This is How To Library Blog

I found this beautiful library blog this morning, from Adelaide City Council:

Charlotte's Blog

It's gorgeous! It looks good, great colours and layouts, is chatty and informal yet informative, clearly tells you that it's part of Adelaide City Council without "badging" all over the place and going corporate, and draws you right to the library website all over the place, without leaving you feeling spammed or harrassed.

This is what I would love to do for us. Get rid of all the marketing rubbish that is imposed on us, keep it simple and attractive and yet draw your readers to the places that you want them to see.

I think a lot of Web2.0 technology has excellent applications for libraries. Twitter, Facebook, blogging, Flickr, you name it - we could be using all of these to create a presence in the online world, without being formal or contrived in any way. But I think one of the thing that holds us back is the fact that everything has to be "branded". It just makes it look false and boring. Marketing strategies are great for printed matter, formal information websites and the physical appearance of branches and venues, but when it comes to the online environment, formality just kills it.

I hope to see a lot more push to allow public organisations go in this direction, as ACC are showing it can be done and done really successfully.

My Favourite Nonsense Blogs

Looking for something fun to subscribe to once you've learned how to do the whole RSS feed thing? Well, I've got a few for you!

These are purely frivolous, silly bits of fun that I really enjoy each day, and I've got some examples here for you to go with them.

The first one is LOLCats or I Can Has Cheeseburger.

This picture is for Kerri B:




Then it's poochie counterpart I Has a Hotdog :



And then there is FAIL (a blog of when people get things terribly wrong!)



Cake Wrecks is fabulous fun too. It's subheading is "When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong."



That should give you all something to giggle over, and to bulk up your RSS feeds.

Two Hundred and Fifty Four!!

I just looked at my blog subscriptions in Bloglines, and I've subscribed to 254 blogs, and that number climbs every day.

Of course, well over 75% of those are library staff blogs. If you're registered in 23 Things with your blog, I'll have subscribed to you, or will soon. Just so you know you've got one reader out there, someone holding your hand so to speak! When I can, I will leave comments on your posts too.

People kind of look horrified at me when I say I read everyone's blogs, like that's all I must do all day. But using Bloglines (or any other RSS tool), I find I can usually spend less than an hour per day catching up on everyone's blogs. That's because of course, not everyone posts every day, so there's only a certain percentage of new material to look at, and also, when people post pictures or videos, they're really quick to peruse. I've got it all down to a bit of a fine art now - I've had to or I'd go bonkers. But tools like Bloglines, or Google Reader using the RSS feed technology has enabled that. It all kind of intertwines eventually.

I've absolutely loved reading my colleagues blogs. So many people tell me their blog is boring, or that they don't know what to say, but I've discovered so much about people. I've discovered that we're full of artists and musicians, folks who've travelled, people with adorable pets, fascinating hobbies, great memories, interesting tastes and often just new perspectives on things. It's been a really steep learning curve on just how diverse and full of knowledge and skill and talent we all are.

Plus it all helps me do what I do... which is help you, my colleagues. That's what I'm passionate about in this whole 23 Things - not the technology itself (though some of it is lots of fun and really cool), but in helping you guys all learn what is happening in our library services and the big wide world, and helping you all find ways that you can streamline your work so that the day is just that little bit smoother. I figure if you save 10 minutes per day, that's time to have a cuppa that you might not have had before, isn't it?

And after the cruddy day I had yesterday, today I had two people who said the NICEST things to me. It really makes a difference when someone just says "Thanks", it makes the times you feel a bit run off your feet or tired or whatever really worth it. So to those people who have made a point of thanking me or complimenting me... I thank YOU. It's the positive, upbeat folks who really give me the warm fuzzies while I'm working on this project.

Just Start Typing...

Ok, I have no idea what I am going to blog about tonight. I'm too lazy to get up and get my little ideas book that I keep in my bag, for jotting things down that I want to write about. But I did read somewhere that with any kind of writing, if you just sit down and start, then something will flow and you'll find yourself writing something interesting. At least I hope that's what will happen!

Oh, I know what I wanted to talk about. RSS feeds. I keep getting people saying to me "I don't know why I would bother, it's just more stuff to read." Or "I can't see how I would use it, I just go to whatever I want to read." What I'm thinking is that many folks just don't "get" the usefulness of RSS feeds at all. So I'm gonna tell you how I use them and why they work really well for me.

