Library Stuff

David Teten links to and article titled, “Caves, Clusters, and Weak Ties: The Six Degrees World of Inventors”, which appeared on the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge page. A quote:

“Six degrees of separation seems to work well for B-list actors—but does it have anything to say about innovation and business?

One implication for executives: Don’t lock your scientists, researchers, and inventors in ivory towers. Your organization will benefit by the knowledge that flows to them from outside your company. Instead of asking ‘How can I make my R&D lab more productive?’ Fleming says a better question to ponder is, ‘How can I commercialize from this web of connected engineers?’”

The basic premise here is to understand the talent and expertise that exists not only in your own organization, but outside of it as well. Do librarians do this well? Are subject specific libraries utilized to their utmost capacity when researching a topic? Are the collective talents of our profession being used, or can we do better? QuestionPoint has made some strives in this arena, and WorldCat helps. Certainly, the new Google/Library initiative has the potential to work in our collective favor if properly marketed and utilized well (and we won’t know that for a long time).

I believe that our first work in librarian collective wisdom is to tap into those librarians that we work with on a daily basis. Get to know them, their interests, their specialties, their hobbies. And why just do this with librarians? We had staff at the library where I worked that knew more than any reference book could tell us about certain queries (especially computer assistance). After that, learn about librarians from around our county, state, the national level. A social software tool for librarians only comes to mind, although I’m not sure that this would work. This interaction needs to be face to face. I learn more about colleagues when I meet with them at conferences and meetings. I couldn’t even attempt to calculate the quality of “circle sessions” we had in that bar in the Portola Hotel in Monetery last month. Again, get out from behind that desk.

John Lovitz used to say on SNL, “Get to Know Me.” How true.

Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not what you think. I had both hands raised in the air doing a “Hip Hip Hooray” before I read more about it on Beyond the Job (this link may be a bit off – they need to change their permalinks):

“During 2004, RUSA reorganized some of its sections to better meet member needs. In the process, a new section was created specifically with reference librarians in mind: the Reference Services Section (RSS).

RSS represents the interests of librarians and library support staff
engaged in all aspects of reference and information services including the delivery, management, and evaluation of reference and users services in all kinds of libraries.”

While this is a noble endeavor, I was hoping that ALA had finally joined the RSS crowd. Alas, I was crestfallen. I was cheered up however, by a few new ALA press releases that came into my aggregator tonight. Thank you Yahoo! (wink)

There is long running debate in the blogging realm about whether bloggers should be up front with their employers about their blog. The answer to the question shouldn’t be that hard. If you want your employers to know about your blog, then just put your name on it. They will find you. If you don’t want them to know about your blog, then do it anonymously, don’t publish from the office, and refrain from talking about anything remotely correlated to your job. You “should” be safe (nothing is 100%).

I’m going to argue that librarians who blog professionally should tell their employers about their blog. I’m not talking about personal blogs. Those should probably be left anonymous (remember, they will find you). But professional blogs that discuss our profession should be a welcome enhancement to your work. If done right, it will boost your “face time” with the administration. It will show them what you’ve accomplished through your weblog (it may even push the library to start one of their own – and guess who will be in charge of it?).

Example: Karen Coombs. While figuring out why she should renew her domain name, she had an unexpected conversation with her boss:

“Then my boss mentioned that she had been reading my blog while I was at Internet Librarian and asked “do you know how many people link to you?” in a sort of amazed way. It seems she had Googled my blog title in order find it and found much more. I’ve done this myself but not since August. I did it this morning and my reaction was “whoa!”.

Karen’s boss reads her blog! Fantastic. While I’m not sure if Karen told her about it first or she found it herself, the important part is that her boss reads it. My boss doesn’t read my blog, but I show her posts every once in a while just to keep her informed that I still do it. A few possible positive outcomes of showing your organization your blog:

1) They can use it a PR tool, which benefits both the blogger and the employer.

2) They can utilize your knowledge gained by blogging, if they want to start their own. Of course, RSS goes along with this.

3) By blogging about the library profession, one is forced to keep current. You can become an expert in a particular area and utilize that knowledge for new projects and initiatives.

So, does your organization know about your blog? Is your blog on your resume? Use the power of blogs to market yourself to your administration and don’t be afraid of a little publicity. Get out from behind that desk and work it baby.

A short, but interesting post (considering that the PLA blog will be launching soon) from Andy Beal about the restrictions of blogging at the SES conference. Apparently, they are not allowed to check e-mail or blog in the press room.

