Stream of Consciousness

Blogs are an important tool for Libraries.  The content of your blog can be syndicated with RSS and received in a news aggregator to broadcast your information across the world.  In addition to sending information, blogs enable two way communication with your patrons when you enable the comments feature.

Blogs can also be used internally.  An excellent example was given by Stephen Abram of SirisDynix, in a recent podcast.  He mentioned that the Library Director can have a blog for communicating with the staff.  By keeping the blog open for comments, you have what amounts to “a suggestion box on steroids” (quote is from his commentary).

Please add your own comments and experiences with blogs and their applicability within an academic library environment.

A wiki is a collection of information that is created and edited by a group of people.  One of the most well-known wikis is Wikipedia.  The concept is that many people can share their knowledge, and we’ll all benefit from it together.

Some of the issues with this approach include matters of perspective and of veracity.  Not everyone will agree on the content of each entry, and how do you know that it’s all true?

Meanwhile, an internal wiki for your library staff is a great way to capture corporate knowledge, especially among reference librarians as they move on in their careers or retire.

Please comment on your experiences with wiki and the opportunities and challenges you see for the university library in using this technology.

In newspapers across the country we’re used to seeing “syndicated” columns (like Dear Abby or cartoons) where the same information is published in a lot of places all on the same day.

Now “syndication” has gone online, with RSS.  RSS makes it possible for new information on your webpage to be “syndicated” or carried onto other peoples’ web pages.  This means that your breaking news and announcements can be broadcast all over the place.

How do you ‘receive’ these broadcasts?  Usually in an “aggregator” - a software program that collects and displays the headlines for you.  Popular aggregators include bloglines and rssowl.  With an aggregator it’s possible to scan the new headlines from many sources in a very short period of time.

Please comment on your experiences with RSS and/or aggregators and with your ideas on how this technology can benefit the university library.

One of the technologies mentioned in Mr. Abrams podcast was social bookmarking.  Social bookmarking is a way to save, share, and select subject headings for (”tag”) your bookmarks in an online location. 

There are several social bookmarking websites, one of the most well known is “del.icio.us” (http://del.icio.us).  At this site there are helpful tools/icons you can download to the comptuer you’re working on that will enable you to quickly create your online bookmarks, which will then be available to you at any computer or device with internet access - not just on your desktop terminal.

When you create your bookmarks you can also ‘tag’ or describe them (subject classification like Library of Congress Subject Headings).  Del.icio.us gives you examples of popular tags for the site you’re viewing, but you’re still free to create your own and you can have as many or as few as you wish.

Please comment on your experiences with social bookmarking and the features and benefits of this technology.

Stephen Abram, MLS and Vice President of Innovations for SirsiDynix, gave an interesting podcast “25 Technologies in 50 Minutes” as part of the lecture series for the SirsiDynix Institute (http://www.sirsidynixinstitute.com).

He talked about new technologies that will be important to libraries, and why and how they can be used for our benefit.  I’ll begin posts on specific technologies to allow for more focused discussion on some of them and how they can be used in libraries (in particular, private non-profit academic libraries like the one I work in).

What are your favorite library podcasts?

I started blogging at work for a project and now I’m hooked.  My work blog is a demo thing, so is lacking an audience and comments.  I hope that won’t be the case here. 

I couldn’t settle on just one topic, hence the title ’stream of consciousness’.

*Edited to add that I’ll start this blog by copying over most of my work from the ‘demo’ blog - hate to have all that fun languish as a cobweb. 

**New edit - I’m so very glad I copied over most of my posts here because our little ‘ol test server died and I would have lost all that work!