Think of all the magazines in your local newsagent. Say there's about 500. Now you're not going to be interested in every single magazine there right? Out of that 500, maybe 20 of them are something you'd like to read. So you buy a copy of each.

Now some magazines are weekly, some are monthly, some bimonthly, some seasonal, some totally sporadic. We know that from trying to catalogue the damn things. If you want to read them regularly, you need to keep going back to the newsagent to see if there is a new issue out. OR, you can subscribe and get them delivered to your door, whenever there is a new issue. No more multiple trips to the newsagent, it just shows up ready for you to read when there is a new one.

Think of RSS feeds as being subscriptions. Of course there are millions of things out there on the internet available for you to read. But you choose the ones that interest you. Now you can either go back to those websites every day, to see if there are any new posts (or issues) and waste all that time visiting sites with no new content, OR, you can subscribe via RSS feed, and have the new posts come to you. You get notification that there is new content, and then you can go and read it.

In my case, I'm finding it a Godsend when it comes to keeping up with all the 23 Things blogs. When I tell people that I read ALL of the staff blogs, they look horrified at me. But then I explain that I do so in usually less than an hour each day. That's because a) not everyone posts every day, and b) I subscribe to them all, so that I just go to bloglines (my subscription reader of choice) and it collates all the new posts for me. Easy peasy. And trust me... there are over 240 of you who are blogging so far, so that's a lot of trips to the newsagent so to speak!

But when I'm not 23 Thing-ing, there are other blogs I subscribe to. Friends of mine are blogging, and I love to see their photos and stuff, so I subscribe to those so I don't miss anything. There are a few fun things I subscribe to, like Cake Wrecks, Cute Overload, Ugly Overload, Shorpy, PostSecret and Photoshop Disasters. Then there are the informative things that I like to keep up with. Mythbusters website, some writers blogs, some library industry stuff and some women's health things I'm involved with.

The point is, what you subscribe to is what YOU find interesting and useful. Just like the magazines you read. We're not all going to be reading New Scientist, or Women's Weekly, or Patchwork and Quilting. It's all about collating what you read and getting it to you in an easy, timely fashion.

Subscribing!

I Heart BrisVegas

Just thought I'd share the new project I am working on. I'm writing a blog about Brisbane! It's nothing lofty or precious, just the thoughts of a Brisbanite talking about my favourite bits of Brisbane. If you want a look, go to:

http://iheartbrisvegas.blogspot.com/

No Comment!

Well, just enough time for a quick Friday afternoon blog before I disappear for the weekend.

Does anybody read my blog? I read all of your blogs you know. Well, everyone who has either put theirs on the "Links to Library Staff Blogs" page or have sent me their blog address privately. I subscribe to every single one, that way I get updates when you make new posts.

One thing that is good blogging practice, is to leave a comment when you read someone's blog. Not every time, but as often as you can. Because it means your blogger keeps on blogging, when they have some feedback. They know they have an audience, they get to learn the bits their readers enjoy, and they can hone their skills.

So please, do leave comments if you are reading this blog. Tell me things you like, things you are not so fussed on (be constructive in your criticism though!), make suggestions. It helps me know what works in the blogosphere!

Memory Meme

Well as promised, I thought I'd share a "meme" this afternoon, which is a little exercise or game designed to give inspiration for blogging.

So today's meme is:

Tell us about your first memory, and share a picture that relates to it. You can call the blog "Memory Meme"

My first memory is of shoes. Many of you won't be surprised at that! And here's a corresponding picture:



It was when I was about two years old. I can remember laying on the back seat of my Grandparents car, with my feet up on the window. Their car was white. I had on red patent leather Mary-Jane shoes, very much like the ones above, only a deeper red and they had gold buckles on them. I also had on little white socks, with frills around the ankle. I remember the sound of my shoes tapping on the glass, and the smell of Minties which my Grandma always fed us when we were in the car (in the vain hope that we wouldn't puke - never worked for me!) The car is stopped and I can see trees moving outside the window in the wind. It's nice, not hot, but not cold either. The shade from the trees is falling across the car really prettily.

So what's your first memory? Go blog NOW! Oh but leave me a comment first... nobody leaves me comments!

