Weblogs

Ten years ago, many library websites consisted of a picture of the library, the library’s address and phone number, and not much else. Now, many library websites are truly functioning as a sort of “virtual branch” – helping local libraries connect to their communities.

We have talked about the Kansas Libraries on the Web project here on this blog before. It’s a project that was created to help small public libraries easily maintain an up-to-date, useful, and attractive web presence. We’re seeing a lot of great content and innovative ideas and thought it would be fun to highlight some examples here.

Many libraries in Kansas have a physical Kansas room on-site, which includes local history and documentation. Atchison Public Library has gone beyond that to start creating a virtual Kansas room, too.

Also, check out the recent post, What the director is reading, which inspired some online book discussion. And also see the online storytime info - wow!!

The smallest library in the NEKLS region has one of the liveliest websites! Moving images, local weather, and a “word of the day” feature add interest and content to the site.

The library staff spice up the clean look of the site with images. The Morrill Public Library site is regularly updated. All of the posts are categorized and can be browsed under the Library News and Views section.

The library recently encouraged contributions to a local cookbook and posted a historical photograph, creating a true feeling of local connection.

This site is regularly updated and visually appealing, too. The library staff recently used the website to give special thanks to a local family.

Many libraries promote upcoming events on their websites. Richmond, however, took that idea to the next level and posted photographs as a follow-up to a recent Mother’s Day event.

When the Mary Cotton Library staff received word that the local sales tax increase vote for the library had passed, they posted the exciting news with a big note of thanks on their website. Other recent content includes the story of a young boy’s job shadowing at the library and memorials.

Summer Reading Program is on everyone’s mind this time of year and Seneca Free Public Library uses their website to promote this year’s events.

Web 2.0 is a popular topic in the library world and Tonganoxie is a small library making a big impact using some 2.0 tools. Browse their site for lots of examples. Be sure to read about the online book discussion group they are starting.

You may notice that the site looks a little different… or that it looked different five minutes ago when you looked. That’s because we’re upgrading!

That’s right, we finally took the step and moved this blog on up to Wordpress 2.0.5 from (ahem) 1.5, even though we’ve been using the 2.0 series on every other blog we host for months now. Since this was our first blog, and we went a bit plugin happy, it’s a big jump so it may take some time for all of the functionality to be recreated. Don’t worry though, your friendly neighborhood library technology blog will be back and better than ever soon.

Here’s something that I have been reading about that some of you may find relevant….
If you want to learn more about
* Blogs
* RSS
* Wikis
* Social Networking Software and SecondLife
* Flickr
* Social Bookmarking Software
* Selling Social Software @ Your Library
then consider applying for an upcoming free course, offered entirely online: Five Weeks to a Social Library. This is the first time this has been offered, but I have a feeling this is going to be a course with a lot of impact. The creators of the course are currently some of the most exciting thinkers in the world of library technology use.

The class will be limited to 40 participants and the intended audience is “those librarians who have the most to gain from learning about social software and who would not otherwise have access to conferences or continuing education.” The participant applications are due December 1st and you will find out by January 1st whether or not you have been selected to participate.

If any NEKLS library members apply and complete the course, I’d love to know, so I can hear all about it and also so I can interview you about the experience for a NEKLS newsletter article. Go for it!

Become a del.icio.us Power User at David Brunelle: Geek for Life

Some awesome tips on using Del.icio.us. Even I, longtime del.icio.us user learned something.

It has been 2 1/2 weeks since NEKLS Tech Day 2006, so I feel like I have had some distance and space to think about things and start to plan for next year. It has been thrilling to see the response from some of the attendees. We had eval forms and got some good feedback on those, but even more telling has been the response in the “blogosphere.”

• For example, From a KC Librarian created an audioblog entry while at the gas station on his way home!
• It’s all about connections! At Tech Day, A The Book of Nature was able to meet The Goblin in the Library….
• Erica and others from Johnson County brainstormed possibilities and applications in their community.
• We think that David liked us so much he decided to become a Kansas librarian

Thank you everyone for being there and for sharing your ideas and excitement on your blogs! If you have ideas for next year’s Tech Day, please share them with us. Liz and I will both be going to the Internet Librarian conference in October and we’ll be scouting out potential keynote speakers there.

