Advanced Weblogs: Applications, Technology, Cases

Steven M. Cohen

PubSub Concepts, Inc

Library Stuff

Jenny Levine

Metropolitan Library System

The Shifted Librarian

Presentation URL

http://internetlibrarian05.pbwiki.com

What We Will Be Talking About Today

+ Marketing Your Weblog

+ Guidelines and Policies for Weblogs & RSS Feeds

+ Automatic posting notification systems

+ Weblog Extras, Plug-Ins, Audio Posting

+ Templates

+ Intranet v. Internet

+ Customized RSS Feeds

+ Bookmarking Tools and Folksonomies

+ Library Vendors and RSS

Quick, Quick, Quick Intro to Blogs and RSS

+ Website, listed chronologically, with written content and links.

+ Most use software for easy publication.

+ Calendars, Permalinks, Archives, RSS, blogroll, comments.

+ Easy Easy Easy Easy Easy…

+ Every blog will have an RSS Feed, but not every RSS feed comes from blogs.

Examples of blogs

+ Library Stuff

+ Resourceshelf

+ Tame the Web

+ It's All Good

Examples of Feeds

+ New York Times

+ USA Today

+ Chronicle of Higher Education

+ AP

Examples of RSS Readers

+ Bloglines

+ Net News Wire

+ Newzcrawler

+ http://www.newsgator.com

So You Have a Weblog - Now What?

Marketing is Key

+ If a blog is on the web, but nobody is there to read it...

+ Put up a "about this" page

+ The value of a "soft release"

+ Talk to the right people (the ones that make the decisions)

+ Put out a press release

+ Talk to the local newspaper

+ Put it in your newsletter

+ Link to it on your website

+ Use the blogosphere (especially the library blogosphere)

+ Flyers, bookmarks, classes

Marketing the Professional Librarian Weblog

+ Stand out in the crowd

+ Ease of use

+ Best way to publish without trade publications (on your own terms)

+ Finding your niche

+ Marketing the Librarian

+ Write everyday

Guidelines and Policies

Professional Librarian Weblogs

+ Loose guidelines work best (for me anyway)

+ Does your library know? Will you tell them?

+ Do you put your blog on your resume?

+ Guidelines on comments (Free Range Librarian)

- Other guidelines from LISNews.

Library Weblogs

+ Need to be more in depth (liability)

+ Posting policies for library staff

+ Don't talk about patrons

+ Don't post about staff members

+ Make sure that the information is accurate

+ Is there going to be a holding period for approval?

+ Who gets access?

+ What gets posted? (news, new materials, library events)

+ How often can staff post?

+ PLA Blog guidelines on a wiki

+ Corporate blogging policies

- Feedster

- Charlene Li

- University of Minnesota - services and guidelines

- McMaster University - RSS Policy

Discussion - Should libraries have blogging policies?

Automatic Posting and Notification Systems (APNS)

+ Pinging Technology

- sends notification of new blog post to centralized service

- Examples:

- http://www.weblogs.com

- http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

- http://api.feedster.com/ping

- Ping-o-matic

- Pings.ws

+ Trackback

- Tells you who is linking to your posts.

- You have to play with Trackback to get it working

- Some say that trackback is dead (PubSub can do the same thing very easily)

+ What's so great about APNS?

- Gets your content out into the blogosphere quicker (almost instantaneously)

- Who is talking about you? Who is linking to you? Feed the ego.

- Think about marketing again.

- Cross blog conversation

posted by Steven | permalink 0 comments

Weblog Extras, Plugins, Templates, Audio Posting

+ Macros are extremely important.

+ Easily embedded if you know html or other coding languages (css, javascript)

+ Don't touch those macros!

+ Blogger example

+ Plugin Directories

- www.mt-plugins.org

- Blogger help

- Wordpress Plugs Wiki

+ Examples of blogs that have gone "the extra step"

- Thomas Ford Public Library (MT)

- Roselle Public Library Blogger Book Club (Blogger)

- Construction Diary

- Hillsdale Library (Blogger)

- Princeton University Libraries (MT)

+ Free templates are available.

+ UThink example.

+ Search?

+ Sometimes, the basics are all you need (content is king)

+ Post to your weblog from the road (literally!)

+ Audio posting - The Gates

+ The "call in show weblog" concept.

posted by Steven | permalink 0 comments

Internet v. Intranet

+ Weblogs can be useful in both situations (What are you trying to accomplish?)

Internet

+ On your library web page

+ News, press releases

+ New Acquisitions (Waterboro Public Library)

+ Virtual Reference Collection

- New databases

- Electronic libraries (Lexis example)

- Problems with databases

- New policies

+ FARQs

Intranet

+ Communication among staff, libraries, consortia

+ FARQs

+ Backend CMS only

+ "We've shifted books again"; "The biographies are on the second floor now"

+ Everyone is involved

+ Meeting/event planning

Discussion: Will weblogs work on my internet/intranet? Why not? - DISCUSS

posted by Steven | permalink 0 comments

Customized RSS Feeds

+ Customization is the future of RSS.

+ The future is now

+ Be a hero @ your library (law firm example - outcomes)

+ Let's do it with Bloglines (class account)

- PubSub (examples)

- But what if my news resource doesn't allow me to customize? Fear not!

- Feedster

- Blogdigger (ITI Groups)

- Amazon / Amazon Wish Lists

- HubMed (Be a Hero!)

- Econtent

- RSS Weather

- DayPop

- Topix (zip code)

- Yahoo News (ALA Pres Releases, other examples)

- Wired News

- Moreover

- ODP Directory Feeds

- Find Articles

- Ebay

- Fedex/USPS/UPS

- Ingenta Connect

- Find Articles

+ Open tagging systems

- Collective intelligence

- The power of the masses

- Categorize your own bookmarks on your own terms (yikes)

- Subscribe to category bookmarks

- Subscribe to others' bookmarks.

- Examples:

Furl

del.icio.us

Connotea

Cite U Like

Digg It

Unalog

Technorati

Tagsurf

FeedMarker

Tagsy

Wists

+ Is there a place for open tagging structures in libraryland?

- Let's meet in the middle of the right (totally structured) and left

- The masses will probably decide the structure

- Readers Advisory example

+ Discussion: Open Tagging Systems are neither open nor tagging systems - DISCUSS

posted by Steven | permalink 0 comments

RSS @ Your Library

+ RSS in Your ILS (Jenny Levine)

New Books

Automatic RSS Feed with most weblog software

Library Elf

University of Alberta/NEOS - New books by subject heading - How'd they do that?

posted by Steven | permalink 0 comments

Thank You

Contact:

AOL IM - nylibrarian

Skype - stevenmcohen

Phone - 631-645-4516

E-mail - stevenmcohen at gmail.com

posted by Steven | permalink

Introduction

• WhatWikiIs - history and explanation
• WikiStyle - find out how to edit wikis
• SandBox - play around here to figure out how to edit wiki pages