Volume 4 - Issue 1
In This Issue: |
 Tech TimeHave You Read Any Good Blogs Lately?So, what are these blogs that are appearing on the Web? How are they different from Web Pages, listservs, and email? How do you find out about blogs in your areas of interest? What is the best way to stay current with new postings on each of the blogs you monitor? A Weblog (or blog) is a Web site that is structured like an online journal. Postings are organized by date, with the most recent appearing first. Many blogs are interactive…allowing readers to add comments to individual postings. It is usually possible to review archived postings by date. Some blogs also allow readers to browse postings by author or subject, and search postings. The activity of updating a blog is known as blogging, and a person who updates a blog is known as a blogger. One of the big advantages of a blog is that content is added to the site without using HTML. This means that bloggers just need a Web connection to add new content. So hopefully, new content is added on a regular basis. Finding Blogs in your Areas of InterestDirectoriesA good place to start is the Google Directory listing for blogs: http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/ As you can see, there are thousands of blogs listed. However, many are not updated on a regular basis. A directory of library Weblogs can be found at: http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html Some blogs that may be of particular interest to health science librarians include: Hospital Library Advocacyhttp://hosplib.blogspot.com/ Administered by Jeannie Gluck, Director of the Medical Library at Eastern Connecticut Health Network. The blog brings together "resources related to hospital library advocacy: standards and their promotion, making the business case for library services, promotion of library within the hospital and to outside organizations, etc." The site will help you answer the question when your administration asks, "Why do we need a health science library in the hospital?" Bringing Health Information to the Community http://medstat.med.utah.edu/blogs/BHIC/ Community Health Information Blog by Siobhan Champ-Blackwell, Community Outreach Liaison from the Mid-Continent Region of NNLM. Open Access News http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html This site includes information on the latest news and background information related to open access issues. Topics include putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature on the internet, and making it available free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Library Blogs Below are some of the more popular library related blogs: http://theshiftedlibrarian.com http://librarystuff.net http://www.resourceshelf.com http://librarian.net http://www.lisnews.com http://www.lisfeeds.com Stay Current with RSSSo now you identified several blogs with interesting content. How do remain current? Do you have to go to each site and check to see if there is new information?Of course not! RSS to the rescue! Many blogs support RSS (RDF Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary). With RSS, a user subscribes to the blog's RSS feed and is notified when new content is added to the site. Content is quickly viewed by clicking on a hyperlink. It's easy to take advantage of this capability:
Additional information about RSS can be found in an Technology Notes article by Greg Bodin, the Technology Coordinator from NN/LM South Central Region. http://nnlm.gov/scr/scnn/mar-apr04/technotes.htm Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about blogs or RSS. Penny GlassmanTechnology Coordinator |