adjunct Law Prof Blog to Workplace Prof Blog.
3. Blawg.com
"Your source for Legal Blogs, Podcasts & News Feeds." Provides a directory of law-related blogs. Check out their mashup!
4. The Wall Street Journal Law Blog
"WSJ.com's law blog focuses on law and business, and the business of law." 'nuff said.
5. Anonymous Lawyer Blog
"Stories from the trenches, by a fictional hiring partner at a large law firm in a major city." This is a funny but biting blog, rails against paralegals a lot. (So beware if you are sensitive to paralegal bashing.)
Remember, these blogs are no substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed attorney in your state. (Sorry, had to add that!)
HAPPY BLOG DAY!
Following on Jill's post, here are my five picks for Blog Day.
Today is a holiday! "Blog Day was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day
dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and
areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to
their blog visitors." In keeping with the spirit of Blog Day (August 31), here are five blogs worth checking out!
Confessions of a Mad Librarian -- When Eli Edwards, an SLA member, talks about copyright and intellectual property issues, many people listen. Her posts are well-written and thought producing, even though they are infrequent. Hopefully she will write more frequently once she is through with law school.
Lifehacker -- "Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time. Don't live to geek; geek to live." There is always something of interest in Lifehacker and frequently tips that will be very useful.
Linked Intelligence -- Likely you've heard of the networking site called LinkedIn. Maybe you're using LinkedIn and, if you are, probably you feel like you could be using it better. This blog is dedicated to using LinkedIn well. Scott Allen, who writes this blog, even does Extreme LinkedIn Profile Makeovers.
O'Reilly Radar -- This is a team blog with Tim O'Reilly as the chief blogger. It covers topics such as emerging technology, Web 2.0, open source and more. Because the blog covers a technology broadly, there is always something of interest in it.
Sivacracy -- This is a team blog headed by Siva Vaidhyanathan (pronunciation), who is now a faculty member at the University of Virginia. Now a project of the Institute for the Future of the Book, this blog focuses intellectual property, free culture, globalization and more. Siva and his team tackle serious topics, but have fun too, especially since they make good use of media in the blog.
Technorati Tag: 
BlogDay2007
Darn it, you're good enough, smart enough and people like you. Well, it's the mom version of the author's point: if you're passionate about something and you can string together a sentence, you ought to be blogging.
Monk at work: Does the world need your blog?
c.
(ps -- sorry about the lack of posts from me - I've had quite a run of vacation and travel!)
One blog that I find interesting and useful is Lifehacker. Lifehacker provides tips for a wide range of things and I'm always running across something useful for me or a someone else. Recent posts include:
If you subscribe to this blog, don't feel that you need to read everything -- or anything! Look at the titles and read only those things that will interest you. Why? The Lifehacker team generated a LOT of stuff and you don't want Lifehacker to take over your life!
Meredith Farkas is conducting another survey of people considering themselves bibliobloggers, as a follow up to her August 2005 survey.
She notes:
I’m looking for both people in the profession who have blogs and people who blog at their library as part of an official library blog. You don’t have to have an MLS to be a part of the survey and you don’t have to work in a traditional library setting. If you consider yourself a part of the profession and you blog, please do take part. I’ll probably keep the survey open for four weeks. Just like last time, I’ll be sure to publicly share all the details. I definitely can’t wait to see the results myself!
I'm very curious to see what has changed in 2 years - please check out her post and participate!
The results of her first survey are here.
Matt Huggins has collected links to 55 articles that he thinks every blogger should read. He's put them into categories:
There is definitely something here for everyone, no matter how long (or short) you've been blogging.
Web Worker Daily has a post on being productive with your blog. Among the 10 suggestions are:
To read details on those -- and for information on the other seven ideas -- go here.
The Influential Marketing Blog has a post about librarians blogging. Yup -- us! Worth skimming or reading! Or...blog about it!
I think everyone feels like this from time to time. A friend just confessed that she felt like her Internet skills were outdated. I pointed her toward R A Meyer's blog, The Internet Can Change Your Life. http://rameyerguam.blogspot.com/. it's a great collection and exercises to encourage you to have fun with the web and learn something new while you're at it.
