The ‘wow’ factor September 28, 2006

Great work, libraries, with your RSS feeds! While Tacoma PL and U of Oklahoma’s uses of RSS were the most conventional, they were very impressive in their categorization. Signing up for a feed of my library’s new books in a personal or scholarly interest is very appealing to me.

Hennepin County Library offers ’subject guide’ feeds which appear to be a librarian’s suggestions relevant to a pre-existing subject guide, posted approximately monthly (at least this is the case for the Ready Reference feed that I added to my Bloglines). This is a unique idea, and I love unique ideas, but as a patron I think I would prefer RSS feeds on new acquisitions that interest me.

All (except NHMCCD) offer ‘current library events’ type feeds, which is really a great, essentially free, marketing tool.

I was intrigued by Western Kentucky U Library’s obscurely titled feeds New Stuff and Old Stuff. I thought it was brave of them to use these titles, and that the curiosity factor worked for me!

It’s great to see a whole collection of journal article RSS feeds altogether at NHMCCD. But there is no ‘wow’ factor on this page, I feel it is missing something. At a minimum, more spacing. But back to the RSS - this would save the library a lot of resources if they could set this up rather than the old-fashioned Table of Contents Service, and the use of technology is where the patron would see the ‘wow’ factor.

The Kansas City Public Library’s RSS feeds page has a high ‘wow’ factor. First of all the graphic is great, and offering ‘most popular guides’ is very helpful since they have 47 feeds! The feeds themselves are a mashup of librarian tips, library events, and borrowed feeds from Yahoo. I’m a big fan of this combination idea - but aren’t they missing new acquisitions? Correct me if I’m wrong…

Choices, choices September 25, 2006

So Amanda is making us check out other rss aggregators this week and I have to say I am both intrigued and put out by this. My first impression of Rojo is that it looks slightly more modern than Bloglines. I like how you can edit your subscriptions in the left navigation bar by clicking on the little icon - it is much faster than Bloglines which really lets you feel like you are waiting for a page to load. But why did it sign me up for all the feeds when I clearly left some unselected? Wow, my account is huge. I’ll give it a go for a few more days…

Netvibes hasn’t impressed me much since I’m used to all the same features in Google Homepage. But it is great how the add content feature opens on the left side of the page since in Google it navigates you away to a new page where you select your content. And I wonder how long they’ve had the ‘New tab’ feature since Google only just started doing this a few days ago.

I want more RSS! September 25, 2006

I am one of the lucky four who collaborated on this week’s group presentation on RSS. Please leave us some comments!

At school today I was chatting (in person!) with Shauna-Lee, our Menno Girl. We were discussing the job search (gulp!) and how great it would be to get one RSS feed with all the Canadian library jobs. It would be even better to get them in categories, such as Academic vs. Public or BC vs. Ontario. It’s a shame that neither CLA nor OLA offer RSS feeds for their job postings. This UK job site offers RSS feeds for Information Management and Librarianship, and what a great thing!

I’ve been subscribing to RSS through Bloglines since the beginning of the summer and am definitely a fan. I can scan through the headlines pretty quick now and ferret out articles of interest to me. *BUT* it has turned into a time-waster rather than a time-saver for me because I am constantly looking for new feeds to try out & therefore have way too many new articles daily to ever get through. My Bloglines account currently has 72 feeds, and it is only this low because I have been working hard lately at deleting the ones that don’t capture my interest at least on a weekly basis. Are there any other feed junkies out there? What is your culling policy?

This week I got a great article out of one of my Bloglines feeds - it’s called How to explain RSS the Oprah Way, and in it the author (Back in Skinny Jeans) calls RSS “I’m Ready for Some Stories”. How cute. So if you don’t get RSS yet, check out this article and you really can’t not get it. Or, maybe send it to your mother/father. But if you want to stay away from the cute, I really liked this article from IBM when I was working on an RSS project for my co-op employer. It demonstrates how some RSS providers are providing aggregator-specific icons on their webpages that will plunk the RSS feed directly into your reader (Bloglines, My Yahoo! or Pluck, in the case of IBM) at the click of the button.

Another random thought on RSS: in our group presentation we mention that RSS feeds can come to your email and I posted a cheeky little comment “(but who wants more email?)”. I stand by that comment. In one of this weeks’ readings you’ll see that “5) RSS can be fully integrated fully in your email. Yes, no one forbids the final user from using new services and tools which do allow perfect integration and receipt of RSS feeds inside your email Inbox.” I’m glad this author is on my side - are you?

Multi-author blogging September 23, 2006

I almost missed posting on my thoughts about multi-author blogging. First of all, I think it the idea of multi-author blogging is great! This way you share the workload, provide more than one perspective, and you have someone to bounce ideas off and share editing duties with. However, you may be producing a different product with each post so it is best to put some guidelines in place. I would suggest the following issues be addressed:

1) Define the writing style (formal/informal, first person/second person)

2) Define the linking style (will you hyperlink a single word, a few words, a link itself)

3) Determine whether to include the authors name in the post - will the reader (or the bloggers) benefit from knowing it is a multi-author blog?

