|
|
Joeychgo.com Book Store > Joeychgo.com books beginning with B
|
Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Guide |
Author: Michael P. Sauers
Published: 2006-10-29 |
List price: $29.50
Our price: $26.55
|
Usually ships in 6 to 10 days
As of: November 20th, 2008 05:18:35 AM
|
|
|
Customer comments on this selection.
 incorrect order over priced
I found Blogging and RSS A Librarians Guide a bit difficult to read and over priced
 Blogging and RSS for Dummies
I am not a blogger or a librarian, but by the end of the year I should be both. So this seemed like a good book to check out so I can hit the blogosphere and job market running. Now, before I start kvetching, let me state that this book does a perfectly good job at what it does, and my primary complaint is that I wish it did more, and did it in greater depth.
br /
br /Basically, this is "Blogging and RSS for Dummies", with a very small dollop of librarian content. Yes, it kicks off with about 70 pages on "The Library Blogosphere," however the bulk of this material is devoted to the ten or so "stars" of library blogging (shiftedlibrarian, librarystuff, librarian.net, etc.). You get small write ups about each of these blogs, excerpts to indicate their tone, screenshots, and then their authors' answers to a brief questionnaire. This may be useful if you've got a lot to say about the profession and aim to crack their ranks, or if you're new to blogs and want to know what the good librarian ones are (although a two minute online search would lead you to the same blogs), but there's very very little information about how libraries use blogs. I guess the book I really want to read would be something like "Blogging and RSS for Libraries" (not "Librarians").
br /
br /When it comes to actual blog creation, Sauers limits his tutorial (and that's what it is) to the free "Blogger" service (now a Google property), with only a one paragraph mention of server-based packages such as WordPress, MoveableType, and TypePad. Blogger is great at what it does -- you can have a nice-looking, free, basic blog up and running in minutes (well, as long as you have a Gmail account). However, most libraries are likely going to need the flexibility and custom features of the more robust server-based packages noted above. Blogger is so easy and well-documented that most people can probably skip the 40 pages of hand-holding covering blog set-up and preferences. Still, if that's what you need, this book does an outstanding job of walking you through the process, with plenty of screenshots to illustrate the way. However, it would have been far more useful to devote that space to server-based packages, which do require more hand-holding.
br /
br /RSS is a bit more complicated and thus somewhat more worthy of Sauer's baby-step explanations. Again, the focus is on the simplest method, so while various flavors of aggregators are mentioned (stand-alone client, embedded client, and server-based), Sauers advocates and concentrates on the popular web-based Bloglines service (which now belongs to Ask.com). Again, Bloglines is so well documented, I'm not sure what the point of a lengthy print-based guide to account setup and maintenance is, but if you need it, it's here. And although RSS is of clear benefit to an individual librarian who's trying to keep informed, it's never explained how or why libraries might want to implement it to serve information to their users. RSS has some real practical applications, especially in special libraries, but these are never mentioned. There's a chapter outlining feeds that may be of interest to librarians, but again, these are easily found online, and I'm not sure what the point of putting them in print (where the information will be outdated almost instantly) is, when they could just all be listed on a companion web page. I'm also not sure what the value is of seeing a screenshot for every single blog and feed mentioned (another quibble is that these are often reproduced too lightly for easy legibility).
br /
br /In the end, this isn't a bad starting point if you know nothing about blogs or RSS, but for anyone with even a minimum exposure to these tools and a specific interest in how their use might improve library service, it's unlikely to be very useful.
Only for the really fainthearted
I had this bookmarked in my 'must buy' list months before it came out. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. If you have absolutely no experience in this area then this book is probably for you. If however you have any experience in this field then you may well want to look elsewhere. The overview of longerterm Library bloggers in the field was an interesting insight, but overall the whole package was disappointing.
 Invaluable resource
Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Guide is a solid introduction to blogging written especially for librarians, by a librarian. Internet trainer, blogger, and part-time reference librarian Michael P. Sauers recommends the best blogs, gathers and shares blogging advice from fellow librarians, and walks the reader step-by-step through creating, publishing, and syndicating a blog with free Web-based services, software, RSS feeds, and aggregators. Librarians of all skill and experience levels in the rapidly changing culture and technology of blogging are sure to find valuable insights, instructions, and tips in this invaluable resource covering a topic often overlooked by classical library science instruction.
|
Similar Listings
|
|
Our Joeychgo.com book picks:
|
|
LCS Amazon Store 2.4 © 2008
|
|
|