I’m not at SES so I don’t know how it is set up. I’ll assume that the press room is not part of the actual conference presentation rooms and that attendees are allowed to blog during the presentations. If my hypothesis is not true, I’ll just scratch my head in amazement and shock.

Blake takes a stab at the popularity of librarian blogs, and comes to a few conclusions:

“So, to summarize what I’ve learned so far, The Shifted Librarian is the most poular librarian blog, according to my interpretation of browsing a bunch of sites that attempt to measure popularity. (Since I host The Shifted Librarian I can also say she is the most popular target for spammers as well, probably not the kind of award anyone wants to get!) I think saying that Jenny is most popular is a) an honor and b)correct . It’s an honor because she’s popular in an ubelievably huge and crowded field full of talented people. It’s correct because, well, the lists that rank these kinds of thigs say it’s so. But, c) it’s not entirely accurate, because these lists are rather insular and limited in scope, and they probably miss many good sites. Special niche sites like librarian.net, and LISNews don’t show up here because we are popular in a different way. We have limited appeal to a limited audience and aren’t linked to by the blogosphere because what we write about isn’t very interesting to most people. Even though these numbers are far from perfect, they’re all we have, and they all pretty much agree “Shifty” takes lithe LISBlogoprize for most popular librarian blog. She’s got a great domain name, great posts that appeal to a wide variety of folks, and a great hook.”

It’s funny that I should read this post tonight. For two reasons:

1) I was debating on whether I should comment on an article from Newsweek titled, “The Alpha Bloggers”. I have already done so in the past and stand by what I wrote then. So, consider a mention of this article and a link to my previous post as my commentary. The reason why it relates to Blake’s post is obvious. The fact that LISNews and Librarian.net (as well as a host of other worthy librarian-related blogs – Resourceshelf, Tame the Web, Librarian in Black, etc) do not come up in “The Lists” means nothing to me. They are without a doubt the reason why I am blogging today (as well as a host of other librarian bloggers) and don’t need to be on any top list. If this means anything, they are at the top of my list. I look at my stats daily, but don’t get too hung up over them. They are important for others reasons (wait until January), but the satisfaction that I get from comments, e-mails, and IMs means more to me than any list.

2) Popularity polls: They are a dime a dozen these days. The most popular blog from France. The most popular blog in the field of carpentry. Last week, I mentioned a poll of the most popular librarian blogs. Well, it turns out that I won. While it’s nice to be recognized (although I’m going to assume here that I won because I was the only one of the three nominees who mentioned the award), I still feel that a) There should have been more nominees and b) Polls really don’t measure anything, considering that only 65 votes were cast in our category. Thinking back to my statistics classes, that is a low “n=”.

So, Why the rant? Because I don’t want librarians who want to blog to feel that they have to reach a large audience to be “successful”. Don’t get caught up on statistics. Blog what you feel and not what you want others to read. The letter “A” can stand for something other than Alpha. I went through my aggregator again and I realized that I only subscribe to 1 of the bloggers on the A-list. And she is a rock star, a close colleague, and an Alpha. As my buddy Dick Kaser said to me at Computers in Libraries 2002: “Blog On”.

Karen Schneider blogs:

“I’m hoping that those of us blogging PLA’s meetings at the ALA Midwinter 2005 conference are willing to talk about, and agree to, guidelines for our own blogging, and are willing to commit to standards of blogging that won’t make us cringe when we look back at our activities ten or thirty years hence. We have a great opportunity to show the world that information specialists represent the sine qua non, the absolute go-to-gang, for today’s citizen bloggers. Library flavor: it’s mmm-mmm good!”

I guess that I’m in the best position to comment on this. Since we will be blogging for an organization, there will be guidelines for what it published. I’ve mentioned this on numerous occasions during my presentations and most recently Internet Librarian (with Michael Stephens). When blogging for a company, organization, or association, there should be guidelines. There should also be a mission. The mission of the PLA blog will be for the 10 (or so) of us to get the national library associations in the United States excited about blogging. Second, it will be our mission to get out thoughts, ideas, and (yes) commentary out to those who couldn’t attend the meeting (but want to play along at home) and to put a different face to the conference. Who better than a bunch of librarians who love blogs and who want to get that information out?. Thank you PLA for allowing us to do this and for your faith in our work.

