CILIP Promoting Blogging

A little while ago I had an email from CILIP asking if I minded having this blog aggregated to a CILIP blog called CILIP members blog landscape. At the moment there are 15 blogs aggregated here, all by members of CILIP. Although it's only a small percentage of the UK library bloggers it is an interesting overview of what is being blogged about. Unlike the forums on the CILIP communities site it doesn't require you to login with a CILIP membership to view the blog so it's open to everyone.

In addition to the CILIP blog, this month's edition of Update (CILIP's monthly journal) contains what I hope will be a regular column LIS Blogwatch. Matthew Mazey scans over 100 blogs for this column and it's a great round up of some of the hot topics although publishing deadlines mean that the 'October' issue has hot blog topics from August so most bloggers will have come across them already. I think it's more a way of bringing the conversations from the blogosphere into the consciousness of people who haven't really got into the idea of reading blogs. Hopefully some people will follow the links and find their way into the online conversation. I'm glad to see this column is available online and I hope it will continue to be published online in future.

And finally... check out another Update article online - Dave Pattern's 'Are you Happy with your Opac?' reports on his survey of OPAC satisfaction and the University of Huddersfield's approach to upgrading the catalogue. A must read for anyone who every considered that their OPAC might suck...

Public Library Blogs - 1st search

Not much luck so far! A Google search returned a few academic libraries and specialist libraries but no public library blogs in the UK. Plenty of US public libraries came up on Google and on a Bloglines blog search but nothing closer to home. A couple of articles referred to Gateshead Public Libraries but looking at their website it looks like the blog has gone - certainly no sign of an RSS feed or an ability to comment on news items listed.

I did find an online article by Ian Winship in Update's May 2004 edition which looks at using weblogs in libraries - Weblogs and RSS in information work but this again only refers to the Gateshead project.

Are there really no UK public library blogs out there???

Phil Bradley's Website

Now I finally have a broadband connection up and running at home I can try out all those sites that didn't really look work related at work! First port of call when trying to figure out blogs, wikis and anything other web jargon has always got to be Phil Bradley's Website. Especially useful are all the articles in the "I want to..." section and the huge amount of information on different search engines - all tried and tested. Phil Bradley also writes an excellent column every month in CILIP's Update - a monthly journal for library and information professionals in the UK. Thank you Phil!!