It's probably far from a secret, but the University of Minnesota library offers everyone in the University community a weblog of their own. UThink has been around just over a year -- they celebrated the service's first birthday on April 12, 2005 -- and has an impressive level of use:

Just think what a powerful communication tool your library could offer your user community. Whether for book discussions, community organizations, "birds-of-a-feather" gatherings among patrons with similar interests.... The possibilities are amazing.

I found an exhaustive list of public, academic, special, and other libraries providing blogs and RSS feeds to their user communities. Blog Without a Library even offers RSS feeds by library type -- so you can keep track of the latest additions to the list. Fantastic stuff!

I think this is really neat. The Roselle, Illinois, Public Library is publishing a kids-only book review weblog: Blogger Book Club.

Kids in grades 4-6 can sign up to be authors. The Youth Services department has selected a set of books for review (mostly nominees for the 2004 Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Award). These young bloggers can then post their reviews of any of the books they have read. Registered bloggers can also comment on other blogger's reviews.

In addition to the rules for bloggers, the library also has a separate page of explanation for parents -- a clever move to assuage any doubts parents might have about their children becoming public writers.

The Highland Park Public Library is using a tool called Speakwire. Follow the link to Speakwire from their blog (Highland Park has the link near the bottom of the right navigation column -- "Want this blog to read to you? Click Here") and after a few seconds' pause, you'll start to hear the blog entries read to you. The voice is synthesized but utterly understandable.

Bridging the gap between blogs and podcasts, Speakwire opens an interesting set of possibilities to reach vision-impaired patrons with library news and announcements.

Another tool, called "Talkr," goes a bit further -- it will turn blog entries into podcasts that you can download to play on your MP3 player while you're offline. Talkr offers three podcasts for free; you can subscribe to their service to receive more.

[Via Shifted Librarian and Web4Lib.]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a legal guide for U.S. residents on issues related to publishing a weblog. The 9-part guide, Legal Guide for Bloggers, is formatted as a series of frequently asked questions:

This detailed resource answers many questions bloggers may have -- what is defamation and libel, compared to opinion; the benefits of obtaining a press pass; and an explanation of the legal difference between what you write and what a visitor to your site writes via blog comments or other such tools.

The Bloggers' FAQ is a very handy guide to the world of publishing that so many of us are now joining.

[Via Web4Lib.]

LibrarianInBlack reports:
Library Journal's new blog, LJ Tech Blog, has an RSS feed. Finally, LJ has dipped its little footies into the RSS pool. Hurrah!
LibrarianInBlack: LJ sidles up to RSS

The librarians at the University of Pennsylvania maintain a Library RSS Feed Generator. The main page of this site lists subject areas for which there are research guides (with the most recently updated on top). Each entry on the home page provides links to specific resources, a link to the RSS feed for that list, and a link to all the guides within a broader subject area.

For example, the History category has both an overall RSS feed for guides in history as well as individual feeds for guides to articles, historical image collections, and databases of print advertisements.

Even better, the librarian who curates each guide is listed by name, with an email address and last-updated date displayed on the web page.

Things You Can Do with RSS is a wiki for discussing just what the title says. While it's not written from a library perspective, it is nonetheless a great thought-starter and source for things to borrow.

The Rhode Island Office of Library and Information Services offers Rhode Island-wide library news and information via its Rhodarian blog. From their site:

According to the Oh!Libraries (Ohio Libraries) blog, similar services are offered by at least four other states' libraries: Idaho, Indiana, Utah, and Ohio.

The Edmonton Public Library's subject guides are an excellent example of how RSS feeds can be integrated into library subject guide pages. See, for example, the guides to Architecture and Books Similar to the Da Vinci Code.

Both of these subject guides offer a variety of static links to other web and library resources. They also have a section of "Blog Entries" -- comments and suggestions by EPL staff to other resources. According to Peter Schoenberg, the EPL's Virtual Services Librarian,

EPL naturally offers RSS Feeds for their subject guides along with book reviews by patrons (in fiction, non-fiction, kids, and teens).

[Via [Web4Lib.]

The Neef Law Library blog at Wayne State University is using Shockwave audio files to record blog content. A slightly different form of podcasting, but it works very nicely without the 'pod' or iTunes. It uses ClassCaster as the underlying technology.

I gather that the ultimate use of this will be to podcast courses, the Neef librarians are testing it with other content. And since it uses Shockwave, a fairly common browser plug-in, it's pretty universally accessible.

Correction: 4 November 2005:
Elmer at Content let me know, very nicely, that I didn't do my research very well!

Thanks for the correction.

