Publishers Weekly is reporting that not only are they up for sale by their publisher, Reed Business Information, but that Library Journal and School Library Journal are available as well.

Without knowing the cost/profit information for each of these, I do wonder how  they are affected by the various pressures in the publishing world as well as the shifting of library information to the web (including social media such as blogging and Twitter).

found via LISNews

You know it, even if you don’t admit it… your library has books that should have been weeded years ago, but have hung around until they become anachronistically funny.  To give you an anonymous outlet for this outlandish situation, there is Awful Library Books, a blog highlighting (only in a metaphorical way) those library books that serve to let us know that ours is not the only library that needs a good cleaning.

found via LISNews, who found it via Time

Shorpy is a collection of photographs presented using a blog, but it is an especially captivating collection.  A combination of historical photographs, found images, and personal/family photos, there is rarely an entry that doesn’t hold some interest for the viewer.

I especially like the pictures with an element of mystery… the attempt to gain some context of what is happening or where/when the photograph was taken.

found via Librarians’ Internet Index

Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest is a New York Times article about blogging, specifically about the study showing an estimated 95% of blogs have not been updated in over 4 months.

Does this signal an end to blogging?  The death of a communication tool?  Not at all.  As the article points out, much of the information conveyed through blogging can also be conveyed through other tools, such as Facebook and Twitter.

As with all tools, users will seek out the tool that best fits their task (or at least the best that fits their skill set, and will still accomplish the task).  Blogging was an early “web 2.0″ tool, and was adopted and adapted to serve many purposes.  Through a combination of better tools for specific tasks, loss of interest/time/support for the creators, and the limits of readers to follow more than a given number of blogs on a particular topic, it is no surprise that many blogs are going into hibernation.

There is also a discussion regarding the expectations of the blogger.  If one strives for fame, fortune and glory, go for it… but a majority of bloggers will not achieve that level.  I suspect that more than a few people set goals beyond what the market could provide their particular skill set and audience.

When I set out to start blogging, I simply wanted to utilize a forum that would allow me to collect thoughts and ideas that I felt were important, and to use it to organize my own interests and actions, as well as to convey what I posted to those who might be interested.  Over time the focus has expanded to include more of my thoughts and ideas (I still cringe a bit when using the word “I”), but still focuses on what is happening in the library technology world.

Blogging has been harder to maintain than I originally thought, but it has also been far more rewarding.  I am still searching for the balance between all of the activities that demand attention, but I suspect that Libology will remain in the “active” category for some time.

found via ResourceShelf

Not a huge deal, but I just changed the theme of this blog to slight, which was created by Thematology.

There are several reasons for this change, including:

• Wanting a theme that would fit better with the Libology logo (forthcoming)
• Wanting better support for widgets – Libology has been using tags since last summer; now you can see and use them!
• Wanting a cleaner, simpler page layout
• Wanting to customize the look and feel of Libology over the next few months

Hope you like it… feedback is welcome!

Not the death of this blog, but of the ending of The Patry Copyright Blog, which has been consistently informative, educational, and timely.  I truly hope that William Patry returns to blogging at some point, as I can only guess at the amount and quality of information that I won’t gain from him in the meantime.

On a “making lemonade out of lemons” note, he is “creating a file with most of the posts (weeding out really trivial one)” and offering it up to all who ask.  I have responded, and am planning to host the file on Libology.com.  Other people have indicated their interest, as well, so it is likely that his blog will be accessible in some form.  How the posts will be presented on Libology remains to be seen (I don’t even know what format the file will be)… I hope to present them in some way that makes them more easily accessed and used.

In the time it has taken to transfer the domain, I have been thinking about the blog, especially what its focus is and will likely be.

I am, as of three minutes ago, changing the name of the blog from “LibrarySupportStaff.org” to “Libology Blog” and am adding another layer of discontinuity to what was meant to be a behind-the-scenes change of hosting services. It makes sense, however, to do this now instead of later, and make July 2008 the “month the blog went kabloee! and everything changed”.

A major focus of this blog, and my interest, will be library support staff and how they can improve library services.  The blog is more than that, however, which is why I think the name change is ultimately a positive thing.

There is a lot I have to do to clean up the blog, the main being updating the links that point to other posts.  Until then, please bear with our mess.