UK Public Library Blogs

I've come across a couple of blogs, finally, for UK public libraries! Both describe themselves as 'semi-official' and have a mix of library news, reviews and general information. Paige Turner has been writing on behalf of Swansea Public Libraries since December 2006 and writes short interesting posts on all sorts of topics. She also publishes pictures of new libraries in Swansea and some more personal posts about the library world in general. I'm not sure what the intended readership of the blog is as it feels much more like a personal blog than an institutional one but I certainly enjoy reading it! Sutlib Reader is a very new blog started this month and presenting itself as "The (semi) official blog of Sutton Libraries". Only 4 posts so far but I like the idea and according to the author it has the support of the Head of Libraries so I look forward to seeing how it develops. Congrats to the first UK public library blogs I have found!

RSS, Blogs and Wikis with Karen Blakeman

Last night I attended a thought provoking CILIP event at Basingstoke Library - RSS, Blogs and Wikis by Karen Blakeman. Organised by my local sub-branch this was a very popular event - interesting as I had seen very little publicity and had wondered if we would be the only ones there! At the beginning Karen did a quick hands-up assessment to see how many folk had heard of the different 2.0 technologies. About half of the room had heard of RSS feeds although not everyone was sure what they were for; blogs were only used by a small number of people and wiki knowledge was mostly limited to the odd search on Wikipedia. Probably quite indicative of an average group of UK library staff but it was good to see how many people had given up their evening to come along and find out more. I've been reading Karen's blog for a couple of months now and had come across most of her recommendations before but it was really interesting to hear which services she recommended for beginners and how to get experimenting. Today Karen posted her presentation and recommended links on the RBA website and I'd recommend having a look as it is a useful introduction to the subject.

I'm looking forward to getting together with my colleagues who also attended and seeing how we can start to use this technology to improve our library service. Maybe an internal wiki for library procedures and ideas or RSS feeds for readers to get news of new books/library events etc. There is always the standard difficulty of permission, getting the powers that be to agree (or even the IT department!) will probably be the biggest battle but I'm hoping if we start small and demonstrate something that works and makes a difference we can move onto bigger things. Watch this space...

Biblioblogosphere Tagcloud

Via Blog Central for Australian Libraries Librariesinteract.info I've just discovered another cool widget. Dave Pattern's hot topics from library/librarian weblogs is a way of keeping an eye on new topics that have appeared in the biblioblogosphere during the last 48 hours. The list of blogs he uses to generate this is huge and covers a good range of UK and US blogs so it should be interesting to see what turns up. It's over on the right there, above my Meebo me box...

Life as I Know It's Library 2.0 Roundup

Jennifer Macauley in her excellent blog Life as I Know It has created a comprehensive list of sites and citations on library 2.0. Library 2.0 Roundup was originally posted in October 2006 and it is a pretty huge list to work through. Thanks to Jennifer I've discovered a wealth of posts and ideas that I hadn't previously come across and I'm only about a third of a way through. I imagine it would also be a really useful resource for anyone wanting to chart the development of the library 2.0 idea from autumn 2005 to the present. Just don't blame me if you stay up all night reading the posts, I'm finding it rather addictive reading...

Public Library Blogs part 3

Back in November last year I considered the complete absence of public library blogs from the UK . This afternoon I had a good hunt through the list on the The Blogging Libraries Wiki to see if any UK public library blogs were listed. After a number of false hopes caused by English sounding place names such as Rye, Cambridge and Cumberland I failed to find any based in the UK. I did come close with an interesting blog from Galway Public Libraries in Ireland. The archive goes back almost a year and they seem to post pretty regularly on library news, books and events. They describe themselves as the first Irish Public Library Blog and I think they're a good example for other public libraries to follow demonstrating a passion for books, writing and libraries.

Another blog that I came across is pretty far from being a UK library blog as it comes from Singapore! High Browse Online is an initiative from the National Library Board of Singapore "Helping you make informed reading decisions". It is an online version of their printed booklist with a greater focus on reviews and discussion and I've really enjoyed reading the last few posts. Great example of a library blog which set a clear aim and has stuck to it with a good level of participation and useful links to library services such as the catalogue and enquire services.

