Library Stuff

The School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama has a wiki.

This should make for interesting reading. A company called Wildbit has released a report [PDF] on online social networks and communities.

“Communities are not created; they evolve. The growth of an online community takes time and effort. Relationships must be initiated based on trust, and then carefully cultivated. Organizations must identify a sequence of steps to increase a constituent’s level of involvement and offer a variety of participation options that work to engage different components of their audience. To build a vibrant online community, organizations need more than an individual’s donation or membership application — they need ongoing interaction opportunities that will keep a constituent engaged and developing into a lifelong supporter. In addition to defining a set of interactions, goals must be clearly articulated. Organizations must ask themselves fundamental questions about the nature of the online community that they are building.”

File…Print.

My aggie (Feed on Feeds) has been acting up lately, so Blake upgraded it this morning to see if that would fix some of the slowness issues. We were 6 or 7 releases behind, so it was about time that we did it. I have been using FOF for more than a year now and couldn’t work without it. The new upgrades make my aggie life even better.

One great addition is a frame-based browser (like Bloglines), which allows me to look at specific feeds if I wanted to. Also, I have the latest 50 entries on the right-hand side at all times. What this does is give me access to anything I want in one interface. Beautuful. I can also delete and/or update any feed with one click (FOF automatically runs all of my feeds at 20 past the hour).

I like FOF over Bloglines for one main reason. It runs on my server (well, LISHost) so I have better access to the backend and not have to rely on a third party.

By far one of my favorite literary blogs, Bookslut is the focus of an article in the Chicago Sun Times:

“This website — Crispin says it’s visited each day by 7,000 to 8,000 people — fills a sizable niche as an alternative to market-driven book review sections that focus on mass-audience authors. Instead of dishing on pop novelists such as Terry McMillan and Robert James Waller, Bookslut does lengthy reviews and interviews of writers such as David Markson, author of the experimental novel Wittgenstein’s Mistress and of Lee Gutkind, guru of the “creative nonfiction” genre. They are hardly household names but still are important figures in the American literary world.”

“Bookslut is “filling a void,” declares Annie Tully, associate producer at the Chicago Humanities Festival and one of the site’s many bright young reviewers. “While [Crispin] will mention bigger books here and there in her blog — when she loves anything like [Philip] Roth’s book last year or [Kazuo] Ishiguro’s recent one — she’s not shy about it. Her articles, reviews and interviews often introduce me to writers I don’t know but should.”

Here’s something I didn’t know about Jessa. She was once a librarian for the Sexuality Resource Center at Planned Parenthood. Suweeeeeeet!

Hey, Meredith. When I read the study, I thought about making one of my “e-mail is dead” posts, but didn’t really feel like it at the time. I’m trying to be more of a “different strokes” guy these days, but I keep getting pulled back into so-and-so-technology-is-dead mode, especially when I read studies like the one from Pew. Yes, e-mail is still alive and kicking, and I may be premature (as Greg says) in digging its grave because I HAVE to use it. The only I reason I use e-mail is because everyone else does. If everyone I knew had Skype, I wouldn’t use e-mail. Plain and simple.

Also, any technology that gets people to praise themselves when they clean up their inbox is a dead technology, IMO. Is that any way to live?

This is also a friendly reminder that if you send me an e-mail, I will most likely read it, but not respond right away (in some instances, it’s been taking me over a week). On the other hand, if you IM, Skype, or call, chances are you’ll have a response within a few minutes (if I’m at my computer). Remember, you can send a Skype message to me even if I’m not online. When I go online, I’ll get it. Skype is/will be the e-mail killer. No doubt about it.