Dumpling in a Hanky

Yes, I feel all proud, because it's coming up to birthday-time for the UK Library Bloggers Wiki. ..it's toddling along nicely all by itself (with just the occasional spammer attack - it's really quite satisfying to get to ban and block people!), with people generally seeming quite happy with the process of adding their blogs themselves. Since I last looked in July 2010, there have continued to be additions in various categories.                                           July 2010                                        March 2011 Institutional bloggers              135                                                   ...

So, we unleashed the UK Library Bloggers wiki into the wild back in March, and crossed our fingers that it would be ok, out there in the Scary World, all on its own. And so far, it seems to be doing just fine, yay! There are of course the regular spammer attempts to "subtly" insert adverts for dissertation work, and all sorts of less...erm...wholesome products within the entries, but the email alerts about text amendments that go to the administrators of the wiki (Phil, Jo and I) means that the first person online and able to, goes in and removes that material and blocks the creator. This has worked really well so far, and unwanted content doesn't stay on the wiki for any real length of time. And the best bit is the librarians and info professionals who've been adding themselves to the wiki! I created a backup in March before we "unlocked" the wiki, and at that point there were 115 institutional / professional group blogs, 83 librarian blogs, 5 Chartership...

I mean, they've all gone through many years of expensive education, designed to weed out those who're not able to perform to the high levels demanded in the competitive world of the law. In the case of Advocates, Solicitor-Advocates and Barristers, after their initial degree qualification there's even more training involved, again, accepting only the best minds to this higher level of education. And then, once they're out practising in the Big Bad World, they have to be able to assess information presented to them, the accuracy of that information, identify opportunities and threats, and figure out what's really a sensible conclusion to many issues. So...with all that education, knowledge, experience and business skill, just how the hell did this proposal get any further than a 4am late-night-cheese-snack-induced nightmare?!? The Executive Committees of Inner Temple and Middle Temple have agreed to commission a feasibility study to investigate the potential benefit...

So, a month or so ago* I did a trawl through all the institutional / professional group blogs on the UK Library Blogs wiki, checked that the ones I'd found before were still there, added any new ones I'd found, and added a new area on entries, for account information on those groups or professionals with Twitter accounts listed on their blog. I'm trying to do the personal blogs soon too, but with more work, less time to do it in, and my own life getting a bit busy, don't hold your breath for that to happen in the next few days! :) As always, if you're not on there (and that's quite likely, the Magical Interweb is a big place, with many nooks and crannies hiding things), contact me either via the 'contact owner' option on the wiki front page, or via the email cunningly disguised in the right hand sidebar here, and I'll add you as soon as I can :) *Oh, looks like it was a bit more than a month, more like two! Time flies!

I'm continuing to add to this list, as and when I can, and trawl through those already on the list to check for changes since the last visit / my mistakes in the collection of the initial list (my apologies to Neil Infield for accidentally renaming him to Ian!) Also, I received an email telling me to look at FADE Library 's great work on collecting UK health library blogs, which I will(with their kind permission) also add in to the overall list (and blog about in a later post) to try and make it as comprehensive as possible. Unfortunately, my email provider went squiffy and deleted the original email before I could reply, so I don't know who to credit for alerting me to this massive piece of work by the FADE staff, and also means their own blog details were zapped! If this was you, please can you get back in touch so I can add your blog, and say thank you personally!

Starting on Saturday 8th November, the Edinburgh Festival of Libraries will be running a week long programme of talks, walks, tours, presentations roadshows and behind-the-scenes peeks into some of the many different types of library services working in Edinburgh. Lots of interesting things going on, but I'm kinda ruled out of any of the daytime events by working (I've maxed out my holiday allowance for the year, boo, hiss), which is a shame, because there's plenty I'd have loved to be able to go to! So, to make sure I still get to do *something*, I've emailed to book a place for the finale event on Friday 14th November: Finale event - Future of the Book Panel discussion "The Future of the Book" Print books or e-books? Uplift or download? Writers and readers or interactive interchange? We are pleased to present a panel of informed people who will present and discuss a range of views on this topic. The discussion will be chaired by Stuart Kelly, Literary...

