Blogging Section of SLA-IT

LibraryThing Hiring

Not only is LibraryThing hiring, but they'll pay you if you help them find a new employee!

Find us a Maine—or anyway within an hour of Portland, ME—employee and we'll give you $1,000 in books.

We did this once before. It's how we found John, our Systems Adminitrator. (John found himself, so he got his own $1,000.)

Jobs. We have three potential jobs to fill.

• Hacker. We're looking for PHP hacker. JavaScript genius and library-data experience. We hope we get two of those.
• Graphic designer/user-experience guru. Experience designing for data-rich sites like LibraryThing a must.
• Brainy, overworked assistant. Smart, flexible, organized, relentless—willing to do both high-level (strategic analysis) and low-level (send-out-these-CueCats) work. The job is non-technical, but you need to be super-comfortable around computers.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to Abebooks, Amazon, Booksense or the independent bookseller of your choice. (Longfellow Books? Books Etc.?) You can split it between them. You don't need to buy books with it (but why do that?).

This is such a neat idea!!!  I don't know anyone in Maine - but maybe you do.  Learn more here.

Why Doesn't Anyone Comment on Your Blog?

The ASAE and The Center for Association Leadership has a e-magazine called Associations Now. A recent article suggests strategies and solutions for an association blog that may not get as many comments as desired (thankfully our faithful readers here comment regularly). A lot of the content applies just as well to private blogs.

I know you!

I had a wonderful experience in a hotel lobby Thursday evening in Washington, D.C.  I was meeting two information professionals for dinner and while I knew Cindy Hill from the SLA conferences, I had never met Jill O'Neill face-to-face.  Jill and I had talked on the phone twice in the last few years, but really had gotten to know each other through Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook.  Cindy was amazed that Jill and I started seemingly in mid-conversation, rather than the usual pleasantries that are exchanged when you first meet someone.  We knew each other and had already built a level of trust that allowed us to freely exchange information, ideas and resources.  We skipped over the "so you are..." and jumped right to "how is the kitchen coming?" 

Building that type of rapport demonstrates the power of the tools, but it is often something you have to have to experience yourself.  (BTW you are doing the 23 Things through SLA, aren't you?)

Blog post: The 10 Blog Commandments

Even if you've been blogging for a while, it can be helpful to read tips on blogging.  Two of the The Blog 10

Commandments that stood out to me from this list were:

• Know What your area of expertise is and Own it
• Create Optimized Blog Post Headlines

Oh...do we all follow all of the tips we read?  No, and that's what makes each blog very unique!