No Lolz

This is how you know you read I Can Has Cheezburger? way too much. Here is how I "called" in sick last week:

New Feed! Humble Apologies! Advice-Seeking! Act Now!!!

Ok, so despite the fact that I've had a personal blog for a long time now, I'm still getting used to having a professional-type one, and still learning all the ways to use the blogging software to its maximum potential (and also learning ways of promoting the blog...)

So in that spirit, I've gotten a Feedburner account and made that feed the default feed for the blog. Not that I imagine there are tons of readers out there, but if anyone who subscribed before say, last week, could kindly switch to the new feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheInfoBabe) that would be just the awesomest! :)

Oh, and also, I only just now realized that I hadn't set my account to email me when I had a new comment, so imagine my surprise to see that I actually had a few! Thanks guys, and I'm sorry I didn't reply to them, I didn't know they were there! In the future I promise to be better with that.

And from the other bloggers out there, any tips for a n00b? Good ways to promote yourself without being obnoxious (self-promotion is a tricky subject indeed...)? Or technical stuff regarding blogs that all serious bloggers should know (aggregation, archiving, spam, tracking and analytics...)? Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!

Gorman: You're a Dumbass, Part II

In light of the most recent Gorman crapola-fest, some interesting reading/watching... The first is an article in Library Philosophy and Practice about socially-driven authority, and the second is a clip from The Daily Show of an interview of political strategist Bob Shrum. If you let the video load and then shoot ahead to about 5 minutes in, he makes the following statement: "The blogosphere was a lot more right about Iraq than all the experts..." I just thought it was quite the cooincidence that that quote could come the day after Gorman's ranting about the lack of authority on the web.

I'll Tell You Where You Can File Your Authority...

Ok, I am not even going to comment on the Gorman thing. Seriously, he's like a message board troll. I think dumbasses are sometimes best dealt with by not giving them the satisfaction of knowing they riled you up. I won't even link to his recent remarks, you can read about them here and here and here and here and here if you like.

In fact, the only reason I bring this up at all is because the whole issue is being brought to my attention right after a conversation about writing I had yesterday. I was talking to a friend about how I am interested in foraying into the world of academic publication, why I enjoy blogging, and how I think my blogging has actually made me a better writer in general.

You see, I love electronic publishing in general for the ability it affords to provide instant clarification, background or support for what you are saying (through hyperlinks.) I loved this idea from the very first time I read Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" where he expounded upon the idea of hypertext. To me, this allows authors the ability to add so much more value to their writing, linking to relevant definition, sites, audio and video. (Man, there are some books that I would love to be re-published online with hypertext, so I could get all the author's allusions and references.)

Not to mention, publishing on the internet gives us the ability to instantly fact check... and that makes me strive to be more accurate, not less. Now I'm not saying that the internet is not rife with crap, of course it is, but without leaving my computer I can more easily distinguish between fact and fiction. This leads me to evaluate content based on its own accuracy and reasonability, rather than just based on the reputation of the author and the publication.

In fact, it is this desire to be accurate and back up my statements that has made me a much better scholarly writer, because it has taught me how to recognize vague or opinionated statements when I make them, so I know when I need to cite my sources or provide additional information, a skill that is not always so easy as it sounds.

And the truth is, I have two separate blogs, a personal one and a professional one, and I do in fact treat them differently. For example, in casual writing, I tend not to use capital letters (yes, I know this can be annoying, but it's been a habit of mine for years now...) My writing style here is a little more formal, and I hardly ever mention personal issues that don't deal with librarianship, my career, my education, or my job. (Not that there is anything wrong with mixing the two, my personal life is just a little too personal for general public consumption.)

I honestly don't know what's up the Gormster's bum (besides his head, of course...) If you don't like blogs, don't read them. If you want to get your information elsewhere, well, then, um... get it elsewhere. I don't see how you can feel so strongly against blogging in a world full of war and poverty and suffering. Ok, now I've resorted to commenting on the issue, which I said I wouldn't do... But hey, I'm just a lowly blogger, so you can't trust anything I say anyway...

cyber schizophrenia

Managing my online identities has been a bit of a challenge for me lately. With all these cool web 2.0 apps out there, I really am finding it hard to keep track of it all... I find that just keeping up on my rss feeds and checking out all my social networking profiles is eating up a more and more significant portion of my day.

And as if that's not enough, the other day I had a bit of drama that had me back-tracking my internet steps for about an hour. Now, being the forward-thinking librarian that I am, I try to maintain a "professional" presence online (through this blog, as well as Myspace and Facebook pages, among other things.) But I also have a personal life online, and I work with members of the general population who I do not want knowing everything about me on such a personal level as some of my online entities allow. I generally try very hard to make sure there are as few as possible linkages between my professional and personal online personas. (Obviously I realize that a savvy user can track me down if they really want to, but still, I do my best to maintain a distance between the two...)

So the other day I decided to start writing a new library-related blog (which would allow me to speak as myself, instead of being the "royal we" of my library's blog that I maintain). All was fine until I foolishly went into my Technorati account and claimed my new blog under my old username (which I had used to claim my [very] personal blog). Duh. Super-duh. Because you see, I had included a link in this new blog to my work blog. Now when you looked up my work blog in Technorati, it showed that this new blog linked to it, and when you clicked on the author of this new blog, you saw it was also the author of my [very] personal blog (wow, that was a mouthful, huh?). So I spent the next hour unclaiming and unfavoriting blogs in Technorati so as to destroy the chain of association. Oh yeah, and I had to go into del.icio.us and un-share all my personal links, because this blog links to my blogroll through del.icio.us.

Is it me, or has my online life become incredibly more complicated than my real one?! I mean, I used to be one of those people who didn't really care that I was putting so much out there on the internet, because, really, who the heck was paying all that much attention to little old me? But then you read stories like this, and, little by little, paranoia starts to creep in.

At least I'm not the only one with web 2.0 fever... (And just in case YOU haven't caught it yet, check out The Cool Librarian's Social Software page, it's a great intro to some of the more popular 2.0 apps out there.) Oh, and speaking of cool web 2.0 stuff, if you haven't already seen this video, you NEED to check it out:

Well Hello There, You!

My love of all things web 2.0 and my desire to play in the biblioblogosphere has given birth to yet another blog. I currently have a (very) personal blog, and also maintain a blog for my library, but this one seeks to merge the two me's- personal and professional- into a well-integrated, well-balanced (haha) whole.

When, exactly, I plan on finding time to maintain this blog, I have no idea, seeing as keeping up on the myriad of library/technology/design-related feeds I try to keep current with is fast becoming a full-time job on its own, but alas, I will, at least, try.

My interests in the world of libraries lie mainly in academic libraries, library technology, library 2.0, site design and usability, and supporting the distance student. I currently work as an information services (read: reference, outreach and instructional) librarian in an academic (engineering school) library.