Archive for September, 2004
LibTalk
September 29th, 2004A 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 [...]
More upgrades to Blogsnow
September 29th, 2004There 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 [...]
Content, Not Containers
September 29th, 2004I’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 [...]
Michael Fagan joins Feedster
September 29th, 2004Feedster 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.
Rocketinfo Adds Ability to Create customized RSS Feeds
September 29th, 2004I 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 [...]
TMCNet Customized RSS Feeds
September 29th, 2004TMCNet (a technology resource for numerous press releases, articles, and more), just released a News Alerts and RSS Feeds feature. The feeds are personalized by keyword, which is impressive and useful.
Bloglines API - Useful For All?
September 28th, 2004I think that Mark Fletcher changed the RSS world today. Kinda. It won’t effect me (I don’t think). I don’t use Bloglines, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, or Blogbot. Oh well. But, if I understand API correctly (and I’m not sure that I do), my aggregator of choice will just have to support it for me to use [...]
Advanced Wiki’ing with Library Tools
September 27th, 2004The Digital Librarian writes:
“[I]t occurred to me while talking with some of my colleagues who work in our University Archives that linking together a finding aid with Wiki functionality might bring together an interesting system. Imagine if users could leave behind comments or annotations to a finding aid - providing additional information related to the [...]
New Subscription and Why RSS is Better Than Magazines
September 27th, 2004I just subscribed to the feed for Future Now - Emerging technologies and their social implications. They also have a Del.icio.us page.
I’m not sure that I will keep the subscription, as it seems a bit too “techie” for me. But that’s the great thing about subscribing to RSS Feeds (as compared to magazines, [...]
Blawg Republic
September 27th, 2004Say hello to Blawg Republic:
“Blawg Republic is an online service that collects the latest news and commentary from the top legal oriented weblogs (blawgs).
Blawg Republic provides a search engine that allows you to track the latest blawg news, and subscribe via RSS to keyword searches. All blawgs in the index have been categorized into one [...]
Librarian Syndrome
September 26th, 2004Garrett writes:
“I have coined a term called ‘Librarian syndrome’ which comes from a personal theory of mine. Women that work in jobs that force them to be on good behaviour for the entire day are much more wild in bed because they have to ‘let it all out’ in the evenings before going back to [...]
Inetgrate del.icio.us into Firefox
September 26th, 2004It was only a matter of time before this awesome extension was created (link via [ironically] del.cio.us)
Feed Your Reader
September 25th, 2004Feed your Reader is a neat extension for Firefox that allows you to subscribe to a feed in your aggregator, using the live bookmarks feature. I haven’t set it up yet, but I will. Go Firefox Go. (link via somewhere: I forgot to link to in in my draft)
Personalized Aggregators - Rankings
September 25th, 2004Codey has an interesting thought on aggregators. He wants ranked results:
“There is not a single RSS aggregator which will give me ranked results. This really sucks when you have to skim over thousands of words in a day to satisfy your need for feed. Why would I want ranked results in my aggregator [...]
Grow the Profession: Marketing the Librarian
September 25th, 2004I always link to articles that I have written. It’s an important marketing skill. It would also be ironic if I left this one out. The article appears in this months issue of LISCareer.com. A quote:
“There are numerous ways for librarians to market themselves, online and offline. While the method above [...]
It’s That Time Of Year Again
September 23rd, 2004The fall. The kids go back to school (well, starting school - Hallie is in nursery school) and my busy season begins. I’ll be plenty busy over the next 2 months with 8 presentations to prepare, a book proposal to get out (by December), plus my usual SEO work, column, and a [...]
Worldcat/Google Bookmarklet created!
September 22nd, 2004Editors Note: Michael IM’d me within 10 minutes after my call for help and he created the Worldcat bookmarklet. Michael is a tremendous asset to librarians. For the first time ever, LS has a guest blogger. Take it away Michael:
Hi. This is Michael Fagan guest-posting on Library Stuff.
