Library Stuff

At CIL this year, I spent a considerable amount of time on guidelines and policies for library weblogs. I showed a few examples from the corporate environment. Yesterday, my aggregator pointed me to Venture Blog, which posted a link to a Howard Rice Alert on corporate blogging risks.

The guidelines posted seem more related to the library environment than the risks. These “practical guidance” bullets are as follows:

(Howard Rice – 2005)

Blog guidelines and policies are going to become more important for libraries as more jump onto the bandwagon. I hope that these examples help in formulating an official policy for your library. On a related note, we will most likely be hearing from an expert in blogging ethics at Internet Librarian in October. It’s not set in stone, but she has agreed to speak during the blogging track. Stay tuned…

A wonderful post from Dan Brown titled On Freetagging where he discusses the difference between the term folksonomies and freetagging:

“Freetagging – applying freely-chosen words as labels to objects – is the activity that leads to a folksonomy. When you type tags into del.icio.us, you’re freetagging. My preference for freetagging comes from looking at what makes the activity valuable: the process itself. A folksonomy is an ever-growing vocabulary that is internally inconsistent (out of necessity). The value is not in its content or structure, but in how its generated.”

So, freetagging leads to folksonomies. I can get behind that theory, although I’m not into arguing about semantics (you might say I’m anti-semantic – heh)

The most useful part of the post, at least in my work, is when he creates a chart defining the differences between folksonomies and controlled vocabularies. (scroll down in his post)

I only disagree with his use of the term ‘proprietary’ to define folksonomies. I think that tags are shared and not owned by anyone. Having tags as proprietary schema defeats the purpose of a true folksonomic system, which is shared and collaborative. Controlled vocabularies are also shared among users, so I don’t feel the need to distinguish the two in that respect. They are both shared among groups.

A great post by Dan. Make sure to read the whole thing.

If you want a quick glance at what people are tagging at del.icio.us today, bookmark trendalicious!. Soon (if not now), del.icio.us will be seen as a tool for current online trends, news, and more. It may give Daypop, Blogsnow, and Popdex a run for their money, depending on one thing. WIll more people be blogging or tagging in a year? Not a question that can be answered quickly…

Cindy L. Chick points to a blog run by the NY Supreme Court Criminal Term Library:

“This web log serves as an information gateway to web based services provided by the New York State Supreme Court Criminal Term Library in New York County. It includes the following features: 1. Direct access to the Library home page where you have access to the library online reference service by clicking on Ask a Librarian. 2. Space for posting library announcements and other relevant information. 3. Selected law and law related information feeds from outside sources for non commercial use.”

Very impressive. Since they are using Bloglines, they can also track their new book acquisitions via the new service:

Yet another university working on a weblog program. Weblogs@UBC has a ton of useful information, including this statement:

“Our aim with weblogs@UBC is not to get everyone to start blogging – blogs are not for everyone. However, we do think they have tremendous potential in higher education, not only from technical and managerial perspectives, but also because they are such a natural fit for many users.”

“Anyone interested in publishing their work may do so freely, quickly, and easily. Our hope is that by encouraging participants to speak their minds and share material, we will all build a community that fosters openness, trust, collaboration and most of all, learning for the sake of learning.”

I have to keep reminding myself that not everyone is a blogger (you can lead librarians to a blog, but you can’t make them post) and we can’t assume that just because the technology exists that they should be using it in their library. It’s one thing to get excited about technologies, it’s another thing to implement it correctly and effectively.