For entertainment, I sat and graded the ads I was getting for 15 mins again, refreshing them to see what would come up to replace what I'd marked as 'irrelevant'. The results, from their headlines: Rachel Ray diet (twice), 1,000,000 people can't be wrong (Pink Patch ad, this one is particularly repetitive, 8 times out of 12 this replaced an ad I'd removed by rating it irrelevant!), the Pink Patch diet (same as the other one, but different format...this company must have an impressive advertising budget), Floristry courses at Bournville College, the GI patch (yet another diet offer!), free Samsung Tocco, Poor history credit card (multiple), Call worldwide for a month (some sort of phone plan), free PS3 with T-Mobile, Home in Cyprus and Greece, Instant payday loan, free Samsung Soul, Jobs in Oxfordshire (twice), Want a PS3 for £10.92? (auction site ad), The best of Dagenham, A few drinks tonight? (don't know what this advertised, had website link but I didn't ...

Well, apparently, according to the recent Times article. The only problem is, Alex Wade doesn't seem to have bothered actually doing any proper research. They've decided that only staff at law firms are likely to blog, or have any knowledge of the law, thereby ruling out advocates / barristers, academic law professionals, support staff / librarians, students.... There are lots of law blogs out there, by all sorts of people working in the law, all it takes to find them is a few minutes! I randomly selected one of the blawgs listed in the article, and a quick look at some of Geeklawyers blawgroll lists the following: Bar Council Blogs Batgirl was a librarian Binary Law CharonQC Conflict of Laws Corporate Blawg Current Awareness Family Law Free Movement Head of Legal Human Law Impact IPKat Law Outsider Lawclanger Legal Beagle Legal Spy lo-fi librarian Martin George Open Content Lawyer Pink Tape PJH Law Publawyer Pupillage and How to Get It Ruthieslaw ...

Sarah Hammond, an MA student, is researching the world of UK library blogging, and is trying to compile a comprehensive list of UK public library blogs. She's going to post the results on Delicious, with the username Public_biblioglogosphere , and has kindly agreed to allow me to add the results of her work into the overall UK library bloggers wiki. She's also doing her dissertation on the UK biblioblogosphere, and has set up a survey for UK public librarians to fill in here , if they're feeling  nice. It should only take 10 minutes, and will give you an inner glow of happiness for being so lovely :D

After some checks by someone who's much more technical than me, it appears the invite for the survey was for a BT telephone directory. Glad of that - the less I have to do with Phorm the better (although as a Virgin Media customer, I wonder if that decision's always going to be mine to make)

I participate in various online surveys, getting pennies, or prize draw entries in return. Last night, I got sent the following invite - hands up who thinks it's in some way linked to BTs Phorm experiment? Hi Jennie, We have a new survey available for you to take. You will also be asked if you would like to take part in an ongoing program run by BT in which you will be asked to take part in online activities. You will need to provide your e-mail address and register on the website so that you can be sent the details of how to take part. In exchange for taking part you will be entered into weekly prize draws. If you complete the survey but do not register to take part in the rest of the online program you will be rewarded 25p if you register to take part in BT's online activities you will receive £1.00. You will also be redirected straight to a BT site at the end of the survey. Please be assured that your e-mail address will only be used to contact you about this study. Or maybe...

Since Gordon Brown's gone on holiday, that leaves the country under the watchful eye of his co-pilots.While looking at this BBC News article about deputies, I had a little moment when I wondered whether Harriet Harman (one of the 3 grown-ups currently in charge) had ever got back to her blog . she had a little incident in April when it was hacked, and her 'resignation letter' was posted. It would appear she's not gone back to it since...although there is a spoof blog that's quite entertaining! Actually, I think I prefer the spoof one to the real one...

I tell ya, it takes at least a week to catch up on the week you were away...and now I'm off to Dublin this afternoon until Sunday, so I can only imagine how long it'll take me to catch up again when I get back! One useful thing I have done while on holibobs though is play with Yahoo Pipes, to create a feed of feeds. After being a total doofus and needing the help of the lovely law.librarians group to fix things (how come they could easily explain what a video didn't?) I've had a stab at making some usefulness from the UK Librarian Bloggers wiki, starting with (hopefully) a feed of all the academic library blog feeds on there. If I'm lucky, you should be able to do something with it, like subscribe to it. Although I haven't got as far as actually testing that theory myself. Hopefully, you'll find it here : http://pipes.yahoo.com/jennie/ukacademiclibraryblogs And even more hopefully, it'll be useful to someone! Let me know if it works, and if it's u...

