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

Saw a post on TechCrunch that indicated that Amazon has opened their offerings of blog subscriptions for the Kindle reader to all blogs that sign up.  So now Libology is available to readers of the Kindle… with two caveats:

1. It costs.  A lot.  Way more than you are paying now.  A whopping $1.99 per month (and I have no say in the price, so there).
2. I get some of the money, a whopping 30% (that’s 66 cents per month per subscription).

So really, if you don’t feel the need to pay to read this stuff, don’t.  Keep reading this stuff for free, though.  And if you are philosophically inclined (or reclined) against my getting paid, then, again, don’t.

Seriously, if you are really into the Kindle, and find the blog-perusing experience to be great, then I am glad to provide Libology as an option, just as I have provided a mobile-browser friendly version.  They do offer a 14-day trial if you want an excuse to try it out.  Just don’t feel guilty about canceling… I understand, trust me!

In its continuing examination of library blogs, HotStuff 2.0 has added a visualization of emotional content.

Here is the current visualization for Libology:

How to read the information, from HotStuff’s description:

1. The overall scatter of words in the ANEW list are shown as small blue dots. This is shown simply as a guide to indicate the overall shape (as per the previous image that resembled the map of Australia).
2. The average emotional content of each blog post is shown as a small green cross. This is a calculated by looking for all occurrences of ANEW words in the blog post. The average position is then calculated. Therefore, if a blog post contained lots of strongly negative content, you would expect the green cross to be towards the bottom-left.
3. The average emotional content of all the blog posts is shown as a larger red cross. This is calculated as before, but is the average for all of the content on the blog. Therefore, if a blog contained lots of posts with strongly positive content, you would expect the red cross to be towards the bottom-right.
4. Word usage frequency is indicated by the transparent circles. This gives an indication of the type of words being used on the blog. Larger circles indicate that words with the same pleasure & arousal values have been used more frequently.

The red X falls in the Neutral Pleasure, Medium Arousal section, but definitely far enough towards the right to suggest that there is Positive Pleasure at work as well.  This seems about right, as I don’t tend to go negative all that often (and when I do I try to remain constructive), and my writing voice tends to be more formal, leading to a Neutral/Medium tone.

I haven’t seen anything on the HotStuff site that makes me feel that there is a grand truth in their categorization of various library blogs, but they are doing some really interesting experiments that provide glimpses of what is there.  I recommend checking out their listings for the library blogs that you follow.

And the title of this post?  Well, I had my Myers-Briggs Type – INFP – as my automobile’s license plate for several years, so this seemed to be the way to go.

found through Walt at Random

Now that Google Ventures has been officially announced, I can go public with my own news:

Libology is one of the first group of startup companies which will be receiving Google Ventures funding.  I have been in talks with someone from their Cambridge office over the past few weeks, just sent in the signed contract yesterday, and today the terms of the contract take effect.

The biggest change you will notice is that they requested some design changes to this blog, mainly to make it easier to integrate with other Google services.  (See below for screenshots)  If you are viewing this through a feed reader, check out the main page of this blog, or view this post.

Another change you may notice is that I will stop being critical in any way, shape or form when referring to Google or any of their partners, including OCLC.

And, of course, one must always remember what today is!

Google Style Main Page

Post Googlized

A little over two months ago, I decided to apply for an ISSN for this blog.  The notification letter arrived from the Library of Congress yesterday:  Libology blog has an ISSN of 1946-1852.  The link on the ISSN number doesn’t return a result (yet) but I recommend WorldCat’s xISSN History Visualization Tool.

There has been a debate over the use of ISSNs for blogs; my perspective is that I attempt to make this a responsible and professional ongoing commentary on library technology, sociology, etc., and as such it fits the definition of a serial.  And the LOC agrees.

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!

HotStuff 2.0 is described by its creator, Dave Pattern, as “an automatically updated blog… [in which] a daily blog post is generated using a single word that has seen a marked increase in usage over the last few days.”  The best part is that this blog is built upon “nearly a thousand library related blogs” (including this one), and is a great way to explore library blogging.

Added features, all automatically generated, include word wheels, Hot or Not (I am currently #18… we shall see where that goes), and detail pages for each of the blogs, including a list of similar blogs.

Seriously, check this out.  If you don’t find at least one new and interesting blog, I’ll refund your annual subscription to Libology

found via Walt at Random

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.