Library Stuff

Another local library (local to me that is) has started podcasting. While I’m thrilled that Dowling is getting into this form of content delivery (it’s a no-brainer for those that have the staff and time to do so), I’m a big skeptical about calling their “blog” a blog. A blog without an RSS feed is, in my opinion, like running half a marathon…(podcast link via Syndication for Higher Ed)

As many of you who use blog/RSS search engines have seen over the past few days, we’ve been hit by a bunch of blog spam, mostly coming from Blogspot blogs. It’s something that has been an ongoing problem, but have been noticed a lot lately. Take a look at the screenshot below, which shows an aggregated feed from the latest additions to Syndic8.

These are a specific type of spam blogs. They automagically aggregate news stories from the major news resources, throw up some Google ads, and hope to make a few bucks. Syndic8 doesn’t seem to be helping out as they are adding the spam feeds to their directories. Humph.

Hip Hip Hooray! The ACRL is blogging, with none other than Steven Bell (among others) as a contributor. They have an exciting “Why an ACRL Blog” page that is worth reading. Does this mean that we will have 4 national library associations blogging at Midwinter? We have AASL, PLA, LITA, and ACRL. I’m not sure if the ALA Techsource crew will be out in force. Also, should we be syndicating all of the content somewhere in one place? Exciting times…

Now it’s my turn to be nit picky. On the resources page, the last citation, the huge library weblogs list from Libdex is maintained by Peter Scott, not Greg Schwartz. (link via Resourceshelf)

I’m not sure if this is a marketing issue for librarians or the need more education as to what librarians do for a living (or just an ignoramus – I’m not casting judgement, I’m just curious), but the following was posted to a blog hosted at Ohio University at Zanesville:

“This is kind of strange, but our campus library director asked me to set up a blog for her and her staff so that they could dump the RSS feed into the library’s home page. I set up a WordPress blog and now they can go and post announcements to the home page via the blog. The primary advantage here is that they don’t need to know how to be web publishers, though perhaps some sort of content management feature at the site itself would be a more direct way of handling the need.”

Bolding is on my end. Whatever the issue, it looks like the Zanesville librarians have seens a need on their site and used RSS and weblogs to fix the issue. Congrats!

Strange but true: librarians get weblogs and RSS. Don’t be scared. We don’t bite!

A big hip hip hooray and suweeeeeeet for William T. Vollmann, who is a finalist for a National Book Award (He’s not listed in the press release, but he’s on the list – his page is returning a 404 at this time). He was nominated for Europe Central, his latest novel.

This is well deserved nomination and I will have all toes and fingers crossed that WTV is finally validated for his work (although the nomination is some sort of pat on the back). I’m finishing up his first novel (You Bright and Risen Angels) and am continuously baffled by his extraordinary writing. Hip Hip Hooray!

New to Vollmann? Never heard of him? The NYT has an author profile with reviews of all his books and an article from the magazine which appeared in 1994. Here is what Tom LeClair said about Europe Central:

“Vollmann is a master of atmosphere, expanding a trivial detail into a metaphor, then wiring that metaphor to others, as he does with a black rotary telephone that ultimately extends into “Europe Central.” He is not so adept at dialogue. Perhaps recognizing the difficulties of creating historical and translated speech, Vollmann has his narrators expatiate much, much more than they eavesdrop on conversations. The narrators’ ideological rant in some interchapters also becomes repetitive and can be oppressive.

But these quibbles are like an occasional wrong number in the vast cross-cultural switchboard of “Europe Central.” Part novel and part stories, virtuoso historical remembrance and focused study of violence, “Europe Central” orchestrates the best of Vollmann’s past impulses into one large-minded and bighearted “Opus 15.” Or “Opus 21.”

Hip Hip Hooray. Gary Price mentions that the Online Books Page from the University of Pennsylvania Library now offers an RSS feed for it’s most recent listings.

A few RSS tools that I came across recently:

1) FeedAlley – Basically another “taggregator” along the lines of Feedmarker, the leader of the pack, IMO. I plyed with Feedalley for a bit and only just realized that I can’t a get a feed for tagged items. Huh?

2) Frankenfeed – One of many meta-feed sites where they will roll a bunch of feeds into one. This is one of the hottest things in the RSS market these days. I’m not sure I “get it” though. Maybe someday I’ss see the light.

If you don’t understand the value of keeping current (or do and want a refresher course), take a look at this article by Peter Jasco on the Informed and Underinformed Librarians. A few great quotes:

“Wherever I travel to when I step out of my ivory tower, I always visit libraries and learn how informed are librarians elsewhere. I am lucky to be close to some first class, well-informed librarians and library students at my home base, and I am always delighted when meeting similar ones elsewhere. However, I also see the increasing proportion of librarians who are and may remain underinformed about the classic digital reference tools, and fail to use the best resources and the best search techniques for finding the best answers in the best way.”

“The librarians who are underinformed about these issues may give a bad name to our profession. The informed librarian who got not only a diploma but also acquired knowledge in this field (even when the process did not make them feel good at the time), know all these, because they keep reading the literature, attending the workshops, testing and using the alternatives. They are the ones who keep me writing my regular and guest columns, and doing my workshops – beyond some concomitant perks. I’d rather see informed librarians than just feel-good librarians. Being informed is likely to make one feel good, too.”

Peter makes a good point, but one that he doesn’t address is that librarians have to make the choice to stay informed. We can’t force our colleagues to stay current. What we need to do educate librarians and librarians-to-be on the value of staying current. A mandatory course in library school comes to mind. (link via Resourceshelf)

You have to hand it to the guys over at Thomson Peterson’s. Not only do they have a killer blog on syndication in higher education, but they have put together a College and University Feed Directory. Within the directory, they have a section on libraries and, of course, a feed for newly added feeds (how is that for meta).

In the biggest step towards community involvement in online catalogs, OCLC has released a commenting system for Open WorldCat records. I signed up for an account and wrote my first review.

I’d love to see which library will be the first to incorporate these reviews into their online catalog (I’m not sure if this can be done yet- Lorcan?) The service may be built on a wiki-platform, but this is not a wiki. It’s actually more bloggish than wikiish (sp?). So, when will we be able to get RSS Feeds for updates on OCLC records for each book so I can follow the discussion.

Something OCLC might also want to consider: A Structured Blogging method of producing mass reviews whose data can be better understood by machines (aggregators, etc).