Library Stuff

A weblog about library marketing! I love it. From the first post:

“The fact that libraries need to utilize marketing and public relations to reach users, stakeholders and most importantly, those who fund libraries, is no longer a secret. While many libraries have communications programs in place, we still have not reached the saturation point of library communications and marketing programs. There is still a lot of room for improvement. We need to communicate better, smarter, and to more audiences. We need to conquer the resistance of some within libraries and begin to tell our stories consistently, loudly and as often as possible.”

I wholeheartedly agree. Sometimes, the truth hurts. But what hurts can only make us stronger. Subscribed!!

There seem to have been some upgrades to Blogsnow, one of those “little engines that could” that I am always so fond of. Here’s the rundown as I see it:

1) Movie Clips have been added to the mix (with accompanying RSS Feed)

2) The top German sites are also new (with RSS Feed)

3) There is a list of “no .com or .us domains” (RSS Feed)

4) Yet another list called “This Hour”, which I assume only has links from the past few hours (although some of those links are more than 12 hours old). This one has an RSS Feed as well.

5) Also new: An archive of top links for past days.

Color me impressed. Andreas always comes up with interesting methods of tweaking his software.

I’m going to have to read this report [PDF] from OCLC in more detail at a later date, but I was hooked just by reading the abstract on PADI:

“This is a follow up document to the 2003 Five Year Information Format Trends report. It is an enlightening report regarding the concept of “format agnostic” users of library and web based material. It explores the idea that users don’t care about what type of document (book, URL, file, text etc) the information is, rather the content is of greater significance. Projected shifts in the volume of content are also discussed. Of particular interest is the rise of social publishing such as blogs and wikis and the syndication of digital content. Such shifts have implications for the planning and implimentation of digital preservation strategies.“

The bolding was on my end. I have 4 social networking books sitting on my nightstand waiting to be read, plus 10-15 articles that I want to get through as well. Just add this one to the pile.

Feedster has made some great decisions over the past few years, but probably the best one was to hire Michael Fagan.

Good luck Michael. They are lucky to have grabbed such an intelligent and approachable person.

I don’t think this is new news, but this press release issued today mentions that Rocketinfo now allows users to create customized RSS feeds. I used to have 5 or 6 customized feeds through Rocketinfo, but I saw more adds than content, so I unsubscribed. Today, I signed up again for a few keyword-specific feeds and it seems that the numerous ads have dissapeared. Very good news. I don’t mind ads, but to pushing more ads than content is a bit too much for me (and probably for many RSS people).