Adding a Rollyo searchbox to your blog

1. Log into Rollyo and click on the Tools menu at the top of the page.
2. Click on “Put a Rollyo Searchbox on your site”
3. In the “Searchrolls” box, choose your roll and click the right arrows button
4. Choose a style (plain, plainer, gray, black, red) and you’ll see a preview of what you Rollyo Searchbox will look like to the right of your style choices.
5. Copy the code from the box called “Cope and paste Code” [use Ctrl-C]
6. Go to your blog and sign in
7. From your Dashboard, click the Layout link
8. Click “Add a page element” in your sidebar and choose the one called “HTML/Javascript”. Click the Add to Blog button.
9. Paste [Ctrl-V] the content from Rollyo into the large box and leave the title bar blank.
10. Click the Save Changes button.
11. If you have several things in your sidebar, click and drag the new box so that it appears in the order you want and click Save.
12. View Blog.

Don’t forget to check out your global community!

The third annual BlogDay is coming up at the end of this month on Friday, August 31st. Bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. Preferably the blogs will be from cultures different from their own culture, and points of view different from their point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves discovering new blogs around the world and celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

What is BlogDay?
BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors. With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

Why do we need a BlogDay?
This activity was started by Nir Ofir. He suggested this activity because he felt that the more blogs there are, the less time he was spending on new web logs. Because of the overload of information, he found he was missing a lot of good blogs. He initiated blogDay in 2005 with the belief that bloggers should have one day which will be dedicated to discovering new blogs around the world.

Beware: Ninjas Really Are Out There

This is for AwesomeRyan and his blog, AwesomeRyan’s Blog of Awesomeness . He was the first one to tell me that Ninjas really were out there everywhere. I had no idea!

Karate Lessons Originally uploaded by Chris Matta

Tags, labels, categories

Our library system is doing the 23 Things program and most people are using Blogger for their blog.  Blogger uses “labels” to organize your posts. WordPress uses “categories” but I also have a “tag’ cloud on my site. I wasn’t clear about the differences between tags, labels and categories so I went searching for an answer. It turns out that initially they were very different concepts but they all seem to be essentially the same thing now (… I think).

What’s important for us to know is that it gives you an easy way for your blog readers to group your posts about a particular topic. At the end of the 23 Things program I want to be able to click on the tag/label/category for BCPL2.0 to get all of my posts that had ideas I thought BCPL might be able to use with our customers. Of course this depends on me actually remembering to tag it correctly – that might be a stretch.

1. Categories are like folders on your computer. You can have a category inside of a category. Categories add organization and order whereas tags add descriptions. Eric, from the blog, Internet Duct Tape, describes the differences this way: “Categorizing is like taking all of your socks and putting them into drawers based on colours. Tagging is like sewing a little label on your socks that says when you bought them, how to wash them, and “if lost please return to the dude with the fat cat.” “
2. Tags and Labels are keywords that you can use to “catalog” your posts or pictures. They are handy if you blog about a lot of different subjects, since readers can then choose to view all of your posts on, say, Library2 at once. One post could use the tags Library2, Flickr, mashups. Another post might use Library2, blogs and forums. If you click on the tag “Library2″ you would get all of your posts that have that tag and you would get both of these posts. If you click on the tag “Flickr” you would only get the first post and any others with the same tag. If you have a team blog, you could also give each member their own label, so you could easily read all the posts by any one of them. The nice thing about tags and labels is that they are so flexible. You’re not restricted to someone else’s ideas of how information should be grouped. The down side is if you misspell the tag. You could have Flickr and Flicker.

When tags work and when they don’t: Amazon and LibraryThing 

10 Minute Blog Tips: Creating Compelling Categories

Climbing Out of Category Hell

Using Categories & Tags in WordPress and Other Blogs

purl soho string  Originally uploaded by striatic

Recent Comments widget for your Blogger blog

I wanted to be able to tell people how to add a widget for “Recent Comments” to their blog but didn’t realize how incredibly simple it would end up being! Take a look at the test blog I set up in Blogger  and view the list of recent comments in the left-hand column. There’s a link there that takes you to a site where all you have to do is enter the address of your blog and it will add the widget for you! I found this at Blogger Templates where you can find some other widgets for your Blogger blog too.

Beginning with Blogs

According to Jenny Levine, blogs are a key way for libraries to engage their users, to reach out to their patrons via a back-and-forth communication model online. “Blogs have driven a whole new level of conversation on the Internet,” she explains. “So if we talk about Web 2.0, blogs are one of the biggest drivers of that. It’s quite a different concept for many of us—for those of us who grew up with television and the beginnings of the Internet, where everything was just this one-way information channel, where we’re used to just going somewhere and reading whatever’s there. But kids today expect to be able to interact back. There’s a rising level of expectation of interactivity in Web sites in general.”

Jenny says that blogging is one way for libraries to achieve this interactivity. “Because, right now, your Web sites are very static, and people can’t contribute back to them. Blogging, though, provides one way for your library to get there.”

Of course, Jenny’s talking about using blogs with our external customers, which I think might be a great idea. In the meantime, I think we should start by using blogs for our internal customers, BCPL staff, and that’s what *this* blog is all about. We can talk about what’s happening with technology at BCPL and outside of BCPL. I’ll be interested in hearing what you have to say.

CALM CCD started the first blog for BCPL and it’s working very successfully. I think the best way to start with “Library 2.0″ is to use it internally first, to give staff a chance to play with it and become more comfortable with it. I’m sure there are many BCPL staff who are already using many of the Web 2.0 technologies who can help move us along.

Improving and Changing Communication

People are trying to figure out the best and easiest way to improve how we communicate – forums vs. blogs vs. wikis vs. email. I’ve spent some time thinking about this and the best I can come up with is that each one is better for different things.

1. Blogging is all about the identity of a person or a group. Someone who “meets” that person or that group through their blog should get a good idea of what they’re currently talking about and what’s important to them. Blogging is also used for sharing and distributing knowledge.
2. Wikis are for shared information and collaborative documentation.
3. Email is useful for direct communication but sharing information between a large group via email gets unwieldy and awkward.
4. Forums have been around for a long time and many people are comfortable communicating this way. Group voice is the forum’s real advantage. With so many authors, the forum or message board usually has someone with just the information you need.

What are the Differences Between Message Boards and Weblogs?

Lee Lefever says “Worlds are colliding, people. Your friendly neighborhood message board is not alone in the online community world any longer.”

He has a nice comparison of forums and blogs and believes they are different enough to happily exist together in the same online community web site.

One commenter says “The fact that there’s variety and plenty of choices does nothing but good for all of us and the best way to learn is to jump in and get your feet wet.”

Read this blog message for a funny boxing match comparison between forums and blogs: DeathMatch: Bad, Bad Leroy Blog vs. Mean Mr. Message Board Submitted by leelefever on June 7, 2005 – 10:46am.