4) Who will blog when? Will there be two posts one day and none another, or will you space it out to keep it regular?

5) Decide before you begin if the authors should be commenting on each others’ posts, or if they should address issues behind the scenes (not on the blog!), so as to not cause any bickering or animosity amongst the staff!

Creative blogging thoughts, anyone? September 20, 2006

I’ve decided that I’d better write this post before I go looking at all my classmates sites and feeling as though all the good ideas are taken. Here are my creative library blog suggestions:

1) A virtual bookclub. Not nearly as much fun (I’ve heard the best ones involve a lot of wine and gossip), but perhaps more productive.

2) A community event review board. All those involved in community events love any opportunity to promote them and they would likely make the bulk of the posts. This would be a simple way to draw in new bloggers, people who otherwise may not visit the library website.

3) Unemployment blog. Job hunt tips and links, recommended outings on a budget, profiles of people who change careers. Lots of possibilities.

On the case studies:

Darien County Library’s coverage of their application for a new library is a great idea. It would definitely interest all their loyal customers, although it is boring for the passerby.

Lamson Library’s recently added items blog is a good example of using blogging to promote your new resources. But fire up the scanner, I’d like to see way more pictures. The right hand column feature ‘most popular’ is really handy, but they could highlight this even further and perhaps put a ‘librarian recommended’ section in there too. Even better, have a section featuring recommended books by community members with simple profiles - change the profile every week and bam!, you have current content which would appeal to our slightly snoopy side of human nature. I suppose the best part is that it is all automatic, thanks to some wordpress magic. Nope, the best part according to my interpretation of the Jenny Levine article is that any library can customize their catalogue, now that it is churned out through wordpress, with a simpler skill set then it takes to customize a typical library catalogue. Librarians can blog reference questions on the fly and add tags to catalogue items just as we are doing in del.icio.us. Sounds great!

So this is what a bunch of teachers’ blogs look like (MabryOnline.org). I can see how it would draw students and parents in, its just too bad the teachers’ sites I clicked on were really boring. I can’t help but think that an academic library could gain a lot of undergrads loyalty by posting some pre-first-week information for all those keeners out there. Yes, all those kids bored of their hometown and horrible summer job who just want to dream about the fun they are going to have at university… so draw them in while they are keen, I say! Tips on information literacy could be peppered in to the discussion in moderate amounts. Other topics could include clubs, intramurals, jobs, loan procedures, etc.

I’m not won over by the GameBlog. I feel like there must be a billion blogs on gaming out there and why would you want to read your library’s? I’d like to hear about their use statistics. Maybe I’m wrong, though, they seem to have a big gaming community by the looks of their Summer Smash Tournament. I suppose it is all about noticing your communities interests and running with them - it can’t hurt to try, right?

A Library Suggestion Blog is a good idea, too, so that people realize they are welcome to make suggestions and so that they can see the reasoning behind whose suggestions are feasible and whose are not. It exposes the decision making process that is budget vs. community needs/wants. I can’t really see becoming a regular reader of something like this, though, I would only re-visit it to see a response to something I had posted and now that I think of it why not just email? Hmmm…

Reading more on blogs, as assigned! September 20, 2006

I have read a lot over the past few months about how to correctly use a corporate blog by monitoring Seth Godin’s marketing blog on my Bloglines account. He talks about marketing in general but often about marketing through blogs. The first reading on Blogging Strategy was a good way to hammer the concept home of non-blatant blogger marketing. It made me think more about another RSS subscription of mine, Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women, which is a very clever marketing tool since it has a cohesive theme, great pictures and lots of witty banter. The most informative part for me was the simple statement that “if higher SEO rankings, more press coverage and demonstrating leadership and innovation in your industry are on your list, blogging is a medium you should consider.” Wow, what library shouldn’t be demonstrating leadership and innovation?

Oooh, and thanks to the second article “Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes” for telling me I need to fill in the ‘about me’ section. However, I don’t think I’ll worry about my “cute or humorous headlines that make no sense out of context” for the purposes of this class although I will definitely keep it in my for a corporate blog. But I disagree completely in context of a YA blog which I think would benefit from “Hey, kids! Comics!” vs. the boring “Ice cream trucks as church marketing”. I also like it when links say where they go since I am frequently too lazy to hover over the word long enough to find out. Ok, all these tips are great!

The third article Net Rage: A Study of Blogs and Usability, gives me a lot to think about when designing a blog. I sensed a lot of irritation from the study participants when they were told they were reading a blog. I suppose it is best to be upfront about it to avoid ticking off your customers!

I read the ethics articles too! But I don’t have much to say since I feel that it is typical ethics/common sense stuff.

But what’s this?? For A Blogger’s Code of Ethics I get “Temporarily Unavailable”. I’ll check back later before alerting Amanda of this link error.

