This week begins the LIS 901-06 course on Web 2.0 at LIU’s Palmer School of Library Science. I want to thank everyone who helped beta test the website community, and to invite anyone who would like to follow along to go ahead and check it out. It’s a social community in which the students will be able to participate, and it’s built in Drupal. If you’d like to check it out, please go to: http://www.infosherpas.com/fall2007/

To find out what the website is all about, and what you can do on it, you may want to check out the LIS 901-06 Introductory Tour webcast I created (it’s about 3 minutes). There are also several other webcasts which will teach the students how to accomplish specific tasks.

For those of you who are curious about Drupal, the website was created using Drupal v. 5.2 and I utilized the following modules in my implementation:
CCK
Development
Event
Image
Image Assist
Avatar Selection
Chat Room
FAQ
Favorite Nodes
Feedback
Forward
Guestbook
Masquerade
Month
Service Links
Signup
Tabbed Blocks
Thickbox
TinyMCE
Buddylist
Tagadelic
Views

I also designed a custom user profile file by following the instructions on the Drupal website here. If anyone would like to copy and use my user profile code for their own social network, please feel free to download my file here. And for those of you with more budget than time, don’t forget about my consulting services.

The New York Times ran a story about bloggers whose efforts led succesfully to a career goal, and one of them is me!!! Okay, I really have to stop jumping up and down now…I’m just so thrilled that librarians are starting to get so much press!!

Here’s the story: Blogging Your Way Into a Business

I just got word that my book, Web 2.0 for Librarians and Information Professionals is up on the Neal-Schuman website and is available for pre-order, for all of you who’ve been wondering! This is very exciting for me to see it up there with the ISBN and the marketing copy, etc! This has been a great experience for me, thanks Neal-Schuman! And also, thanks to Michael Stephens who has written my foreword!

(I was given this .pdf flyer from the publisher which offers a $10 discount on pre-orders and was told that those ordering by phone - (866) 672-6657 - could also ask for the discount).

I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about what types of workshops I teach, so I thought I’d just let everyone know in a blog post. I teach half-day (3 hour) workshops for library consortiums, state libraries, etc. (anyone who’ll have me, really!) I teach hands-on, interactive workshops using wikis which I create as tools for my students to have going forward, after the class.

At the beginning of the class, everyone signs into the wiki and can click around and follow along at their own pace. Each type of technology or project planning aspect is covered on a different page of the wiki with clickable case studies of how libraries are implementing them, as well as participatory exercises. I provide usernames and passwords for each of the technology types, as I have set up workshop accounts for everyone to “play” with. By the end of the workshop, everyone will have touched several different technology types and will have experienced things like creating a blog post, adding to a wiki, bookmarking a website, cataloging a book, adding a widget, favoriting a photo, etc.

I’ve included some screenshots of my workshops to give you some ideas, but if you’d like advice about how to set up a workshop like this, feel free to write me with your questions. If you are interested in having me come to teach a workshop and would like to have a closer look at the wikis, let me know and I’ll be happy to send you the links and passwords.

The August issue of Choice is finally out!! I have been waiting expectantly for this issue in particular because I had the pleasure of writing the essay that’s featured in it. Susanne Bjorner who authored the buying guide was my very talented editor on the project and she really helped me whip my article into shape. Thanks Fran for this amazing opportunity!

Well, it’s official. I will be teaching LIS 901-06: Web 2.0 at Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library Science this fall. And what’s more, people have actually signed up already to take my class!!! I am incredibly excited about this opportunity, and I will be calling on (bugging) some people in the field who are already doing this, and doing it well, for advice. In particular, Michael Stephens, Steven Bell, and Amanda-Etches Johnson who are all pros. And I’ll finally be able to put my Drupal skills to the test, as I’ll be creating a website community for the class.

I would like to give a special shout-out here to Michael Stephens who really helped me brainstorm about how to make this goal of mine into a reality. Thanks again, Michael!

I just got my copy of “Library 2.0 and Beyond” in the mail. This is very exciting because I contributed chapter 8 on the subject of Folksonomies. I had the chance to work with a really great editor, Nancy Courtney, (who also happens to be super-nice in person), and the roster of contributing authors is amazing. I’m so glad I got to be a part of this publication.

I got an email earlier today from my friend Matt Bolin (thanks Matt!) who let me know that my talk “Information Design for the New Web” at Computers in Libraries was written up in a Tech Brief in the June/July issue of American Libraries (page 48 for those of you who want to check it out). Awesome!!

I wanted to let everyone know about the new Facebook application for those of you who are using LibGuides called LibGuides Librarian. LibGuides is a white-label subscription service which enables libraries to create a branded community of librarian-created subject guides or portals for their users. These subject guides, or libguides can incorporate all kinds of content, pull in RSS feeds, embed videos, podcasts, custom search engines, etc. Librarians are given profiles which aggregate all of their guides, contact information, and even live chat widgets.

LibGuides are a product of Springshare, a company which is really in touch with its user base. I contacted Slaven last Thursday afternoon about wanting a Facebook application which would allow me to show off my LibGuide “Web 2.0 for Info Pros” to potential users on Facebook. Well, they must have worked all weekend over at Springshare because early this morning I had install instructions for a new Facebook application designed as per my request! For those of you who would like to add the LibGuides Librarian application here’s the url (it’s not yet listed in the Facebook apps directory).

Thanks LibGuides!

They also have a nice website widget:

Here’s the video of the talk I gave at the Ohio State University Libraries Library 2.0 conference in June. I really enjoyed the conference, all of the other speakers were very interesting, and everyone was super-nice. To check out the rest of the talks, go to the main presentation page here.