The University of Michigan libraries are publishing a number of weblogs -- ranging from library news to "Have you read...?" from the Shapiro undergraduate library.

Even more interesting than the library blogs is the underpinnings of the blogging environment. MBlog is managed by the University Library and the Bentley Historical Library, the University's archives. When a member of the UM community creates a blog, he or she has the opportunity to request that the weblog be considered for long-term preservation and access through the Bentley Library's collection.

This is a great step. The archives is responsible for documenting the formal and informal life of the university. Providing a way for community members to make their blogs available for long-term archiving is a boon to future scholars. And by getting the OK from bloggers up front, the University of Michigan is ensuring that they have permission to keep and republish the blogs they archive. This attention to copyright is critical to the long-term preservation of this important facet of intellectual life on campus.

Update 6/26/07 -- Why didn't somebody tell me I fat-fingered "University" in the title and had it as "Univeristy"? Fixed.

Paul Pival notes a survey of Blogs in Academic Libraries being conducted by Shelly Drum. I look forward to seeing the results of the survey when it's complete.

If your library runs an outward-facing blog, take a few minutes (and that's all it took me) to fill out the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=773202839763. If you aren't running a public-facing library blog and want to see the responses to date, simply click "Exit this survey" from the first page, without entering any data.

Page2RSS is a tool that lets you know, via RSS, when a specific web page has been updated. Give it a web page URL and it will give you an RSS feed to put in your browser or aggregator. Whenever the web page is updated, you'll know.

In addition to being a good way to track changes in infrequently-updated web pages, this is also a low-overhead tool for allowing your patrons to keep up with new stuff on your library's web site. Even if you don't have time or interest in setting up an RSS feed for your library news page, by providing a link on that page to the Page2RSS updates feed, you can allow your patrons to monitor your site.

I can't find any documentation on the Page2RSS site to indicated how frequently the application checks your web page; this is probably not the tool to use when you absolutely must know if a page changes instant it happens, but for most normal purposes, it's a useful utility.

Update 6 Feb 2007: As Konstantin from Page2RSS notes in a comment (below), Page2RSS checks sites every 2-4 hours.