Steve Lawson blogged Internet Librarian 2005 and highlighted a very clever use of the weblog. While many libraries use blogs and RSS for library news and announcements, the Virginia Commonwealth University's libraries set up a short-term weblog for Black History Month this past February. In the weblog, the librarians highlighted items in their collections, resources on the Internet, images from their special collections, and events around the country in observation of BHM.

Special-purpose, short-term blogs are a simple tool for drawing attention to events or topics of short-term interest; with a small investment of time and resources (in terms of staff time to set up and maintain the blog, as well as add content) and a bit of planning, a library could easily generate feeds for other campus or local organizations highlighting the 'good stuff' the library offers on a given topic or event.

Welcome to the out-of-the-box content management revolution, Meadville Public Library! While not the first library to use weblog software as the underpinnings for a library web site, MPL has done a very nice job designing a clean, easy-to-use, and attractive library web site using WordPress. The home page and library departments are dynamic, using the weblog as the source of the content -- library news and information -- and secondary pages (Ask a Librarian, policies, etc.) are static. But all managed by the weblog software.

I was particularly struck by the Children's Room, one of the library's departments, has a much more colorful and entertaining design than the home page, as befits the part of the library for youngsters. The blog content is links to children's' author's web pages -- a clever use of the blog, and something that will clearly draw young reader's attention more than announcements or library information ever would.

Since it's a blog, of course, community members can subscribe to the latest news from the main, children's, fiction, and "main floor" (new books) via their favorite aggregator.

In one of today's Library Stuff posts, Steve points to Tufts student Dan Bruno's personal blog, in which Dan comments on the breadth of resources available through the Tisch Library, the undergraduate research library here on my campus.

As a librarian, I find it gratifying when a customer takes the time to say thanks for the resources provided through my professional colleague's efforts. But what I found even more interesting was that several of my colleagues commented on Dan's post!

Which brings me to the point of this entry. No, I'm no commenting on the intelligence of library patrons. I'm thinking more along the lines of "competitive intelligence" or good old-fashioned "market research.". How many of us have set up a Bloglines or Technorati or whatever other RSS-delivered search for the name of our own institution? I hadn't, until today (http://technorati.com/search/%22Ginn+Library%22). Wouldn't it be a shame to miss out on feedback -- positive or negative -- because I wasn't looking for it in the right place?

ProQuest is now offering RSS feeds by subject for its PhD dissertation collection. There are feeds for about 30 subject areas in education, engineering, biological sciences, earth & environmental sciences, political sciences, sociology, and physics. While there are still some gaps in subject coverage, this is a great start. They also have separate set of feeds tailored to business school curricula.

More than just another cute neologism, Amazon's newly released plogs (which stands for personalized web log, as if we needed a new word for personally aggregated content...) is an interesting marketing and promotional tool. In a nutshell, an Amazon customer who has turned on the service sees weblog entries from authors of books that customer has purchased. Messages you've read disappear (you can recall them at the author's Amazon blog). And each entry in your plog has a permalink so you can share it with your friends (and potential Amazon customers).

I suspect a clever programmer could use existing RSS feeds from authors' blogs (for those authors who have blogs on the public Internet) and add recent entries to an author display from the catalog. Probably only best sellers and authors with good marketing teams behind them have their own blogs, but it could be an interesting start.

The University of Western Ontario's office of Communications and Public Affairs offers a directory of blogs published by members of the UWO community. Not only is the directory a good idea, but they also provide a tag cloud that covers the content in all these different blogs. To see the cloud, look at the top of their main weblog page.

The tag cloud shows a summary of all of the blogs under this umbrella. Some are personal, some are project-based, some are from academic departments -- they run the gamut. The blogs may be on a UWO server or they may be hosted elsewhere -- as long as the blogger has let UWO know they're part of that community, they're included. Very clever.

The tag cloud itself is generated through TagCloud.com. I'd be curious to know if anyone has developed an open source tag cloud generator -- something that would take a set of RSS feeds and generate clouds... I can see that being very handy for a number of libraries, or other institutions. If you know of one, let me know in the comments.

I never knew that anyone was publishing books via RSS in a serial format... But apparently, they are, and have been for some time. A brief history of this novel (excuse the pun) serialization technique can be found at Names@Work. (This site is a plug for post is about the book Pulse: The Coming of Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things, which is being published via RSS and email in serial format at this site.)

[28 October 2006: As noted by Antony in the comment below, I mischaracterized his site in my original post. I've edited the text to clear up my misconception.]

Amanda Etches-Johnson at Blog Without a Library started a Blogging Libraries Wiki. It's a compendium of library blogs (public-facing blogs by public, academic, special, and school libraries, public-facing blogs by library associations, and blogs for internal communications). If your library blog's not listed, add it!

