Imagine my surprise today when I found another WORDPRESS blog with the same name as mine!!

http://librarianwoes.wordpress.com/

Now I’m not saying it’s not a good blog, but it is night and day from my happy, uplifting, blog! Also, mine has defintely been online longer.

Does this mean we have to have a duel to settle this? Come on Librarianwoes, state your intentions!

Rhonda

Here’s another site that is a “blog as website”. In fact, this is a company called ContentRobot that is offering to design your blog powered website for you and their own site is, in fact, a blog. They claim to be WordPress experts.

Here’s a quote from their site about the benefits of a blog powered website:

http://www.contentrobot.com/Blog-Powered-Web-Sites

What the Blog Platforms Adds

• A blog, of course, provides reader interactivity and updated content.
• Authorized users can add, edit, and delete content on EVERY page with minimal HTML knowledge.
• Enhanced web site elements, which often can be cost-prohibitive, are easily and inexpensively added, including:
  • Blog template designs can be easily modified and branded with CSS knowledge.
  • Developing an Internet-based taxonomy, which categorizes site information, helps readers and administrators to manage and find information.
  • Contact forms allow visitors to easily reach you.
  • Adding web site forums and/or comments allow readers to get involved in the site.
  • Allows multiple-user access, including defining different roles and touch points for each (including banning particular users as well).
  • E-commerce can be added just as with any web site.
  • It’s simple to add imagery and visual interest to every page with minor HTML knowledge.
  • Adding advertising and banners to pages is fairly straightforward and easily managed.
  • Pushing content to readers and subscribers via RSS feeds keeps them informed without them having to visit the site or get their inboxes filled with unwanted emails.
  • Adding news aggregators allows you to include industry news to your site, keeping it fresh and interesting.
  • Easy to establish and track web site statistics and success metrics.
  • Can add fun elements like contests and forms without design constraints.
  • Multiple writers can be responsible for developing and managing content.

They include links to other blog powered websites; however, they are all commercial sites and I had varying levels of success connecting to them. So I don’t have any other examples to point to. I’ll keep looking! Still, I think the points above are fairly compelling and I think using WordPress.com would be an easy and effective way for small libraries or other libraries with limited IT resources to put up an interactive library2.0 rich website.

Ok, so everyone else already knows about WPopac (now called Scriblio) but me. Nevertheless, I am excited to have discovered it today. Here is what ALA Techsource says by way of explanation. Casey, you the man!

ALA TechSource | Unsucking the OPAC: One Man’s Noble Efforts
“WPOPAC doesn’t attempt to replace the integrated library system (ILS)—just complement and extend it. The WPOPAC goes over the ILS the way a tea cozy might slide over an ugly teapot. I’ve said for some time that a good interface to our richly structured bibliographic data is the “missing module” of the ILS; the front-end user interface ILS vendors provide—what we think of as the OPAC—doesn’t feel or function like a positive user experience. WPOPAC provides that missing module so that a search in WPOPAC feels, and is, satisfying.

Some of the satisfaction from using WPOPAC comes from the capabilities of WordPress, such as comments, feeds, and trackbacks. But the real significance of WPOPAC isn’t the functionality it displays. It’s that WPOPAC leverages “access to a [huge] community of knowledge, programmers, and designers outside libraries.” As Casey puts it, “it already has more users, designers, developers, and administrators than all the ILS vendors combined.”

I have started a de.licio.us page where I’m bookmarking more innovative library sites that are using blogs (or mashups of blogs and other software applications) as the platform for their websites. I’ll bookmark them at http://del.icio.us/RhondaGonzales/blogsaswebsites if you want to check back for more examples.

One of the most impressive is Plymouth State University’s Lamson Library. Take a look at their beta site: http://lamson.wpopac.com/library. If you do a catalog search, the results are posted to the site like blog postings complete with comments. You can also browse the catalog or the whole site by drilling down through categories, etc. Here’s a screenshot.

This site is built on a product called Scriblio (formerly WPopac) which describes itself as “Scriblio (formerly WPopac) is an award winning, free, open source CMS and OPAC with faceted searching and browsing features based on WordPress“. Scriblio is not available for general use at the present, but learn more about it at About Scriblio.

More to come.

Here’s another example of a library that has made its blog its website. The only thing I don’t like about this site is that you really have to hunt to find the links to the card catalog. Then when you click on the link, you leave the blog. They might consider making the link to the catalog and databases each their own page so that they would have a prominent tab across the top. Then have the link open in a new window. My two cents. However, I am impressed with the rest of the site!

Stillwater Free Library » Welcome Home!