I had contact via this blog, asking for help finding a librarian that someone used to work with in the early 1990s. I've posted the text of the email below - if anybody knows her, or of her, get in touch with me and I'll pass the info on (I've withheld his email), or pass his info on to her. Since, as he says, we're fairly well networked, I'm hoping somebody will see this and get in touch. Also off to post on the CILIP Communities board - I have a vague idea that CILIP has a register of members, but I'm not sure about that. And if she's married and changed name, or left the profession, there's not much hope of finding her, but here's hoping! Dear Jennie, This may be a slightly odd email; but I am trying to trace a friend who when I met her was working her BA in librarian(ship?) at Birmingham Polytechnic (now the University of Central England) and subsequently worked as a Librarian at Blakenhurst prison in the Midlands. Her name is Valerie Eva...

I have a terrible, dirty secret. One that will make some librarians gasp in despair, and others maybe will feel relieved that they're not alone. You see, I'm not actually a member, or user of public libraries. There, I said it! In fact, the only time I've been a member of a public library was at Uni, when I joined the local public library...and never used it. As a child, my Mum was a librarian in the local branch, and she just borrowed out books for me on her ticket, so we never got around to getting me a readers ticket. In secondary school, I used the school library, and sometimes the local library, with Mum still borrowing books on my behalf. Now, as an adult, what I do is go to the local charity shops, buy a pile of whatever books from there that take my fancy at £1 each, read them, then give them back for resale. This means I give to charity twice over, once with the sale to me, and again with the donation back to them to resell. Also, I'll have an occasional shop a...

In response to my original post about needing help to double check entries and add last visit dates for the UK Library BLoggers wiki, the lovely Jo and Christine have kindly volunteered to help out, yay!!! So, over the next wee while, we'll be revisiting all the blogs already on there, and checking the original quick synopsis is accurate, and adding in a date of last visit. In my meanderings last night I found that already, in the month since I'd first visited, one blog had shut down and moved to another address with a new focus, and a new university departmental blog had started...it's all go with us library bloggers! So thanks again to Christine and Jo for giving their spare time to help with this task!

I added a permanent link on the right hand side to save peeps searching for the link for the wiki, which is now buried under my random ramblings... >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

...and I'm getting daily addition request emails (which is lovely!), I realise that there's a flaw in the data I originally collected. There's no "visit date", and for something as rapidly changing as blogs, that's not good - things may change quickly, and without a visit date, it'll be hard to know when things happened. So....anybody want to volunteer to take a trip around the blogs, check what I've written about them for accuracy, and email me with the date of visit / revised synopsis? No, thought not...guess what I'll be doing this weekend? Also, the line between "librarian" blogs, and "information professional" blogs is getting harder to draw. The list was set up to pull together all the UK library / librarian bloggers I could find. If people didn't say in their "About" section that they were a librarian, or worked in a library, or the blog was run by a library, they were excluded. So yes, this has ruled out gr...

In my traipse through the highways and byways of the interweb, looking for UK library and librarian blogs, I learned a few things about blogs in general, and UK library blogs. I'll try and make sense of it below... Blog Tips Have an “About” or “Profile” section easily locatable on your blog. Without this, it's like a book without a “blurb”: there’s no information to guide the reader on what to expect from you, and people may well get frustrated, leave and not return, regardless of how interesting your content is. Give people some idea of what you blog about. If you blog infrequently, it can take a fair amount of time for a reader to skim through multiple posts and get an idea of what you’re about. A tag cloud is very helpful to allow a reader to see at a glance what your main blogging themes are. Or sort your labels by order of frequency, so people can see what you most often blog about. Identify, if not who you are (if you want to blog fully or semi anonymously), then at leas...

As suggested, I set up a wiki for this list, to allow for easier updating and accessing. I'll be inviting a few others to co-author it, as many hands make light work! So, here's the address, come have a look: www.uklibraryblogs.pbwiki.com/ If you're on the list and would like to give yourself a better synopsis than I've managed, please get in touch either via the email here (in oh-so-cunning code on the right, below my profile), or via the link on the wiki. Also, if you'd like to be removed from the list too. Hopefully, we'll manage to get a nice comprehensive list together on there, and then get RSS feeds from all the listed blogs going...or something technical like that. Grown-ups are going to help me!