Library Stuff

I’m still working my way through my blogging drafts. Next up: PBJ: A personal journaling tool for the WSU community.

It looks like they have had it running for a while. They currently have 134 journals, which is a decent number. I am still floored by the presentation by Shane Nackerud at Internet Librarian this year. The University of Minnesota Libraries should be the starting point for any university that is looking to create a blogging community around campus.

PBJ: cute name.

Well, one IT conference at least. The very popular Consumer Electronics Show will be held in Las Vegas in next week and I was shocked to read that they will not be allowing bloggers in. From an article in Infoworld:

“The CEA spent more time qualifying attendees this year to make sure everyone in attendance has a legitimate attachment to the consumer electronics industry, said Kristen Peiffer, a CEA spokeswoman. The show is not open to the general public, and the CEA does not allow the blogging community or other independent observers to attend the show.”

Qualifying attendees? Not open to the general public? Are they that big that they have to sift through the applications and pick out the people that they would like to attend? Library associations and companies should be so lucky! Even though they “qualify” people, I’m still not sure about the not allowing the blogging community in. Does this mean that they won’t register someone who has no other interest in the technologies other than blogging it? They allow the mainstream press to come in, so why not bloggers? If the past 6 months (semi-arbitrary date range) have shown anything, it’s that bloggers and journalists can work together to provide many points of view of one event.

Also, I’m sure that some attendees who are welcomed into the show will be blogging it anyway. These days, a tech show without a blogger present is like a vets office without a sick dog.

The committees of library-related conferences, however, are starting to embrace conference blogging. For example, at the last few ITI conferences, the organizers went out of their way to have us blog the show. They even linked to our blog posts on the conference web site. January also marks the first time that a coordinated effort is put in place by a library association to have attendees blog at a conference. So far, we have more than 15 people signed up to blog for PLA at ALA Midwinter (where the mainstream press will also be in attendance). Walt Crawford is also working on his own to ask for reports from the attendees which will be published in Cites & Insights.

I’m not saying that all technology shows are pushing bloggers away. In fact, most of them do not. Gnomedex comes to mind. But for the “biggest tech show” of the year to go out of their way to exclude bloggers seems, well, un-techie.

Microsoft is going to be showing off their new technologies at CES. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Bill Gates says, “Take a look at our new blogging software…” (link via Pro Blogger)

Three del.icio.us tools came through my aggregator today via, you guessed it, del.icio.us.

1) From Hublog (the creator of of one of the most useful RSS tools on the planet – Hubmed) comes “Be the Coolest”:

“Want to be the first to find an exciting new thing? Run this on any del.icio.us page for a URL (eg this one). It’ll find the earliest existing post and add yours one day earlier.” (Grab the Bookmarklet)

2) Tasty, which apparently has been around for awhile (I’ve just missed it I guess), shows you who has bookmarked any URL in del.icio.us. Very handy. (Grab the Bookmarklet)

3) Seb mentions Commentlogging, which is not really a tool, but a freakin’ great idea. Create a tag on del.icio.us that bookmarks all of the posts that you have commented on, and place your actual comment on the extension tags. It’s use? Seb says:

“This is obviously handy as a personal trail of places you’ve been, which makes it easy for you to revisit comment threads you’re participating in. In addition, it can be of use to others (1) as a way of being aware of things you found interesting enough to comment on, and (2) as a way of verifying that you were indeed the person who posted such-or-such comment under your name.”

Yet another way for the collective organism to work its magic. I was chatting with a colleague today and I mentioned, “Remember three years ago when I told you that RSS is going to be huge, and you said no? Well, folksonomies based on the the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ is hot right now. Trust me.”

I hope he does.

I just got off the phone with my new boss and I can officially go live with this.

Starting January 3rd, I will employed full-time at PubSub. I’ve always wanted to work in the blog/RSS field and this is my opportunity to do so. I’ll be heading up some new projects (I can’t tell you what they are, so don’t ask) and doing other library-related initiatives. I’m very excited about this new adventure.

The content of this blog will not change. I will continue to post about weblogs/RSS/Social Networking/Social Software and how libraries can use them to leverage the content that they produce and share. I will also still be attending library conferences and giving presentations. I’m still a librarian and will be a librarian in 2005. I just won’t be working in a library.

Also, even though I will be working for PubSub, it does not mean that I will not talk about other weblog/RSS initiatives. Will I talk about PubSub more? I might. Not sure yet.

I’ll miss working in libraries (I’ve done so since the 10th grade). I’ll miss the reference work, the satisfaction of finding that needle, the comraderie that we all feel with one another.

I also mentioned that Library Stuff will have an official sponsor next year (probably starting in mid January). I still can’t mention who they are, but they are well known to anyone who reads my blog on a daily basis. I am thrilled about this prospect as well.

Again, thank you for your continued readership over the past 3 years.

And away we go…

Gary Price mentions (and he IM’d me to make sure I saw it – thanks buddy) that Waypath (another one of those “little engines that could” that I love so much) had a busy day. First, they redesigned the site (a bit busy but much better than before), created a new logo (I love it!) and rolled out a new feature on the most active news stories. They use Yahoo news (good choice) and will show you which bloggers have linked to a particular news item. Quite impressive.

The one thing that I never liked about Waypath (and this is probably me being stubborn), is the way they display the content from the blog that they are linking to. They seem to grab pieces of the post which garbles the text. They are probably showing the most relevant pieces, but it bothers me that the descriptions don’t flow.

Other than that: Go Waypath Go.