Last but not least, Why and How to Use Blogs to Promote Your Library’s Services tells us everything we need to know. What a great summary and introduction to blogs as library marketing tools.

Humbled… and Angry September 13, 2006

OK it is official, I hate WordPress. It just deleted the most brilliant post ever… here I will try to recreate it. Grrr… forgot my own copy/paste advice.

Wow, what a difference library blogs make to a homepage or a marketing strategy. The GSU subject specific blogs with XML feeds may not attract tons of users, but those who do subscribe would become more informed and therefore more concerned patrons. I’m not a big fan of their Flickr photos though, they look boring. I can’t wait to see how some libraries are making use of Flickr in a later section. I totally enjoyed the Madison-Jefferson County Public Library YourSpace blog, mostly for its good use of cheese, and I totally think I would visit it as a YA. However, I suppose the librarian-wannabe crowd is not/has never been the hardest market for libraries to win over! And I love what Western Springs Historical Society has done with blogging, and the interactive map to find homes is the greatest part. I would like to see more captions with the photos, as would a few people who submitted comments. Finally, the Ann Arbor District Library homepage makes use of the typical blog format, but it is unique that they have made the entire homepage basically a blog. It looks clean and professional to me - I like it.

On starting a blog in a library… September 13, 2006

One key consideration, especially for starting a blog in a corporate library, would be security.  This would lead me to consider primarily blog software that is kept on your company’s network, rather than the web.

Also, I would want the software to be reliable and user-friendly. I consider myself tech-savvy enough, I find most Web2.0 technologies intuitive, but this WordPress software frustrates me in a few ways.  If you hadn’t noticed, the server seemed to be down on me for a bit because I spent close to 45 minutes pasting, attempting to save and attempting to publish the other day… I assume this could be avoided by having the software on your desktop.  This would also save you from ‘eager’ posting - which I consider to be hitting the Publish/Save button before you should, simply out of fear of losing your content. I also spent some time ranting with a friend of mine today (Haha, Vicki) about the limitations of the free version of WordPress.  First of all, it wasn’t evident to me that there is more than one version, but it dawned on me when I attempted to download some more creative templates and found that I could not upload them to this version of WordPress.  So, unfortunately, we are restricted to the output our templates allow.  Mine, for instance, doesn’t post the time of entry!  So you won’t know that I was posting this at 10:50pm while my boyfriend drinks pint after pint at TJ Baxters.  Hah, I’m categorizing this rant ‘thanksforsharing’.

PS, I now copy all my content before hitting save or publish - just in case!

A Quick-Fix! September 13, 2006

I found it! The holy grail! Ok, not quite, but this Web 2.0 validator sure is a nifty tool for this class. Try out those so-called Web 2.0 sites to see if they really are what they claim to be. The results will teach you a bit about the qualifications of Web 2.0, but keep in mind they are made up and changed daily by visitors to the site! Hmmm… so this basicially means it is useless, or rather, what we have been posting about all along - that the definition of Web 2.0 is elusive.

Blogging as meditation? September 11, 2006

Rebecca Blood’s first article on Weblogs promotes blogging as a way to gain awareness of your own likes and dislikes. Well, that is a nice idea but check out the comment thread on Gonzo Librarian’s blog (Kelly), begun by Shauna-Lee (Menno Girl), about filtering your thoughts on blogs in order to not lose out on future job offers. I suppose this is the problem with all forms of publication, but it seems that it is harder to hide behind an alias on the web than in traditional printing methods. Enough on that, if you’d like to contribute to the discussion, join us in commenting on Gonzo Librarian!

So there, I’ve done my duty as called for in Rebecca Blood’s second article Hammer, Nail: How Blogging Software Reshaped the Online Community, I have linked to other weblogs to amplify my classmates’ voices (also mentioned under the heading Blog Popularity in the Wikipedia article). But I couldn’t figure out how to ‘permalink’ Kelly’s posting or our comments, can anyone help?

While I’m not sure about Blood’s idea of growing more in touch with yourself by writing a blog - as opposed to other forms of writing (personal diary, anyone?) or even meditation, I do agree with Meg Hourihan’s What we are doing when we blog’s statement of difference between other written publications and the blog: “The weblog’s post unit liberates the writer from word count.” My post this week could be two words! But I doubt I would earn much credit for that. Amanda?

In the Wikipedia article I was delighted to learn there is a term for a blog written by a mobile device - a moblog. That’s a great name, but why does it need it’s own term? I feel like it is simply there to clutter my brain (I will never be on jeopardy). But thanks to a link from this article I finally used Technorati, rather than just checking out the site as I have done previously, and I tested it with a search for library blogs. I really like how easy they have made it to refined your search as you go - no special advanced search page necessary, you can just click on the dropdown menus at the top of your results page. Great!

Finally, a special thanks to Anatomy of a Blog for inspiring me to think of another title for my blog. Not sure if it will change yet, but I am inspired nonetheless. And I promise to look into adding the time to my entries.