From the article:

It’s an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will “interact” with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.

Good thing to know for those of you starting blogs. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get comments or interaction… just keep at it!

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | What is the 1% rule?

Dayna Williams-Capone, director of the Parsons Public Library, recently interviewed Kansas state librarian Christie Brandau about Library 2.0. The interview is now available as a podcast.

Library 2.0 is a topic that is near and dear to Michael Stephen’s heart. He will be our NEKLS Tech Day 2006 speaker, so listening to Christie’s podcast will be a good warm-up for that presentation.

NEKLS Tech Day will be held Thursday, August 10th, on the Washburn University campus. Watch for more details and registration information… coming soon!

I like blogs. I scan a lot of them regularly and have a few that I read religiously. Without Bloglines, I think I would be overwhelmed by trying to keep up. Bloglines is my RSS reader — I can scan a list of the blogs I like, to see which ones have been updated since I last looked at them. If you’re new to RSS feeds and readers, you may want to check out this article from TechCrunch. It overviews some of the RSS feed readers that are out there. My vote goes to Bloglines — anyone out there using something different and wonderful that you would like to recommend?

Another good resource if you are thinking of starting a blog for your library.

Life Beyond Code :: Blogging Starter Checklist - Updated

Interesting article for new and seasoned bloggers. A primer on how to start, maintain, and perpetuate a blog.

Whee!

The Blogger’s Primer [Content]

Yes yes, another NEKLS blog!

Ottawa Library News

I love all of the images used in the Osage City Public Library’s blog - pretty and colorful! The blog promotes current events at the library, which seems like a perfect way to use a library blog.

Erica at the Silver Lake Library has also joined the library blog revolution… AND she’s got a brand new slick website!

See her blog!

grammylibrarianspeaksout

See her Library website!
Silver Lake Website

We’ve been receiving lots of comment spam in the last day or 2. I guess that’s good because it means someone (or something) is reading our blog. In order to separate the wheat from the chaff, however, I’ve enabled a most useful Wordpress plugin called SpamKarma 2. So far it’s been immensely helpful in helping to control the numbers of spam (and you probably didn’t notice that it was there, all the spams got moderated and so had to go through SuperLiz and got filtered by me) that come to the blog.

If your comment should happen to not appear, don’t fret. I’ll get a notify that you posted and that it was held back and rest assured that I’ll get it up as soon as I see it.

Questions? Comments?

Who says staff blogs aren’t useful. These folks clearly know how to use their blog, check out this post from September 14, 2005.

This issue no doubt affects all staff.

Library Staff Blog food/coconut_cupcakes.html

I love this library blog as an example of what libraries can do on their weblogs. I like how every post is preceded by what the post talks about, such as “Book: The Whale and the Supercomputer” or “Website: Wise Giving Alliance”

I just think it’s a good way to get your librarianism out there for folks to really appreciate. I like to think of it as letting your librarian light shine.

Vairo Blog

An excellent, if older, tutorial on how to use blogs to promote your library’s services. NEKLS has several libraries that are running blogs, jump on the train.

Why and How to Use Blogs to Promote Your Library’s Services

Google now has a blog search tool . Here’s what Google has to say about the new tool:
“Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you’re looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice”.

Richmond Public Library has now joined the blog world, too!

Found this on right here on our own blog, in the comment section. Winchester Public Library has started a simple blog for patron information. The interface is clean and helpful, and all the resources you need are right there.

Congrats to Sue in Winchester for taking the initiative and really going after getting into her patrons’ space!

Check it out at www.winchesterlibrary.blogspot.com

A quite interesting blog about the future and current usage of e-books, both hardware, software, content, and issues surrounding them. For those of you interested in e-books, this might be a very good resource for you.

Teleread.org Weblog

The Ann Arbor (MI) library website features seven blogs. There are book blogs and library news blogs. There is even a catalog blog! The library’s director, Josie Parker, was quoted in a recent issue of Library Hotline, “We wanted our web site to be interactive with the public, and chose blogs as the major form of communication.”

Ah spam. Meat in a can. Unsolicited commercial email. Do you get it? Do you want to know how not to? Read this article!