For those of you that attended Brian Rosenblum’s presentation on Libraries as Publishers at last week’s CALC Summit, you might be interested to know that your colleagues in Europe got to enjoy his presentation as well!

Patrick Danowski, a librarian from Berlin, posted a comment to his blog, Bibliothek 2.0 und mehr (Library 2.0 and more) earlier this week about a Library 2.0 conference he had attended in the Czech Replublic. In it, he blogged on Brian’s presentation. Congratulations Brian!

What a small world!

CASLIN: Libraries as publishers « Bibliothek 2.0 und mehr …
CASLIN: Libraries as publishers
Abgelegt unter: CASLIN2007, Open Access — patrickd @ 10:32

Der erste Vortragende ist Brian Rosenblum von der University of Kansas. Der Hauptfokus des Vortrags liegt auf “Electronic Publishing Services”. Er starte mit der Motivation wieso Bibliotheken Verlage werden sollen:

Incidentally, I ran across PatrickD’s blog at Library20.ning.com. If you haven’t visited this site, you definitely should. It’s like MySpace for academic librarians. Very nice venue for communicating and networking with other librarians around the world who share your interests!

In the last two months I have taught two workshops on blogging for faculty. I’ve tried to make the argument that using RSS feeds and blogs to keep up with developments, news, and trends in their disciplines will save them time. I’ve been met with some skepticism but I do believe that once faculty get accustomed to using an RSS reader, they will find it convenient. However Laura Cohen, on her blog Library 2.0 (excerpt below), points to how RSS feeds as well as wikis, listservs, and more may be contributing to a world in which the growing number of different venues for accessing important information in one’s field may make it too difficult for faculty to keep up. On the whole, though, I think that new methods of scholarly communication have and will continue to encourage collaboration amongst colleagues and will help support the growth of highly specialized sub-disciplines.

Library 2.0: An Academic’s Perspective: I’ve Got the Bandwagon Blues
Let’s consider the options for keeping up with our profession. I’m beginning to see a rapidly-accelerating fragmentation in our professional scene. I’m not just talking about RSS feeds – and there are inklings of a backlash out there as colleagues talk of deleting feeds from their readers. There are so many places we need to go to get the full picture, to become fully informed, to fully participate.

Hi Everyone,

I’ve broken the cardinal rule of blogging, I know! Post frequently. But the truth is, for the last several weeks, I simply haven’t felt like saying anything. It’s been a tough time for all of us at our library lately. One of our staff members experienced a personal loss and it has been very devastating for all of us also. In addition, it’s the end of the semester and everything is due. You know what I’m talking about. In any case, I finally am motivated to post.

And what motivates me you ask? Why, doubling my space on pbwiki, that’s what. Did you know that educational wikis on pbwiki.com are ad free? Check it out. By posting about this on my blog, pbwiki says they will double our storage space. I’ll let you know what happens.

We’re getting closer to the date of the Colorado Academic Library Consortium Summit on May 31. If you haven’t signed up, hurry and reserve your seat. We have some awesome keynote speakers including Joan Lippincott and Carie Windham. http://www.clicweb.org/calc2007/

See you soon, Rhonda

On Friday, I and our intern Karyn Lynn, will be present a workshop for faculty and staff at our institution on blogging. Below is the announcement. See you there!

Have you wondered what all the buzz is about? Why bother with blogs? Academics are turning to blogging as a time-saving method for keeping current with issues and developments in their fields. This workshop will introduce the history and mechanics of blogging, teach how to locate blogs relevant to your discipline, how to subscribe to blogs using RSS feeds and blog aggregators, and how to create your own blog. No experience necessary.

The Joys of Blogging: Confessions of a Former Blog Skeptic
Friday March 2 10:00-11:00 ITC (Library 3rd Floor)
Register at http://library.colostate-pueblo.edu/bi/workshops.asp.

Rhonda

In this post on ACRLog, StevenB, discusses how new technology is resulting in loss of serendipity for our patrons. He goes on to suggest some ways in which serendipity might be built into library catalog searching. In my opinion, some of his suggestions are similar to features already being used by Amazon.com. Its links to titles also purchased by people who have purchased the book I’m buying has led me in lots of interesting directions in the past.

In addition to that, I want to chime in and say that it’s been my experience that my blog aggregator is a great serendipity facilitator. Almost every day, as I click on someone’s blog, I’m led to another blog of interest. In fact, for me, that’s one of the main attractions of blogging. It’s a habit forming serendipitous experience! Thanks for the thoughts Steven.

Serendipity And The Digital Library
As our academic libraries grow increasingly digital we will be removing opportunities for old-style serendipity. Now is a good time to start thinking about ways in which we can inject the value of serendipitous discovery into our research resources.