Blogging Section of SLA-IT

Edublog Awards

The 2005 Edublog Awards have been recently announced in mid-December. I will admit my ignorance and say that I didn't know there was a Best Library/Librarian Blog category. The winner in that category is Joyce Valenza’s NeverEnding Search (http://joycevalenza.edublogs.org/), a new blog that started in August of this year. Other nominees were

• Caveat Lector http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/
• Infomancy http://www.schoolof.info/infomancy/
• Librarian.net http://www.librarian.net/
• Open Stacks http://openstacks.net/os/
• The Shifted Librarian http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/

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.

Article: Big Blue says to employees 'blog, but follow these rules'

This article from May 2005 lists the rules IBM has given to its employees that blog.  Could these be good guidelines for other employee bloggers to follow?

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.

RSS Readers for Palm OS

Good summary of RSS readers for the Palm.  I've been using Bloglines on my Treo 650 for about a year now and have been pretty happy with it.  Still it's important to keep other options in mind.

[Link from Treobits]

SLA Leadership Summit 2006

Registration is open for the SLA Leadership Summit in Houston, January 18-21, 2006.  Blogging section members, IT division members, anyone who is involved in SLA--this is a great meeting to get to know your association and its leadership.  I've attended the past three summits and have found the meeting to be valuable, particularly in terms of networking and in getting the opportunity to speak to SLA leadership.

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.

Outlook 12 will support RSS!

Office Watch via email newsletter today (oh Woody, why aren't you using RSS yet!):

OUTLOOK 12 DOES PODCASTING
Whilst the next version of Outlook won't be out until the second half of 2006 - we're having 'fun' trying out the latest version in its beta format.   That's if you include software crashes, lost documents and hunting for features in your definition of 'fun'.

One thing we did like is the fact that Outlook 12 supports not only RSS feeds but also podcasts.  That's no big leap since podcasting is an offshoot of RSS technology but it was still nice to see it was made possible in the first attempts at RSS in Outlook itself.

I can't wait to give this a try.  Could something finally replace my affection for Bloglines?

Yahoo partners with MovableType

Yahoo has announced Monday that it will become the preferred supplier of blogging software Movable Type for small business.

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.