Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Guide (Paperback)

by Michael P. Sauers (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Libraries increasingly use blogs and RSS feeds to reach out to users, while librarians blog daily on a range of personal and professional topics. The way has been paved by the tech-savvy and resource-rich, but any library or librarian can successfully create and syndicate a blog today. In this readable book, author, Internet trainer, and blogger Michael P. Sauers, M.L.S., shows how blogging and RSS technology can be easily and effectively used in the context of a library community. Sauers showcases interesting and useful blogs, shares insights from librarian bloggers, and offers step-by-step instructions for creating, publishing, and syndicating a blog using free Web-based services, software, RSS feeds, and aggregators.

About the Author
Michael P. Sauers is the Internet trainer for BCR's Member Services Division, and a part time reference librarian for the Arapahoe County Library District. He is currently on the Board of Trustees for the Aurora Public Library and the board of the Friends of the Aurora Public Library. He is the author of seven books on technology for librarians and has written dozens of articles for library industry journals.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Information Today (October 29, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573872687
• ISBN-13: 978-1573872683
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #916,586 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Blogging and RSS for Dummies, April 30, 2007

By	A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I am not a blogger or a librarian, but by the end of the year I should be both. So this seemed like a good book to check out so I can hit the blogosphere and job market running. Now, before I start kvetching, let me state that this book does a perfectly good job at what it does, and my primary complaint is that I wish it did more, and did it in greater depth.

Basically, this is "Blogging and RSS for Dummies", with a very small dollop of librarian content. Yes, it kicks off with about 70 pages on "The Library Blogosphere," however the bulk of this material is devoted to the ten or so "stars" of library blogging (shiftedlibrarian, librarystuff, librarian.net, etc.). You get small write ups about each of these blogs, excerpts to indicate their tone, screenshots, and then their authors' answers to a brief questionnaire. This may be useful if you've got a lot to say about the profession and aim to crack their ranks, or if you're new to blogs and want to know what the good librarian ones are (although a two minute online search would lead you to the same blogs), but there's very very little information about how libraries use blogs. I guess the book I really want to read would be something like "Blogging and RSS for Libraries" (not "Librarians").

When it comes to actual blog creation, Sauers limits his tutorial (and that's what it is) to the free "Blogger" service (now a Google property), with only a one paragraph mention of server-based packages such as WordPress, MoveableType, and TypePad. Blogger is great at what it does -- you can have a nice-looking, free, basic blog up and running in minutes (well, as long as you have a Gmail account). However, most libraries are likely going to need the flexibility and custom features of the more robust server-based packages noted above. Blogger is so easy and well-documented that most people can probably skip the 40 pages of hand-holding covering blog set-up and preferences. Still, if that's what you need, this book does an outstanding job of walking you through the process, with plenty of screenshots to illustrate the way. However, it would have been far more useful to devote that space to server-based packages, which do require more hand-holding.

RSS is a bit more complicated and thus somewhat more worthy of Sauer's baby-step explanations. Again, the focus is on the simplest method, so while various flavors of aggregators are mentioned (stand-alone client, embedded client, and server-based), Sauers advocates and concentrates on the popular web-based Bloglines service (which now belongs to Ask.com). Again, Bloglines is so well documented, I'm not sure what the point of a lengthy print-based guide to account setup and maintenance is, but if you need it, it's here. And although RSS is of clear benefit to an individual librarian who's trying to keep informed, it's never explained how or why libraries might want to implement it to serve information to their users. RSS has some real practical applications, especially in special libraries, but these are never mentioned. There's a chapter outlining feeds that may be of interest to librarians, but again, these are easily found online, and I'm not sure what the point of putting them in print (where the information will be outdated almost instantly) is, when they could just all be listed on a companion web page. I'm also not sure what the value is of seeing a screenshot for every single blog and feed mentioned (another quibble is that these are often reproduced too lightly for easy legibility).

In the end, this isn't a bad starting point if you know nothing about blogs or RSS, but for anyone with even a minimum exposure to these tools and a specific interest in how their use might improve library service, it's unlikely to be very useful.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Only for the really fainthearted, February 26, 2007

By	Bloganon (London) - See all my reviews

I had this bookmarked in my 'must buy' list months before it came out. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. If you have absolutely no experience in this area then this book is probably for you. If however you have any experience in this field then you may well want to look elsewhere. The overview of longerterm Library bloggers in the field was an interesting insight, but overall the whole package was disappointing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable resource , February 3, 2007

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Guide is a solid introduction to blogging written especially for librarians, by a librarian. Internet trainer, blogger, and part-time reference librarian Michael P. Sauers recommends the best blogs, gathers and shares blogging advice from fellow librarians, and walks the reader step-by-step through creating, publishing, and syndicating a blog with free Web-based services, software, RSS feeds, and aggregators. Librarians of all skill and experience levels in the rapidly changing culture and technology of blogging are sure to find valuable insights, instructions, and tips in this invaluable resource covering a topic often overlooked by classical library science instruction.