Monday, February 3, 2003

more helpful blogging resources & ideas Blogging and Libraries. Is It Time To Get Blogging? "A blog allows you to edit a web page without worrying about programming and design issues. People inexperienced in web development can use blogging software to create, update, and maintain web pages. Also, multiple users can post stories to a blog, at any time, from anywhere. At their most elemental, blogs represent a new way to add content to a web site. The blogging tools are flexible enough to allow large parts of any web site to be maintained via the blog interface. Most blogging software is now as easy to use as a word processor, with the programming and HTML formatting done for you. Updating a web page can be as easy as writing a quick letter, allowing a standard web page to become a personal web publishing wizard. The standard web form widgets enable the blogger to control text size and fonts and even facilitate hyperlinks by simply highlighting words and clicking a button.... Adding a blog to your library's web site can add currency and freshness. It can also encourage patrons to return. At its best, a blog can transform your site into a dynamic learning community where everyone shares knowledge." [Library Journal, via Resourceshelf] A great introduction to the topic by Blake Carver, the man behind the curtain over at LISNews. I make some of these same points in my own presentations about blogging. There's the big debate in the blogging community - is it the format,  the author's voice, or the software running the site that makes it a blog? I'm realizing that it's d) all of the above, with a built-in innovation engine that never seems to stop. If a library adds a blog to its site today, it gets all of the benefits of blogging that Blake mentions, plus (potentially): An RSS feed that is generated automatically; Easy posting tools from within news aggregators (either through a built-in aggregator like Radio's, NewIsFree's premium service, or NewzCrawler); The ability to track, post, and follow blog conversations about books the library may own; Trackback, Comeback, and other coming-soon-backs I can't even imagine. There's all this stuff out there that comes built-in (or plugged-in) to blogging software these days. Then throw in ancillary services like Friend of a Friend, GeoURL, and the like, and it starts to get interesting how a library could interact with its patrons. A blog would immediately give most public libraries a more dynamic web site without a major investment in software or programming knowledge while distributing the workload of maintaining the site's currency. How often have we been able to say that?! [The Shifted Librarian] 10:51:48 PM     opera 7 - so cool that it almost makes me forget that I'm on a Windows machine Opera fans I've always loved Opera, the browser touted as "the fastest on earth." I can't confirm that claim but I know it's always been fast and super configurable. There's a new version out, it's even faster, and I just upgraded. I like it. But: One always upgrades at one's peril. Here's the catch: I used to keep a personal ordering of my bookmarks. Opera let me pick any order I wanted in the hotlist window, then that order would show up in the Bookmarks menu. But now, when I reorder the hotlist window, the Bookmarks menu is staying put, in dumb alphabetical order. Bug? Feature? Any other Opera users out there know what to do about this? [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] 10:49:29 PM     can powerpoint slides get in the way of communicating to an audience? Kill PowerPoint. After having relocated my teaching to the Vienna State College of Education in recent years, it now seems as if I'm back teaching at Vienna University next semester. As part of an introduction to methods course, I'll be teaching a class on presentation techniques tentatively titled "PowerPoint, Websites, Weblogs -- And Then What?" Part of my aim is to actively discourage students from using PowerPoint -- an issue recently brought up by John Naughton in his Observer column (see also his weblog), where he says, Under the guise of empowering people to tackle the difficult act of public speaking, PowerPoint reduces it to the rhetorical equivalent of painting by numbers - not to mention reading out words and phrases which their audiences can perfectly well read for themselves. After all, "presentation skills" is not about knowing how to operate a piece of software. It's about compiling and arranging information, and then communicating it in such a way that people not only listen, but understand and remember. And yes, I will be talking about weblogs, too. After all, the title says so. [The Aardvark Speaks] 10:41:51 PM     hilarious windows spoof I Needed a Good Laugh this Morning!. Windows RG (Really Good edition) - make sure you click on everything! (Requires Flash.) [The Shifted Librarian] 10:40:06 PM

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