Librarian Way

Just noticed that Bloglines, the web-based news aggregator, makes recommendations about other weblogs of interest, which are based on a person’s current subscriptions. Their recommendations are on target for me. I learned here that D-Lib Magazine and Ariadne Magazine have RSS feeds.

Max at TechnoBiblio asks, “Library Blogs: Useful or Useless?” and calls attention to the Escondido Public Library’s Latest News weblog as an example.

In SJSU SLIS Library 204, Information Organizations and Management, we had discussions about how to increase community awareness. One idea was having a Web site and I believe most agreed that doing something online is a requirement for public libraries. In my opinion, dynamic weblogs, combined with a more static Web site are the best combination. However, weblogs alone are highly desirable if there is insufficient in-house technical expertise or time to create a full Web presence right away. Weblogs are fairly easy to set up and a library can always hire someone for forty dollars or so to set it up for them if they are uncomfortable about trying it. Once it is set up, it is just like typing in a text editor—a little HTML helps, but it isn’t necessary.

Libdex.com keeps a growing list of Library Weblogs, where you can find more fine examples.

On January 7, I mentioned that I discovered an RSS feed for Librarians’ Index to the Internet. Karen Schneider, director of LII, posted that it was not quite ready. Today, on the Web4Lib e-list, she posted that it is now ready, and that they have also prepared a tutorial on using RSS to view the weekly Thursday postings.

Update: LII reorganized. The new link to RSS information is at: Understanding RSS