So, any chance our customers feel like their information/library skills are outdated? Anybody have a The Library Can Change Your Life blog going? Which brings me to the question of value. We all count usage, but how many of us measure the value of our services? How many hours did you save a scientist, faculty member or stay at home mom? What did your service do to change their life in whatever small way?
Confess -- this posting is less about 2.0 and more about marketing and value, but it seems as though we should be able to use 2.0 to do a better job of both!
Thanks to Nicole Engard for finding these.
In 2005 and 2006, SLA launched a blog for the conference. Now in 2007, SLA has launched a blog that won't end when the conference ends. The SLA blog is at http://slablogger.typepad.com/sla_blog/. Add it to your RSS/blog reader so you can stay up-to-date on what's going on with the conference (including lots of session notes during the event) as well as other SLA news.
A post that is very worthwhile reading from Lolly Gasaway, who is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an SLA member. She covers:
Do you follow Web 2.0? Would you like to share some of what you are learning with others? If the answer is "yes", please consider becoming a writer for this blog! The more people we have blogging here, the more information that will be shared, and the more each of us will know.
Keep in mind that your posts can be short or long. You can post frequently or infrequently.
If you are part of the Blogging Section and interested in writing for this blog, please contact me (Jill Hurst-Wahl) at hurst {at} hurstassociates.com
Thanks!
WeblogMatrix says that it "allows you to build a custom search query to find a Weblog matching exactly your needs." Looks interesting...and they cover more blog sites/software than I could ever compare on my own.
Yesterday, I found that there is a blog that is whole-heartedly copying content from other blogs -- all on different topics. The blog may be setup to automatically do it. At any rate, I am one of the blogs that is being copied. I don't mind sharing content, but this goes well beyond the normal sharing.
All of the blogs being copied "seem" to be blogs that are hosted on Blogger. Unfortuntately, this copycat is not hosted on Blogger. (Blogger would frown on this activity.)
If you have a blog on Blogger, you might want to do a vanity search (search for the URL of your blog) and see where it shows up. If it shows up at
serchc6 DOT travel-ontour DOT com
or a sub-domain of that site, you -- like me -- have a problem. Of course, there is not a person associated with the site, so I'm trying to find the right way to complain. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment. (Thanks!)
ADDENDUM, 4:36 p.m. -- Will "someone" obviously heard my cries for help. The entire site has been taken down (suspended)!!!
BTW a colleague (K.M. Dames) just told me that the correct procedure would be to e-mail the site and demand the site be taken down, then -- if nothing happens -- file a DMCA takedown order with the site's ISP. Good to know for future reference.
Thursday, p.m.: Well, looks like the blogs are back. I looked up the domain on Whois.net and set this e-mail to the e-mail associates with the domain and to the technical contact (the ISP). Now let's see what happens.
To Whom It May Concern,
The blogs hosted as part of Travel-OnTour.com contain content that is being copied from my blog (Digitization 101), as well as many other blogs. Your blogs are what are known as spam blogs. What you are doing is not respectful of the rights of the original authors, since it is clear that some of the content you are copying is indeed copyrighted.
Because of your whole-hearted copying of content, I am requesting that you remove all content on your blogs that you have taken from Digitization 101 within 24 hours. If you do not, I will contact your ISP in Canada with a request that they take down your web site.
Regards,
Jill
I just wanted to remind everyone that the IT division (home of the Blogging Section) does have a blog itself focused on division news and events. As the new Chair of the IT division, I do plan to create much more activity on the IT division blog in the coming year. So be sure to add her to your blogroll!
And if that's not enticement enough, today's post on the IT division blog reveals the site of the 2008 SLA Leadership Summit.
Have you switched over to the new version of Blogger? If yes, can you educate the rest of us on how you like it? What are you doing that you could not do before? And how does it compare (if you know) to Typepad?
BTW I tried to switch last week, but my one blog is too big, so I have to wait until they tell me I can switch. Bummer.
At the SLA conference in June, we collected and posted URLs for those bloggers who came to the bloggers get together. But that was six months ago...a lifetime in the blogosphere! So tell us, where do you blog? Post a comment to this message with the URL of your blog and tell us a bit about its focus, if you can as well as anything else about blogging that you would like to share.
