Blogging Section of SLA-IT

Surveying the biblioblogosphere

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.

55 Essential Articles Every Serious Blogger Should Read

Matt Huggins has collected links to 55 articles that he thinks every blogger should read.  He's put them into categories:

• Blogging Basics: Getting Started
• Building Meaningful Content
• Increasing Traffic & Retaining Readers
• Linkbaiting, SEO, & Social Networks
• Building a Community
• Blog Monetization
• Miscellaneous Blogging Advice

There is definitely something here for everyone, no matter how long (or short) you've been blogging.

10 Ways to be Productive with Your Blog

Web Worker Daily has a post on being productive with your blog.  Among the 10 suggestions are:

• Post goals
• Log progress
• Force yourself to do research

To read details on those -- and for information on the other seven ideas -- go here.

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!

New Kid on the Blog

I made good on the promise I made to Stacey Greenwell at SLA in Denver --- I would join the IT Division when I got back home, as a result of the great hospitality I received from the group at the conference.  I'm looking forward to contributing to the blogging section.  To be honest, I'm a little intimidated by the impressive posts and high-powered IT people.  I'll need my training wheels on for a little bit, but I hope to be up to speed and posting like a pro in no time.

For starters, I wanted to share this site about Library Related Conferences.  When I originally composed my thoughts for this post, this site was 2nd on the del.icio.us Hotlist.  Obviously, I'm not the only librarian who saw it.  There is a good amount of conferences of IT interest.  The schedule has events listed all the way to 2015, for those of you who like to plan ahead.

InviteShare

For those of you who want in on the latest Web 2.0 tool in private beta (or just want to see what everyone else is chasing after), check out InviteShare (recently acquired by TechCrunch, and might be down for maintenance on the 19th). Users can share invites they have in return for priority in receiving invites to other services.

There have been other ways of getting invites, of course: begging one's network, buying an invite on eBay. I remember seeing a site a few years back which spooled Gmail invites to people looking for them.

Introduction to the Participatory Library testbed

Earlier this month, David Lankes released video on his blog talking about the new Participatory Library Test Bed (see below).  Earlier this year, Lankes, along his fellow Syracuse University facility members Joanne Silverstein and Scott Nicholson, released a report on this topic.: Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation.  Indeed, it did start a conversation that is continuing.  There is even a blog focused on this topic.

So why should you care about this?  They're talking about the sames things we're talking about (if not here, then in the corners of our libraries).  We might benefit from listening in -- or even participating in -- their conversations.

 

Librarians Blogging And The Birth Of Library 2.0

The Influential Marketing Blog has a post about librarians blogging.  Yup -- us! Worth skimming or reading!  Or...blog about it!

Podcasts from SLA 2007

The podcasts of a number of SLA 2007 sessions are now available via Click U--at no charge!  Some of the presentations, including one of the IT Division sessions, Podcasting the Librarian Way, feature presentation slides and handouts as well.  Some people never make it to conference; it's terrific that SLA is making more conference content available to everyone.

Blogs turn 10

Sophia Guevara posted the following in the IT Division blog:

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal celebrates the ten-year anniversary of the blog.  Regarded by many as the first blogger, Jorn Barger decided to create a page that would provide commentary and links to sites that he found interesting.  Ever since this 1997 creation, blogging has continued to revolutionize online communication.   

So should we sing Happy Birthday?!

BTW -- For those readers who are not Division members, yes, the Information Technology Division has two blogs: The blog for the Blogging Section of the IT Division (this blog) and the IT Division Blog.  99% of the content is different between the two blogs, so you may want to follow/skim/read both of them.