Library Stuff

A few PubSubers were busy moving servers this weekend and the service was slow for a while. I must say, my aggie was not spitting out exciting content at all. So, the moral of this little story (the “takeaway”) is that PubSub makes your aggregator more exciting. I have 18 subscriptions running and probably get more out of these than the other 424 feeds that I read.

Yesterday, we took Hallie to Old Westbury Gardens to see the Phipps mansion and beautiful flower gardens. Photoset on Flickr.

Colgate joins the party with an RSS Feed for their news headlines.

‘Librarian’ beats ‘Lawyer’ in a Flickr Tag Fight

August was a popular month to discuss library weblogs. Today, Will Richardson linked to an article in School Library Journal on the topic. Alice Yucht has some good advice:

““When you begin, tread gently,” advises Alice Yucht, a veteran educator and blogger who teaches online courses in librarianship to Rutgers University graduate students in New Jersey. “A blog is a wonderful tool for marketing and communication. But it’s not for everybody. I would recommend it to those people who think they would like to try a new way of marketing their library services.”

“Yucht cautions people new to blogs to be clear about what they want to use them for. “Being a frustrated writer is not a reason to have a blog,” she says. “Who’s your audience? If you’re going to have a blog for a school, you should set up in advance some very clear guidelines for yourself. Remember that a blog is a public publication.”

The article includes a mention of Amanda Etches-Johnson at the end. BTW, Amanda will be one of our speakers at Blog-U. She’ll be talking about designing and marketing library weblogs.

I tried to ignore David Utter’s ignorance of the library profession when I read the article and attempted to focus on and enjoy the news that Thomas is getting a (long overdue) upgrade. Lack of knowledge is, however, not easy to dismiss considering we’re in the information business. Utter writes:

“Like true librarians, officials at the Library of Congress have remained quiet on details about the forthcoming upgrade to the Thomas search engine, according to Federal Computer Week. But that upgrade will take place by the end of this year.”

I look forward to the new and improved Thomas and I’ll try to keep my voice down when it comes out.

One more thing. Google is only as relevant as the query put into the engine. Google in and of itself does not equal relevancy.

I’m hooked on local news these days (could this be my “next thing”?). Two days in a row, my aggregator (“aggie” as I lovingly call her) sent me two articles about librarians and weblogs:

1) From the McAlester News Capital & Democrat in Oklahoma comes a brief article about a weblog class that a computer specialist is teaching to YAs.

2) From the Courier-Gazette in Newark, NY comes word that the Lyons Public Library has started a blog of their own, called Check it Out.

Good luck to both initiatives. I love the long tail.

Brian Smith has some ideas for a male librarian action figure. Here’s an idea:

Brian Smith – “I’m going to blog this year. No I’m not. Yes I am. No I’m not.” (action figure’s head spins)

(Thanks Anna)

ASIST will be blogging their annual conference. Yay. Way to go Beatrice! OK, whose going to be next? (link via Peter Scott’s Library Blog)

I’m going to have to download the newest tool from Blogger tonight. So, I can compose my longer blog posts in Word, run a spell-check, and post directly. Suweeeeet! (link via Blogger Buzz)