These guidelines, however, will not hold back the creativity and freedom of the blogger (I doubt that this is what Karen was implying). You see, I think there is a middle ground that we’re missing here. We can have guidelines and standards without having to stomp on the blogging ideology that “I should be able to write whatever I want to”. You can do whatever you want on your own blog. But, when it comes to the PLA blog, there will be certain things that you won’t be able to say. Stuff that you probably wouldn’t post to your own blog anyway. Jenny Levine and Michael Stephens told me that even though I don’t have a “mission statement” for Library Stuff, I do have a mission. When I replied, “I do?”, they both said, “Yeah, you do.” And as we spoke, I realized that I do, albeit informally, have a “mission statement”. I won’t blog about certain topics, I won’t say certain things, use certain words, etc. I’m sure that we all can agree on that.

I hope that Karen doesn’t take the brunt of any negative commentary that her post may receive. I agree with her comments more often than I disagree with them. I think on the topic of ethics, we are almost in agreement. In a way, I’m glad that we’re not.

On that note, for those that still want to blog at ALA Midwinter, we have a bunch of spots left. For those that have already contacted me, you will hear from me this week.

I bookmarked this article in my drafts folder on Friday, and on perusal today saw a great quote. The article is titled, “Library columnists share love of words“.

“After reading their columns and looking at their libraries’ Web sites, I have a strong urge to go visit each person. And I realize that is probably one of the reasons for a library to have a column: it gives a personal voice to an institution. And even a service institution like a public library can benefit from becoming more approachable.”

Interesting. We give these same reasons for your library to have a blog. Whatever the method, giving a personalized touch to your library which reflects on its mission is a great marketing tool. Also, why not combine the two?

The other day, I mentioned that you can get an RSS Feed for ALA by using the “inurl” search at Yahoo News. I played on Yahoo News again this morning (querying different organizations and associations) and found 2 more that may be useful.

+ White House press releases (RSS Feed)

+ American Medical Association Press Releases (RSS Feed)

Here’s my reasoning why this is very important for content providers (this includes the federal government, non-profit organizations, even companies). Today, I received 3 news clips from my ALA Feed. The first dealt with a new childrens’s book list, the second involved a listing of the library budgets/bonds/tax votes that passed during November, and the third mentioned the ALA’s support of a new bill that passed today in Congress.

If I hadn’t created these feeds, I wouldn’t have seen these news releases and I wouldn’t have been better informed about my profession. Why? Because I don’t go to the ALA site. As I mention in my presentations, browsing the Web doesn’t work for me anymore. The mere fact that I can now get ALA news in my aggregator will push me to read content that I wouldn’t regularly go after (it comes to me). And it makes me a well informed professional, which, in turn, will enable me to provide better service to my clients. Of course, I think that ALA should be providing their own feeds, but that’s a post for another day.

Karen talks about librarian weblogs and ethical considerations:

“For some time I’ve grumbled and groused about the practices of librarian bloggers. Too many of us want to be considered serious citizen-journalists, when it suits us, but fall back on ‘hey, it’s only a blog’ when we’d rather post first and fact-check later, present commentary as ‘news,’ or otherwise fall short of the guidelines of the real profession of journalism. (This is doubly ironic, considering how librarians squeal when people without library degrees claim to practice ‘librarianship.’)”

I don’t know of many librarian bloggers who want to be thought of as “serious citizen journalists”. I’m sure there are some out there. Most of us just want to get our thoughts and ideas across without having to be labeled. I’ve always fought the notion of me being a “journalist”. I’m a librarian who happens to have a blog and wants to show off some interesting tools and comment on various issues. Does that make me a journalist? Maybe. I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that when the PLA Blog goes live (next week I hope), I will be representing my profession in a different capacity than I do now. I will be blogging for an organization, one that I trust (and one that trusts me), write for in another capacity (my Internet Spotlight column), and respect. I’m also bringing other people on board (some whom I know and others whom I don’t) to blog as well, which brings up a whole other set of issues (am I an editor now?) My point is that I’ll feel more like a journalist when I blog for PLA than when I blog for Library Stuff. Thus, I’ll have to work on my typos and grammar.

Two press releases were issued today which should have a significant impact on weblogs and RSS. First, Feedster has gotten more venture capital money, which is always nice to read. Congrats Scotts.

Second, Moreover has come out with a Pinging service today, which is great news if you happen to get content from them (I don’t – too many ads in their feeds).

Anyway, since we can now ping Moreover, does that mean that my site will be indexed by them? The answer to my question is probably no.

So, if my site isn’t going to be indexed by Moreover, then why would I want to waste my time pinging their server? They should have only opened up this pinging service to providers whose content they are indexing. Then again, I just read this from their ping server page:

“When Moreover receives this message [the ping], we send out a harvesting program to your site to collect the new content and post it to our vast distribution network.”

So, they are indexing my stuff if I ping them? (links via SEW Blog)