TechSoup - Articles: Using the Internet - Top 20 Ways to Prevent Spam

Hey! We were just talking about this this morning!

From the article:
In August 1991, Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the first website. Fourteen years on, he tells BBC Newsnight’s Mark Lawson how blogging is closer to his original idea about a read/write web.

Superb! Check out this interview with one of the Web’s founders:

BBC NEWS | Technology | Berners-Lee on the read/write web

Man oh man! Tech day was a blast… keep watching here for the next few days to catch some of the Tech Day 2005 excitement… we’ll be posting photos, video of the keynote and some of the sessions, all of the powerpoints from the day, and additional resources for all of your consumption.

I think all of our minds were expanded by Jenny Levine, the Shifted Librarian. There is much to be done for Kansas libraries and blogging/rss/wiki/folksonomy. A world of conversation between our patrons and the library awaits us, all we have to do is harness it. I think that soon we’ll be having a workshop for “introduction to blogger” but you didn’t hear it here.

Remember that you can get ahold of your friendly NEKLS tech staff through MSN messenger (more services coming soon) by adding lrea@nekls.org to your buddy list (we like to hear from you!) or bhough@nekls.org. Send us a friendly message!

We’re also opening up comments on this blog, so we want to hear what you think! Comment! We like it when you do!

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow! Neat things people can do with RSS. Pretty fun!

lists:thingsyoucandowithrss [TimYangWiki]

Finally, the definitive answer.

What Is RSS? RSS Explained - www.WhatIsRSS.com

A great resource… Kansas is coming up with a similar project, but it has not gone productional yet. Watch here for further details.

Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki - Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki

From the article: “If you think about it, RSS feeds are a librarian�s wet dream (and make no mistake that Google is essentially a library, check that mission statement out again). An RSS feed is a blog distilled to its core essence. If you look at the output of an RSS feed in a reader, you�ll see no comments, no trackbacks and (for the most part) no design. It�s the better blog. It�s pure data.”

particletree · The Importance of RSS

Blogwithoutalibrary.net maintains a list of library blogs. The NEKLS Tech Blog is on the list

While we’re talking about libraries and blogs, check this library’s blog out. A good example of what can be done with a library blog.

Marin County Free Library Blog

The question we’ve all been asking… answered! Blogging has become quite a pervasive bit of web technology, and lots of times people read blogs, but don’t REALIZE they’re “reading blogs.” Why not make it a part of your library’s site?

Why and How to Use Blogs to Promote Your Library’s Services

The AP tackles the question of the year… What are web logs?

Q&A: What Are Web Logs? - Yahoo! News

Here’s a quick intro to using RSS (really simple syndication) for non-techie librarians. I hope you enjoy the article.
LLRX.com - RSS for Non-Techie Librarians

You can also add the NEKLS Technology weblog to your RSS feeds… In Firefox, look for the little orange and white signal icon in the lower right hand corner, click it, then subscribe. In Internet Explorer you’ll need to get some kind of feed aggregator like http://www.bloglines.com

More on the subject of blogging, a telling quote from the article: “That ‘time factor,” the idea that something can be distributed globally in an instant and with a mere click of the mouse, is part of the attraction of blogs.” Ever so true, we like weblogs because they keep us up to date with what’s going on, with a personal touch. It makes for an excellent one-to-many communication method, and people get as much or as little information as they want. Explore that world by reading this article: DDN Articles - The Blogging Phenomenon: Who? How? Why?

I attended a very interesting presentation this morning on Blogging and RSS. It planted in me the seed to continue this idea I had to eliminate (or at least reduce) the content going to the NEKLSTech-l e-mail discussion list, and replace it with the RSS feed from this site. It will help me to provide richer content for you and will be readily accessible by those who are interested in such things.

I’m going to go back through the NEKLSTech postings and re-post the best-of here.

Here’s an interesting blog about Library User Education

At the KLA/KLTA/KAECT Tri-Conference today, the hot topic word seems to be “weblog.” I’ve had so many people ask me what they are and what they do and what people use them for that I thought I might come up with a few links to answer those questions.

Weblogs in a nutshell

Wikipedia definition of Weblog

I hope these sites help you find the answers you seek!

Look for more on this as the NEKLS Weblogging gets going here in the next few weeks.