Library Blogs

Salem Press sponsors the Library Blog Awards. Nominations come from the blogosphere and public voting takes place and then the judges decide which blogs are exceptional in thinking, writing, and information.

The 2011 Salem Library Blog Awards have been announced in eight different categories: General, Public, Academic, School, Local, Quirky, Newcomer, and Commercial. Here are the winners:

• General: Librarian in Black
• Public: Swiss Army Librarian
• Academic: Information Tyranosaur
• School: The Unquiet Librarian
• Local: Cecil County Public Library
• Quirky: A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette
• Newcomer: Hack Library School
• Commercial: NeverEndingSearch

The Unquiet Librarian (Buffy Hamilton) and NeverEndingSearch (Joyce Valenza) are both in my iGoogle Reader. You can find some great blogs by checking out the other nominees in each category.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/77319680@N00/2134380212

Some rights reserved by Breno Peck

The Eddies

Nominations for your favorite blogs close on Tuesday, December 8. Be sure to read about the two step process of nominating:

1. Write a blog post with links to The Edublog Awards Homepage and the sites/blogs you nominate.
2. Use the form on the Edublog Awards homepage to send the link to your blog post.
   

Voting ends Wednesday, December 16.

Awards announced Friday, December 18.

Here are my nominations in a few of the categories:

Best individual blog: apophenia by danah boyd

Best individual tweeter: @ShellTerrell (Shelly A. Terrell)

Best group blog: School Library Journal's Battle of the Kids Books

Best resource sharing blog: Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne

Most influential blog post: Things That Keep Us Up at Night by Joyce Valenza & Doug Johnson

Most influential series of tweets and/or Best educational use of a social networking service: #edchat on Twitter by Shelly Terrell, Tom Whitby, Steven Anderson, and Jerry Swiatek, who archives the Twitter #edchat discussions.

Best librarian blog: Not So Distant Future by Carolyn Foote

Best educational wiki: Springfield Township Virtual Library by Joyce Valenza


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Week 9 - Thing #23 CSLA2 Ending

Sadness
Originally uploaded by ashleyasaurus

I've been putting this last thing off for awhile now. I don't want this experience to end.

What a great way to learn about Web 2.0 tools that can be used in a library media center and everyday life. I really enjoyed being able to work at my own pace and actually producing not just accessing and reading about Web 2.0. Using the blog to show my "things" and talk about my experiences during this CSLA2 tutorial has been the most fun activity. Since I no longer work in a school library media center I will be using several of the tools in my home and with WEMTA, Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association. I'm thinking of volunteering to be a reader for the Gutenberg Project.

thank you, uploaded by Qathi

Week 6 - Thing #14 Technorati

Searching for School Library Learning 2.0 in various ways on Technorati did give different results.

• The Keyword, exact phrase, all blogs search yielded 131 entries, most of which were blog entries by registrants for the CSLA tutorial.


• The Tag search without quotations gave results similar to an OR boolean search with over 1000 posts found. Many of the entries were not related to the CSLA tutorial. When I searched "School Library Learning 2.0" the number of posts found was 129, close to the first keyword search with all of the entries from CSLA tutorial participants. Photos also appeared with this Tag search. I found my flickr photo and Liz's too. I noticed with other tag searches that posts, blogs, videos, and photos might be found.
  
• The Blog Directory search with and without quotation marks yielded the least number of results, 6 and 12, again all from CSLA tutorial participants.

I'm not exactly sure why the Blog Directory search turned up so few, unless one has to 'claim' one's blog to get found in the directory or the blog name is important. I did find my own blog and Liz's in the other searches, tho, they were pretty far into the results.

I discovered what the authority ranking is all about. At first I thought that it had to do with the number of comments a blog receives, but it's more than that. At this point in my life I really don't care if lots of people read my blog and link to it. I'm still more interested in reading what others say. Technorati doesn't seem too useful to me, unless I'm looking for videos or photos, but can't I just go to Flickr or UTube????

I do like tagging. It's easier to keep track of sites, blogs, etc. that interest me. I have tagged most of my favorites and continue to use del.icio.us to tag.

Week 4 - Thing #9 Searching for RSS Feeds

I tried out all of the RSS search tools suggested in the SSL2 exercise. Topix.net was easy to use and I've added my local community feed to my Bloglines account. Topix.net would also be useful to find out about happenings in other areas where I have lived and worked. I hate to say that I wasn't very impressed with the other search tools. I've seen links or something for Technorati in many places and have always wondered what they were. Now I kinda' know. I did find Blog Pulse interesting, but don't think that I would use it unless I was still actively employed.

I still don't understand what happens when I click on an RSS feed. What usually happens is that a link is created within Internet Explorer as part of a Feeds list. So I'm guessing that IE has an aggregator for feeds without all the bells and whistles that Bloglines has???