Still haven't found any UK public library blogs though...

Sunday Review

This week I have been reading and pondering...

Robots in the stack at Chicago State University
George Needham's thoughts on Why Does Library Management Suck
Comments on AADL's fascinating new Catalog Seach Cloud
Library Garden's interview with Richard Sweeney of NJIT about his research on The Millennial Generation and Libraries
David Lee King's excellent articles on Inviting Participation in Web 2.0
Predictions for 2007 from: Stephen Abram
John Battelle
Michael Stephen's review of blog posts of 2006 What a Year! 2006 in Posts, Presentations, Permutations and ...PARTICIPATION!
Meredith Farkas' confession on Information Wants to Be Free about why she doesn't use her local public library It's not just the OPACs that suck prompted similar confessions and thoughts from Nicole on What I Learned Today Physical Spaces Suck Too and Life as I Know It The OPAC Isn't The Only Problem
Posts about a public library in the US closing during the afternoon due to problems with teenagers from
Tame the Web
Library Crunch
Provocative thoughts on collection development in libraries from OCLC's Lorcan Dempsey Justifying your place on the shelves and Tim Coates Library Books in American Public Libraries

And watching
Arlington Heights Public Library's Weekly Video Blog
and
Miss Potter at the Harbour Lights Picturehouse . Highly recommended!

Posts I Have Saved part 1

My list of posts I have saved to read later or the magic posts that made me hit the 'Keep New' button...

Phil Bradley's post on 11 Things to Do in Tescos One of those posts that you just 'have' to forward to your friends on a Friday afternoon :o)

Phil Bradley's Surrealism Stalks the Library This should be required reading for senior management when they try to sell RFID as the ultimate way to "free up" library staff!

Random and cold medicine-induced thoughts on screencasting From Information Wants to Be Free - unfortunately I am one of those mentioned folk who hadn't heard of screencasting but having followed some of the links I'm really interested in seeing whether we could use this for staff training.

Phil Bradley's post on Internet Detective" Promise this is my last Phil Bradley link for today! Links through to the Internet Detective site which is not just a great example of teaching HE students how to use the web for research but also an interesting reminder of just how confusing the web can be to anyone trying to sort fact from fiction!

Library Delivery 2.0: Delivering Library Materials in the Age of NetFlix A TechEssence.Info post on library delivery in the web 2.0 era. Particularly interesting for me as I work in interlibrary loans and am looking for ideas about end user delivery. Always good to think about what the Amazons of the world have to teach us in libraries.

Meme attack! Sorted science fiction Velcro City Tourist Board is one of my favourite blogs at the moment, although some of the Sci-Fi is beyond me it did prompt me to read and thoroughly enjoy Ursula LeGuin's Dispossessed recently. Now this post makes me want to go and make strange towers from the books at work tomorrow!

Book Review: ‘The Dispossessed’ by Ursula le Guin And here's the book review by Velcro City Tourist Board.

Ok this is taking some time so part 2 may have to follow tomorrow (I keep getting distracted by clicking on links!) - to be continued...

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???

Ann Arbor District Library

Before coming across any UK library blogs I thought I should mention the one US library that has been all over the Library 2.0 news. John Blyberg of Ann Arbor District Library recently won a the Talis competition Mashing Up The Library for his Go-Go-Google-Gadget. Ann Arbor's homepage consists of a library blog which simply and effectively gives library news, event information and other interesting library posts. The Shifted Librarian referred to this as the Perfect Library Blog Example last year and it will be interesting to see how it compares to any UK blogs I find.

Public Library Blogs

It seems that the US public libraries are way ahead of the UK when it comes to Web 2.0 activities. Whenever I see an exciting reference to a public library blog or wiki or a library using an RSS feed to publicise their books or events it is always based in the US! Is this just the location of the blogs and news sites that I use or a reflection of UK libraries' attitudes to new technologies? With this in mind I'm on a blog hunt - are there any libraries in the UK using 2.0 technology??? I'm off to find out...