David Sifry, founder of Technorati, did a State of the Blogosphere in October. His report has lots of good information, but this really stood out to me -- a blog's authority or influence.
The Low Authority Group (3-9 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
The average blog age (the number of days that the blog has been in existence) is about 228 days, which shows a real commitment to blogging. However, bloggers of this type average only 12 posts per month, meaning that their posting habits are generally dedicated but infrequent.
The Middle Authority Group (10-99 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
This contrasts somewhat with the second group, which enjoys an average age not much older than the first at 260 days and which posts 50% more frequently than the first. There is a clear correlation between posting volume and Technorati authority ranking.The High Authority Group (100-499 blogs linking in the last 6 months)
The third group represents a decided shift in blog age while not blogging much more frequently than the last. In keeping with the theme of the maturation of the blogosphere, it seems evident that many of these bloggers were previously in category two and have grown in authority organically over time. In other words, sheer dedication pays off over time.The Very High Authority Group (500 or more blogs linking in the last 6 months)
In the final group we see what might be considered the blogging elite. This group, which represents more than 4,000 blogs, exhibits a radical shift in post frequency as well as blog age. Bloggers of this type have been at it longer – a year and a half on average – and post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group. Many of the blogs in this category, in fact, are about as old as Technorati and we’ve grown up together. Some of these are full-fledge professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media. As has been widely reported, the impact of these bloggers on our cultures and democracies is increasingly dramatic.A note on Ranking
For those of you who are new to Technorati's ranking systems, we establish a blog’s authority (or influence) by tracking the number of distinct blogs that link to it over the past 6 months. In this chart, we’ve looked at folks with at least 3 links or more and grouped them into four separate categories. In total, we’re looking at about 1.5 million blogs of the 57 million total. Even though I labeled the first group as the "Low Authority" group, given that these people are in the top 2% of all of the blogs that exist, the concept of "low" is purely in relation to the other groups above.
If you have a Technorati account, you can view the rank of your blog(s). Questions for you to consider are:
- What is the rank of your blog?
- How influential is your blog?
- How influential do you want to be? And how do you become that influential?
Quoting CNET:
Cingular Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless phone carrier, will offer a version of popular social-networking site MySpace.com on its phones in an expansion of their partnership, the companies plan to announce on Monday.
For an additional $2.99 a month, customers will be able to upload photos taken on cell phones, read and respond to MySpace e-mail, update blog entries and view and search for friends from their handsets.
Read the full article for more details.
Analysts at the Gartner Group have " said that during the middle of next year the number of blogs will level out at about 100 million. The firm has said that 200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs."
There are legal considerations for bloggers, of course, but what about business blogging policies?
Nancy Flynn of the International Association of Online Communicators suggests 12 best practices.
It's an old post (June 2005), but Fredrik Wackå compared the blogging policies of Feedster, Groove, Hill & Knowlton, IBM, Plaxo, Sun, Thomas Nelson and Yahoo!. A lot of it is common sense, so it's almost more interesting to see the unique elements:
For a contrarian view, Dennis M. Kennedy in Corante's Between Lawyers column suggests that most companies will already have corporate communications and/or Internet use policies which cover blogging and bloggers adequately.
Does your organization have a specific blogging policy? Anything notable about it?
Please welcome a new contributor to the weblog, Section member Steven Kaye. Steven works in the insurance industry and I have a feeling he may have interesting insights on corporate blogging.
Many happy postings Steven!
What are the current trends being spotted among blogs? Stuart Brown looked at the Technorati Top 100 Blog and tells us what he found.
My ah-ha from the list is the software being used by top blogs. For them, custom blogging software rules.
If you haven't seen it, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a legal guide for bloggers in the U.S., which was updated in April 2006. The site says:
Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don't want published. You might, for example, publish something that someone considers defamatory, republish an AP news story that's under copyright, or write a lengthy piece detailing the alleged crimes of a candidate for public office.
The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you're doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn't help - in many cases it was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven't yet decided how it applies to bloggers.
But here's the important part: None of this should stop you from blogging. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn't use the law to stifle legitimate free expression. That's why EFF created this guide, compiling a number of FAQs designed to help you understand your rights and, if necessary, defend your freedom.