Looking for a source of book reviews to put on your library site? Or perhaps just looking for a review of a recently published book? A source I just stumbled on, Reader's Club, has just that: more than 2000 book reviews written by librarians and library staff at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in North Carolina since 1998.

Reviews are categorized by genre. And, the reason this is germane here -- every genre has an RSS feed. That's more than 50 genre-based feeds available through the RSS Feeds Directory. Feeds are limited to books added in the past 45 days, but the complete list of reviews is searchable via the web site.

Whether this is a project to emulate within your own library, or great source of reviews to aid in collection development or to provide patrons, this is a great idea.

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.

Ever thought about opening up your patron feedback system to users through a weblog? The University of Chicago library has done just that with their Maroon Suggestions blog.

Patron suggestions are accepted through a library feedback form. The suggestions, and the library's response, are posted on the blog. This is a great adaptation of the suggestion boards that I've seen in libraries all over -- and makes the questions (and answers) available to patrons even when they're not at the library. There is even a detailed FAQ to provide information about the service.

The granddaddy of American libraries has become one with its multitudinous siblings descendants: the Library of Congress now has its very own weblog. The blog's author, Matt Raymond, writes that his blog's mission will "be in keeping with the spirit of the Library’s mission as a whole: 'to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations.'"

I noted with interest that the blog's author, Matt Raymond, is the library's Director of Communications and a journalist by education. Although I'd find professional and personal interest in a librarian blogger's perspective on the library, I'm impressed that the Library of Congress has decided to use blogs and RSS as a communications and marketing tool. Welcome to the biblioblogosphere!

The Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle School in La Quinta, California, is using RSS and podcasts to keep parents in touch with the day's activities. There's a podcast of the morning announcements. Some teachers are recording information about tests and how-to tips for students and parents. And other teachers are using RSS to let parents know about their child's homework assignments.

I wonder how many public school libraries could help -- or already are helping -- their school by providing this sort of infrastructure?

As noted in my previous post, I'm attending a conference in Columbus, Ohio. While getting my morning coffee, I noticed a photograph on the auditorium wall. This hundred-year-old photo struck me as a particularly apt visual metaphor for the blogosphere:

Image from The Ohio State University Archives.

Look carefully. Here we have photographers, the 'bloggers' of the early 20th century, documenting their surroundings. But what are they actually doing? They're taking pictures of each other. And someone (the metablogger?) is taking a picture of the lot of them. It's the photogosphere! Each photographer is creating something unique by building -- in a very literal sense -- on the work of other photographers. And isn't that, at least in large part, what we bloggers do?

There is a movement afoot to encourage and support "serious" blogging in science. Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting [BPR3] is a group of scientists who have made a step in this direction by releasing a set of icons that scientists are invited to include in their blog posts when "they're making a serious post about peer-reviewed research."

BPR3 is an initial effort to encourage scientists to identify their commentary on peer-reviewed research articles -- whether the article is online or in print -- with an icon. The next step, according to BPR3's web site, is "to use bpr3.org to aggregate all the posts discussing peer-reviewed research from across the disciplines." If this effort succeeds it could well open up new doors to scholarly debate and discussion.

Why does this matter? Well, as was first brought to my attention at the ASIS&T panel discussion on Opening Science to All: Implications of Blogs and Wikis for Social and Scholarly Scientific Communication, there is a great deal of communication, debate, and discussion of scientific research within the blogosphere. However, unlike letters to the editor in peer-reviewed journals, there is no standard method to capture, collect, or forum for evaluating the opinions of blogging scientists. To the extent that research -- and discussion of research -- moves into the public sphere, there is a great opportunity for the scientific community to add to and discuss research as it happens.

Meredith Farkas (Information Wants To Be Free) has an article summarizing her recent survey of the biblioblogosphere in the December 15 issue of Library Journal. In The Bloggers Among Us, she summarizes her findings about who is blogging (by age, librarians over the age 40 are the fastest-growing segment; by professional niche, public service librarians are the most populous segment), and what they blog about (libraries and services, sure, but also hobbies, personal lives -- and the intersections among these topics).

The article is a good read and might help librarians convince a skeptical management that not only are library and librarian blogs increasingly common, but they are often viewed (in academic circles, where such things matter more) as publications. As Meredith notes, "Blogging can be a great leveler, too. People are judged more by their ideas than their résumés, so anyone can make a name for him/herself. Also, blogging can build a bridge for those geographically isolated from other (or like-minded) librarians." I would add, blogging can also build a bridge from the library to the geographically isolated patron.