Jessamyn and Andrea did all the [...]
Rich Site Services: Web Feeds for Extended Information and Library Services
September 22nd, 2004Just in time for my fall presentation schedule, Gerry McKiernan has a wonderful overview on using RSS applications in libraries.
Also, he’s got a new acronym for RSS (did we really need one?) - Rich Site Services. I like that. It may start to confuse people more though. Another note: I mentioned a [...]
Women Library Hackers Rock My World
September 22nd, 2004Leave it up to two of my favorite women librarians to come up with an almost complete bookmarklet for getting worldcat results directly using the Library Lookup Bookmarklet.
One thought. I believe that Yahoo is indexing more Worldcat results than Google at this point, so I’d use Yahoo instead of Google. [...]
R.E.M. @ Myspace.com
September 21st, 2004I’m listening to the new REM album on Myspace.com for free. And so can you…
Bill Spence and more Feed(ing) Frenzy
September 20th, 2004Jessica pointed me to an article by Bill Spence (CTO of Information Today) that appears in the September issue of Information Today (the magazine). In it, he describes his experiences being scraped by a third party feed “supplier”. Some great quotes:
“RSS feeds are the wave of the future. I’ve been hearing this from [...]
New Stuff from Topix
September 19th, 2004Some interesting updates from Topix. I’m loving the social software press releases, but I’m baffled that there is no RSS feed for it. Sigh.
Do Blawgs Help You in Your Daily Newsgathering
September 19th, 2004Matthew Lerner wants to know if blawgs help in your daily news gathering:“Do Weblogs help you as a law student, paralegal, lawyer, law librarian, librarian, or Weblog reader? In preparing for my presentations on using Weblogs in the law, I have been meeting with resistance from a few lawyers who do not see the worth [...]
Qumana
September 18th, 2004Subdued Citizen linked over to Qumana, a desktop tool that allows users to drag and drop content into the system for easy publishing into a weblog. Read more on their weblog. Actually, the developers make it clear that weblogs need not be used. If one just wants to organize content and publish [...]
Yet Another Subscription
September 18th, 2004Today, I came across NevOn - “Neville Hobson’s bog: comment and opinion on business communication and technology”. Subscribed!!
Online groups put the ‘Net in networking
September 18th, 2004An interesting article from the Arizona Republic about online social networks. Two points:
1) “The system’s reliance on trust-based relationships can break down if users invite people they barely know into the network…[s]ometimes I get invitations and it’s, ‘I don’t even know you,’ ” said Scott Larson, senior associate at Grayhawk Venture Partners, a Phoenix-based [...]
Massachusetts Library Jobs via RSS
September 18th, 2004Andrea blogged about the new RSS feed that the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners created for their jobs page. It even comes with an explanation of RSS. Very nice. Now Andrea can be one of the first to know about new jobs in her area.
I would have loved to see [...]
Keep up to date with your friends’ Bloglines accounts
September 17th, 2004This is pretty nifty. If you want to be kept up to date with the feeds that your buddies are adding to their Bloglines account, then check out this hack by Dan Grigsby.
Introducing Superfan: “Superfan creates an RSS feed containing the subscriptions of a particular Bloglines user. When that user subscribes to a new feed [...]
Cooperation is Still Bothering Me
September 16th, 2004Even though I wrote yesterday that I’ll probably bypass the subject of cooperation for my book proposal, it is still nagging the heck out of me. Cooperation has been written about extensively in the library literature (There is an LC subject headings for it), but I wonder if I would be doing my readers [...]
BuddySpace - The Next Generation Social Networking?
September 16th, 2004CJ (who, BTW, was the only one to respond to my plea for help - so much for connections) writes about a concept called BuddySpace as it related to my query:
“Eventually, he will be able to see not only “presence”, but also geographic location, and depending on configuration “knowledge areas” for his IM contacts. The [...]