Feeding Frenzy

RSS feeds. I've been using them for ages at home, but I actually had no idea what RSS actually stood for until quite recently. Real Simple Syndication. Makes sense to me, it is real simple!

I'm using Bloglines for here at work because we have an older version of Internet Explorer on our staff PC's that doesn't have the RSS button enabled on it, but at home I use Internet Explorer to do it. I just click that button and it saves them in my favourites, and when there is a new post to read, it bolds them in the list in the favourites.

But Bloglines seems to work quite effectively for a work environment. I've been tinkering around creating folders so that I can have all of the blogs written by my dear colleagues together, other library interest blogs in a folder, a folder for museums and art galleries and photography sites, a folder for fun stuff and so on. It's a little cluttered looking but I seem to be able to navigate around it ok.

I'm looking forward to when we get the blog links in the 23 Things page up and running, so that everyone can see all of the blogs submitted there. We have had a few little technical glitches along the way, which has meant that they're not all visible yet, but as they are put up, they will go on the BCCLS blog so that everyone can see them until we get the glitches ironed out.

But back to the subject of RSS feeds, I can see a lot of applications for them for both internal use and externally to customers. Already customers can RSS feed things from eLibCat like the What's New lists, What's On, info about One Book Many Brisbanes, things like that. But we could also have blogs for libraries RSS feeding news about events and promotions out to our customers.

Internally, we could have our wiki up and running and if you are working on a certain task, like magazines or AV Incomplete, you could RSS to those pages, and receive notice of any updates on those topics, rather than all 400 of our staff getting an email about it when we don't need to know.

I don't really read straight up library blogs myself, as mostly they're about stuff going on at the actual libraries. But there are some interesting industry ones I like to read. Here's a bit of a list:

Michael Stephens' Tame the Web (lots of Web2.0 information and inspiration)
The Annoyed Librarian - a bit whingey and sour grapey... but raises some valid points.
Librarian Idol
Jenelle.net

There are lots of others, but I can't remember them off the top of my head, I'll share them later.

Some of My Favourite Blogs

Since blogging is our first topic, I thought I'd share some of my favourite blogs, ones that I read regularly and enjoy. You'll get something of a glimpse of the type of person that I am, simply by my choice in recreational blog reading!

For some reason though, blogger is a little overloaded today (could it be all we 23 Thingers from Brisbane slowing it down?) so I have to try and put the formatting in for the links myself. If it doesn't work I'll come back and fix it later. Until then, you can just highlight the link, right click and choose "copy" and then paste it into the address bar of your browser.

http://www.cuteoverload.com/ - Cute Overload. Hundreds of pictures of cute puppies, kittens, ducks, hamsters... all manner of adorable fuzzy and fluffy and feathery creatures.

http://uglyoverload.blogspot.com/ - Ugly Overload. If you can't handle the cuteness, go for the anti-cute and check out the worlds ugliest animals.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ - Cake Wrecks. Absolutely hideous cakes made by so-called professional bakers and cake decorators. Lordy me, the things people will do to cake!

http://www.shorpy.com/ - Shorpy.com The 100 Year Old Photo blog. Ok, not all of the photos are 100 years old, but they're fascinating no matter their age and they are mega high resolution so the detail is amazing. One of the best American Civil War collections around too, if you're interested in those things.

http://judgeabook.blogspot.com/ - Judge a Book By It's Cover. It's written by a librarian I believe, and she loves to take the mick out of those truly hideous cover designs that are out there.

www.postsecret.com - PostSecret. This started as an art project, people asked to send in a postcard with a secret on it to a man called Frank Warren in the US. It is now a huge worldwide phenomenon, and the postcards sent in (changed weekly - a good one to RSS feed to) will have you laughing, gasping and chills running up your spine. We have some of Franks books in our library collection.

http://ifoundyourcamera.blogspot.com/ - Found Cameras and Orphan Pictures. Lost your camera or memory card? Found a camera or memory card? This is the blog that re-unites photographs and cameras with their owners. It was all started by a postcard to PostSecret by the way.

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/ - Photoshop Disasters. See what not to do when using Photoshop to edit your digital snaps!!

I am sure there are lots more I really like but these are my favourites. I'll add more as I think of them.