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Computers in Libraries
Washington, DC
The Blogging Explosion
Libraries and Weblogs
Darlene Fichter
[email protected]
University of Saskatchewan
March 14, 2003
Overview
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What are blogs?
A little history
Blog dissection class
Blogs & emergent information
Blog features and software
10 ways to use a blog
How to find out more
What is it?
Blog / Weblog is
 A web page containing brief entries
arranged chronologically
 Can be like
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A journal or diary
‘What’s New’ page
Interesting links page
“To me, the blog concept is about three things:
Frequency, Brevity, and Personality.”
Evan Williams (creator of Blogger)
Terminology
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Blogger – person who maintains a blog
Blogging – the act of creating a blog
Blogrolling – moving from blog to blog
Blogrolodex – a listing of other blogs
Blogorrhea – hundreds of posts per day
about anything
Blawgs, Klogs …
See discussion of terminology on
MetaFilter
A peek at the past
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NCSA’s What’s New page June 1993
Netscape’s What’s New 1993-95
Librarians' Site du Jour – Jenny
Levine, 1995
Dave Winer 1996
Cam World 1997
Created and coded by hand
Simple chronological lists
Librarian’s Site du Jour
November 30, 1995 -You've used their publication manual, now
visit their web site. Yes the American
Psychological Association has launched
PsychNET, with lots of good stuff for nonAPA members …
http://www.jennyscybrary.com/1995/november.html
Blogs today
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Range from the simple to the
sophisticated
Few features to chalk full on addons and little wizards
Interesting and useful to mundane
and completely irrelevant
Blogging explosion
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2000-2003
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Tools that made it easy to publish
No need to know HTML
No need to know FTP
Add / edit content anywhere, anytime
Dozens of features – dynamic, quick
and easy to develop
Millions?? worldwide
Can you guess what South American
country is a hotbed for blogs?
In the limelight
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Lots of media hype
Google bought blogger
Tripod, the Web publishing unit of Terra
Lycos
AOL is supposed to provide tools
Dissecting a web log
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beSpacific.com
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Accurate, focused law and technology
news
www.bespacific.com
Blog entry
Other features
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Time stamp
Comments
Draft mode
Timed release
Blogging add-ons
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MyMediaList
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AudioBlogger & AudBlog
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set up a email subscribers option
Blogarithm
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phone and leave audio clips
Bloglet
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manage book, music lists
blogs that changed each day
Blogrolling
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Bookmarklet to add links
Pop open the hood
3. Post and publish
Feature rich blogs
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Powered by PHP, perl or some other
scripting language and back-end
database
Two examples:
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Movable Type
Pmachine
Pluses
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Timely
Get to the point
Quick to skim
“Human filter”
Contextualized
What’s “Hot”
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www.daypop.com
Minuses
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ROT
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Redundant
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Obsolete
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Links expire
Best before date!
Trivia
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All posting the same stuff
“my cat coughed up a fluff ball”
Misinformation
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Rigor of validating information (rumor) varies
greatly
Bias
Resource for emergent
information
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Source for “emergent information”
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Many times daily
Often before it hits the newsstands
e.g.
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Viruses and hacks – slashdot
Biz News – Jeremy Allaire’s
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Talks about the fact he is leaving Macromedia
Nothing official on Macromedia site where it
says he’s CTO
Searching blogs
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Google indexes many
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Rise of “Google bombs” – a brilliant gag by
Adam Mathes called his friend a “talentless
hack”
Directories at www.lights.com/weblogs
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Blogdex (MIT) http://blogdex.media.mit.edu
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Linkhype
Popdex
Ecosystem
Daypop
Waypath
Blogwise – geographic categorical index
Choosing a blogging solution
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Lots of options
Dive in and try a few for free:
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Blogger, Onclave,Web Crimson
Types of blogs
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Solo
Community blogs
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Slashdot – news for nerds
LISNews.com
Hosted locally
or remotely
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Hosted
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Antville
Blogger
LiveJournal
Onclave
Local Server
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PMachine
Movable Type
Grey Matter
BlogComp
http://www.urldir.com/bt/
Client solutions
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Clients
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FogCreek’s CityDesk, Windows
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http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/
Eastgate’s Tinderbox, Macintosh
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http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/
Just a few of the factors
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Types of blog
Features and functions
Server platform
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Unix or Windows or MAC
IT help
Scripting languages
Security and privacy
Blogging Software for Intranet
Applications. ONLINE, January 2003
10 ways to use blogs
1. New Stuff to Share
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Recommend internet sites & tools
Promote it!
2. Marketing
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Promote library events and programs
Let visitors subscribe via email
Distribute headlines (RSS)
My Pick: Announce movies,
link to trailers, reviews
Get interactive
3. Talk back
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Books you like
Let users post reviews and comments
10 ways …
4. Staff development
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Fact sheets on new electronic resources
Tips and tricks
5. Share knowledge - KM
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Best practices – “know-how”
Use for a committee, enable the
“comment feature”
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Presentation Blogging for Knowledge
Exchange
IT and budget crunch?
6. Automate Managing Links
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Track web site links under review for
adding to catalog or best sites
Tips:
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Enable the comment button.
Choose a blog that archives by “topic” and
use it for your links
10 ways …
7. Professional / personal development
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Reflective nature, adds focus
8. Résumé
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Professional blog
Write about your interests and what you find
interesting
Solve email overload
9. Project Tracking and Management
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Provides a record in one place for a team of
decisions, next steps
Points for discussion or comment
Be a leader
10. Community information
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Collect and syndicate local [city] news and
events or university or college happenings
Be everywhere.
Blogging and libraries
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Lots of opportunities for libraries
and librarians
Lightweight content management
solution
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Easy to publish
Inexpensive (free)
Multiple contributors
Lighten web maintenance workload
Library related blogs
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Gary Price – The ResourceShelf
Jenny Levine - Shifted Librarian
Jessamyn West - librarian.net
Stephen Cohen – Librarystuff.net
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Complete List of Library blogs
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www.libdex.com/weblogs/
For fun type in “librarian” in Google
Finding out more
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Weblogs Compendium
Articles:
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Darlene Fichter - Blogging Your Life
Away. ONLINE, May, 2001
Darlene Fichter. Blogging Software for
Intranet Applications. ONLINE, January
2003
Thank you!
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Darlene Fichter
[email protected]
University of Saskatchewan Library