LISNews: Librarian News

I almost forgot! 'Twas 6 years ago today LISNews first appeared on the web. If you've been around for awhile you already know the rest of the story, if not, I'll spare you the details.

I can't possibly thank everyone who has helped LISNews over the past 6 years. Steve Glabraith, Steven M Cohen & Nabeal Ahmed, were all instrumental in helping me when I needed it most, during the early years, as was Ieleene, and a few other authors who helped out for awhile and moved on. Behind the scenes Joe Frazee helped me get the server up and running. Over the years a few dedicated souls have tireless submitted stories. Bob Cox, Reg Aubry, Lee Hadden, Charles Davis, and even the mysterious Search-Engines-Web. All the LISNews authors deserve a big thank you and a pat on the back for all their hard work. LISNews is a collaboritve site,

I had hoped we'd be running on a new server and a new version of Slashcode, but as the new saying goes, Life Trumps Blogging, or in this case, life trumps programming and systems administration.

LISNews is a collaborative site, and I'd like to thank everyone who has ever chipped in to pay for the server, submitted a story, wrote in their journal, left a comment, or just dropped by for a visit. Because it's a community effort, my life never trumps LISNews.

Happy Birthday LISNews. Here's to hoping we have a few more good years ahead of us!

I've finally cleaned up the Feeds Page and added some descriptions for each feed.
LISNews spits out a feed for every need, so fire up your aggregators and be sure your subscribed to at least one.

A Feed of the latest comments:
comments.rss

This feed includes all the stories posted, along with the intro text. The dirty version is more prone to breaking because it isn't scrubbed of illegal

characters.
descriptions.rss
dirty_descriptions.rss

Three versions of what shows up on just the home page:
index.rdf
index.rss
index.xml

The latest Journal Posts:
journals.rss

A feed made up of various news that is of interst to librarians. Pulls from just a few topics:
librarians.rss
librarians.rss

The main feed, also the oldest feed and most popular. When in doubt, use this one:
lisnews.rss
lisnews.rss

Three versions of the main Slashcode feed:
lisnewscom.rdf
lisnewscom.rss
lisnewscom.xml

Just the most popular stories:
popular.rss
popular.rss

Stories that focus on books & publishing:
publishing.rss

Some basic stats:
stats.rss
stats.rss

LISNews has many sections that focus on a single area of librarianship. Each section has a feed:
The College & Academic Section:
academic.rdf
academic.rss
academic.xml

The Articles:
articles.rdf
articles.rss
articles.xml

The Books Section:
Books.rdf
Books.rss
Books.xml

The Features(Not used much):
features.rdf
features.rss
features.xml

News For Library Nerds:
geek.rdf
geek.rss
geek.xml

Harry Potter's Section:
HarryPotter.rdf
HarryPotter.rss
HarryPotter.xml

The Interviews Section:
Interviews.rdf
Interviews.rss
Interviews.xml

The Librarians Book Club:
LBC.rdf
LBC.rss
LBC.xml

School Libraries News:
lm.rdf
lm.rss
lm.xml

The Movies Section:
Movies.rdf
Movies.rss
Movies.xml

The Politics Section:
Politics.rdf
Politics.rss
Politics.xml

The Public Library News Section:
public.rdf
public.rss
public.xml

Bill Drew's Wireless Section:
wireless.rdf
wireless.rss
wireless.xml

Occasionally when I sit down to attempt writing something substantial the words will flow like wine. Normally the flow is more like molasses, or maybe VT. Maple Syrup. This week, for some odd reason, the words were flowing like Niagara Falls, and I ended up with a rather long and extremely detailed look at LISNews. So collected here is a series of rather poorly written essays that describe LISNews in excruciating detail; where it came from, how it runs, who runs it, and what it might look like in the future.

1. What Gorman Got Right: Not exactly LISNews, but it's what I started with.
2. Many Facets for Many People. Wherein the by explores the many ways to access LISNews content.
3. Strengths and Weaknesses. It's not all good.
4. A Brief History. Since November 1999 LISNews has seen many changes.
5. The Story Behind The Stories. We dig up some interesting stuff.
6. The people (Including me). Who does what to whom and why.
7. Technical Details. For the geeks (like me) only.
8. Past, Present and Mostly Future. What can we do to fight off irrelevancy?

I'd like to hear from you if you have questions, comments or ideas on things I might have missed. I'll be using this series for part of my presentation at LITA this fall.

vonjobi writes "Not many libraries mount exhibits that make it into the newspapers. But the Rizal Library has done it again."

From "Belgians map the Philippines" by Felice Prudente Sta. Maria (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 28 March 2005):

The Kingdom of Belgium, in celebration of its 175 years of Independence, and the Juana Madriaga Garcia-Natividad Galang Fajardo Collection provide a gem of an exhibit featuring the "rare treat of viewing not one but five different editions of the earliest separately printed maps of the Philippines," writes Leovino Ma. Garcia, dean of Ateneo's School of Humanities in the show catalog.

It's interesting that one of the references cited at the end of the article is Philippine Cartography 1320-1898 by Carlos Quirino. The book is said to be "the must-read, must-have for Philippine map collectors!" Quirino was director of the National Library from 1962-1966.

"From Filipino Librarian"