To be clear, this guide isn't a substitute for, nor does it constitute, legal advice. Only an attorney who knows the details of your particular situation can provide the kind of advice you need if you're being threatened with a lawsuit. The goal here is to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger, to let you know you have rights, and to encourage you to blog freely with the knowledge that your legitimate speech is protected.
To read the legal guide, go here.
While I know the concept is far from new, I still wanted to share the Kentucky Library Association's Conference blog and flickr photoset. We had a great conference last week with speakers such as Peter Morville and Michael Stephens. Multiple mini-sessions covered Library 2.0, blogging, social software, gaming, and other highly relevant topics. My own session with colleagues Gail Kennedy and Toni Greider on the UK Libraries Information Commons project was standing-room-only. We had a great conference, and it is so heartening to hear comments like this.
Stacey Greenwell, IT Division Chair-Elect and contributor to this blog, has announced the birth of a new SLA blog from the Kentucky Chapter.
The blog is already featuring announcements, news, favorite websites and resources, discussion, etc. Chapter members are invited to become contributors and to have their workplace listed on the blog. Contact Stacey if interested.
Without any regards to its small size, the Kentucky Chapter shows once again its vitality and energy. Congrats Stacey and Kentucky for your new "blog baby"!
Big Firms Banking on "Blogosphere" is just a short article on Canada.com on blogging in the business world but it's interesting. It mentions executives and employee blogging as well as publicity brought by new employees that are established bloggers.
And oh, a photo features one of my favorite Montréal-based bloggers, Blork (who is not a corporate blogger by the way).
At my place of work, we may finally be implementing blogs at the campus level. As a result, I've just started compiling some blogging policies, particularly those of academic institutions. If you have a blogging policy you'd like to share or any thoughts on blog policies in general, I'd be most appreciative.
This a short, interesting article. I'd like to quote the entire thing, but best if you read it!
And what are the top five social networking sites:
Please welcome a new contributor to the Blogging Section and to the Blogging Section blog, Karen Huffman.
Karen works at the National Geographic Society. She presented, along with her colleague Barbara Ferry, an "Hot Topic" session at SLA 2006 titled "Web 2.0 - Making Use of Collaborative Applications -Wikis, Blogs, CoPs, RSS and Podcasts." I unfortunately missed it since it was at the same time as the IT Division Business Meeting but I heard it was a *great* session. You can view the presentation at http://www.ngslis.org/sla/ (username: conference | password: sla2006). The NGS is ready for Web 2.0!
Technorati tag: sla2006
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!
Custom in the blogosphere say that bloggers should be posting a lot to create readership. According to Eric Kintz, from MarketingProfs: Daily Fix, that is so "Web 1.0". He postulates that too frequent postings will actually decrease readership. Interesting arguments.
Personally, at least in the case of professional blogs, I think consistency is more important than frequency (of course, quality is important too) - it's fine if you blog once a week only, as long as you do blog once a week. Actually, since I started my new job last year, I've had much less time to blog on my professional blog and I've been struggling on that count. I guess I can console myself with knowing that a majority of my readers use my feeds.
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 :)
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.
The blog for this year will be at http://slablogger.typepad.com/sla_2006_conference_blog/. Last year's blog was very popular, so add this one to your blog reader and stay tuned!
From eMarketer:
According to the "Blog, Podcast and RSS Advertising Outlook," from PQ Media, combined spending on the three new advertising channels rose by 198% in 2005 to a total of $20.4 million. Spending is expected to grow by another 145% in 2006 to reach nearly $50 million.
With many libraries in funding crunches, should libraries be looking for sponsors for their blogs and podcasts? What would be the up and downsides?
Michael Stephens (Tame the Web and new information school faculty at Dominion) asked this question, did research and developed a post that he presented at ALISE. Who are the library blogpeople? How much have librarians adapted to this tool? Check out a PDF of the poster and see.
I blog, I've taught others to blog, and I've blogged at a conference ...but now I find myself in a position on convincing a group (non-librarians and perhaps non-techies) that a blog could enhance a one-day conference they are planning for women in business. The c