LISNews: Librarian News

WhiteHouse.gov is on the job on day one. The 'first blogger' writes:

"Welcome to the new WhiteHouse.gov. I'm Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House and one of the people who will be contributing to the blog.

A short time ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and his new administration officially came to life. One of the first changes is the White House's new website, which will serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world.

Millions of Americans have powered President Obama's journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the internet to play a role in shaping our country's future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration's efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement.

Just like your new government, WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration's online programs will put citizens first. Our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:

They are 1)Communication, 2) Transparency and 3)Participation
(read more at WhiteHouse.gov)

One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it. -- Read More

From The Morning News, some basic recommendations on the etiquette of Twittering; Fourteen Ways to Use Twitter Politely.

Written by Margaret Mason, author of "No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog", the article is "not about the things Twitter does, it’s an article about the ways in which you can accidentally annoy people with Twitter. Should you choose to avoid Twitter, that’s fine."

To start you off...Rule 1). Watch your ratio. If only a few people follow you, but you follow a thousand or more, many people will assume you’re a spammer. That’s because you probably are. Go away, spammer. We do not care about your Facebook app.

I started the "10 Blogs To Read in..." 3 years ago to find people in different areas of librarianship doing the most interesting and original writing on the web. Each year we've gathered a group of librarians working hard to increase the understanding our profession and it's place in the rapidly evolving online world. Again this year I tried to choose 10 writers who cover very different aspects of our profession, 10 sites that inform, educate and maybe amuse. I hope you'll find the list a nice place to find something new to read, or a place to gain better understanding of a part of librarianship that's outside of your normal area. We all have much to learn from each other, and these bloggers are working hard to share their knowledge and understanding with you. Read on below to see why each site made the list. -- Read More

• Alternative Teen Services yalibrarian.com (Feed)
• Brave New World bookseller-association.blogspot.com (Feed)
• Closed Stacks closedstacks.wordpress.com (Feed).
• David Lankes quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/blog (Feed)
• David Lee King davidleeking.com (Feed)
• Designing Better Libraries dbl.lishost.org/blog (Feed)
• In The Library with The Lead Pipe inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org (Feed)
• Livejournal:The Society for Librarians* Who Say "Motherf*@!%r" (Feed) or Library Lovers' LiveJournal (Feed)
• Open Source ILS Vendors, choose your favorite.
  --The Liblime Folks: blogs.liblime.com/open-sesame (Feed) and/or blogs.liblime.com/developers (Feed)
  --The Evergreen Folks: evergreen-ils.org/blog (Feed)
• Planet Cataloging planetcataloging.org (Feed)

I think every library blogger should resolve in 2009 to publish a book. With POD publishing like lulu and createspace, it's "mostly" free and incredibly easy.

Edit your blog and republish in print.

And buying (I used createspace) copies of my book was really cheap, so I was able to give all my friends copies (that's 3 copies for my 3 friends, not counting cats!).

Maybe if enough bloggers become publishers, we can create a whole genre of blog publishing,... or not. But get off your lazy ass and do it. Or sit on your busy ass and do it, whatever gets it done.

Now if Stephen would only add my story that I recorded for him to one of his podcasts, you can hear about how/why I did it (which is basically what I just wrote here).