Blah Blah Blogs

Why They Matter for You and Your Library



Jessamyn West
http://librarian.net/talks/ausblogs

02mar07




Hi, My Name is Jessamyn....




...and I have a blog. A few actually.

abada abada | librarian.net | livejournal | {vox}



Daily show on blogs, how I got librarian.net and jessamyn.com, how I saw things change


What blogs are, usually



an example post
  • blogs inform "most ideas worth sharing aren't finished"
  • "stuff & connectors"
  • other blog like words/pages: journal, "what's new" page, news/events
  • created with a CMS
  • live on the web
  • have some or all of these parts [see image]
Scoble says What made blogging better than Web sites? Five things. 1) Ease of publishing. 2) Discoverability. (Pings weblogs.com or technorati or another ping server). 3) Conversationality. (Trackbacks or as-they-happen referer logs, or now being part of Technorati and other blog search engines). 4) Linkability. (All posts should have permalinks). 5) Syndicatability. (All content should be available in RSS feeds).


What blogs are not, usually



{image source}
950,000 hits for "not a blog" on google
  • formal
  • static
  • newspapers
  • more than a good tool for doing something else


Who has blogs?




The function without the form: RSS



Syndication is what turns blogs into publishing
  • read a stripped down version of your favorite sites via the web or a free application
  • interfile postings from blogs on similar topics
  • where it comes from
  • why it's easy, why it's complicated
  • what it means
  • how it looks


More on RSS




Libraries with blogs?



a non-library example



Ask MetaFilter: questions asked, questions answered, unanswered



A peek at the dashboard



EDIT: blogger | vox | wordpress | booklist



woof



dogster? questions?



«  credits »

Jessamyn West is a librarian, community technology mentor, and the editor of the weblog librarian.net. She teaches email classes for seniors, builds tiny websites for tiny libraries and advocates for sensible technology use at all types of libraries.

IM her at iamthebestartist.

This presentation was created in HTML using CSS. There was no PowerPoint involved except as a nagging bad example. The layout and stylesheet are available to borrow via a share and share alike creative commons license. See source code for details.
slides version | printable version