Library Stuff

It looks like the folks at SirsiDynix are making the library blogger rounds these days. There are lots of us doing these institutes. Today, mine went up, as did Alane Wilson’s, Greg Schwartz’s (no, we don’t share the same job), and Meredith Farkas’s.

I’m excited for my first real chat about libraries being the center of community building. Here’s the abstract:

“Based on parts of previous writings by Kathleen de la Pena McCook (A Librarian at Every Table), Cohen will discuss how social networks, public space theory, and online communities can be used by libraries in any setting (public, academic, and school) to build social capital and become an active part in community building. Learn how other libraries of all sizes and budgets have become active participants in their communities and how a process-based approach can incorporate the above theories into practical methods for community building”

A far cry from my previous talks on RSS, Blogs, etc. How refreshing.

Is it me or are library blogger surveys all the rage these days? I don’t have an issues with them at all (I think they are very useful in understanding how libraries, librarians, and blogs fit in together), but they are certainly popular. The latest one is from CW.

Also, I think RSS is taking a back seat to all of these new tools that we have been talking about. RSS is, IMO, what drives blogs, and other pieces of social software (Flickr is just a place to store and post pictures without RSS updates – RSS is the engine that pushes the sharing). Why don’t we talk about RSS more? Or are we and I’m missing it? I’m probably as guilty as the next blogger in getting caught up in the hype and not looking at the roots of social software services.

I was thrilled to see this post by Mark Bernstein:

“But librarians need news as much as anyone else — particularly news about the world of writing. What books do we need to know about? What books do our patrons need to know about? RSS is a superb channel — provided you can create a good reading list.”

Mark also links to a presentation summary by Alisa Parker on RSS in New Zealand libraries:

“Libraries can collate such feeds into a reference list for users to subscribe to, or incorporate the information from the feeds directly into web pages. Libraries also generate their own feeds and provide users with announcements about things as library hours or new resources. How, then, in 2006 are New Zealand libraries using RSS?”

For the past few weeks, I’ve been in OPML heaven. I’ve been continuing to add feeds to my Web 2.0 Company Blog List, which is available via OPML, and I’m learning a heck of a lot from the amazing folk on the OPML Newbies Group.

After reading Blake’s “10 Blogs to Read in 2006″, I realized that it was the perfect reading list. Reading Lists are supposed to be small. They are supposed to encapsulate around 10-15 blogs that you enjoy most and would recommend. They don’t have to be topic-based, but most are at this point. Also, the great thing about Reading Lists is that they change. What is on my list today may not be tomorrow. I might have to bump my 10th favorite with a new blog that knocks me to the ground with it’s amazing content. My tastes may change as well. Reading Lists are not static. When (not if…WHEN!) aggregators start to support Reading Lists, their promise and usability will show. So, I figure I’d follow in Blake’s footsteps and post my librarian blog Reading List (It’s in OPML). Again, it will change…

+ Library Careers
+ BlogJunction
+ Infomancy
+ Information Wants to Be Free
+ ACRL Blog
+ Science Library Pad
+ Rambling Libarian
+ Library Dust
+ J’s Scratchpad
+ Library Marketing

What would your Reading List look like? Remember, they need to be small (I’d say max it out at 15) so you’ll have to think about this if you read a lot of blogs. It’s a great excercise if you had to narrow down your blog reading to a small amount.

If you want to create your own Reading List, I’d recommend the OPML Editor, but OPML Workstation works well too. If you do create an OPML of your list, make sure it validates.

Last, another important part of Reading Lists is to share them with others. Link to them on your blogs (instead of a huge/useless Blogroll!), send them to your friends. Subscribe to them in your aggregator (again, only 2 aggregators that I know of support Reading Lists – the OPML editor and Blogbridge – so you might have to check them every so often for new entries/deletions).

If you happen to create one, post the URL to your list or your blog post about your list in the comments section below. If many people start to create them, we can move them to some sort of wiki environment.

For more on Reading Lists, see Dave Winer’s guidelines.

Something to add to my presentations. According to the Library Thing blog, the self classification/social software tool just hit 1.8 million books and 2.5 million tags.

I follow new features at LT closely, for obvious reasons. There are more matches for LT in my PubSub results on a daily basis than anything else I follow. It’s amazing how many people are using it. LT will continue to grow, no doubt about it. Librarians could learn a few things from LT on what makes book people tick. More from the blog on tags:

“As the tags accumulate, they are also generating a lot more value. Tags are mostly useful personally and statistically. Tags are often played up baselessly—as if a few scattered and general tags are of any use to anyone. For statistical purposes you need a LOT of tags, so frequency patterns can emerge and anomalous entries fade into the background. And tags are primarily interesting in concert, not by themselves. Because tags are non-heirarchical and often short, they lack the ‘context’ of something like the Library of Congress subject headings. Other tags can provide that context.”

“That’s why the ‘tag similarity’ algorithm takes many tags into account, favoring recommendations that match on more than one.”

Ah the joys of reader-centered online readers advisory.

The folk at Zoho have released an online speadsheet application. More information on their blog. I’ve been using NumSum for a while and have really enjoyed the experience. Tonight, I’ll check out Zoho Sheet. One benefit of Zoho over NumSum is the ability to import Excel spreadsheets, which you can’t do with NumSum (I think).