Well… we wanted to blog the Australian Library and Information Association‘s Click06 conference here in Perth.(Nothing to do with me missing the entire conference while on a five week family holiday). A group of us Ozlibloggers have also been talking about setting up a collaborative blog.
Half way through the Click06 blog setup, We thought we may as well use the domain name and hosting site for the Australian Libraryland blog. Here we are.
Process was interesting. We wanted a wiki and a blog. We started off thinking we’d use WordPress and MediaWiki. Three hours later, we decided we wanted to use Word Press and Mediawiki. Little did we realise that the seemilngly pointless circles we’d wound ourselves in would mean that the next day’s work was much easier. We’d already thrashed out many of the philosophical and organizational issues en route from A to A.
Why Word Press?
- very widely used
- some librarians may have encountered it
- large number of templates available.
What type of look did we want?
- clear, uncluttered,easy to read
- easy to see what to click on to do what you want.
We evaluated hosting sites, deciding on a US based one, bluehost as we got a lot more storage space for a much lower price. librariesinteract.info came about because .au names were hard to register if we were not an incorporated organisation..and many other names were already taken. It’s growing on me and I quite like it now.
This weekend, we set up the basic structures for the librariesinteract.info and the Let’s Blog Click06 blogs. We’ve suggested categories, set up email accounts and users. We’ve seen more templates than we ever want to see again (Pity this one was lime green, pity that one wouldn’t download, wish the WordPress template site could bring up all templates with calendars). We’ve thought about the scope of the blog. We still need to run all this by our other “Ozlibloggers”, so all may change.
We’re also planning an event to introduce W.A. bloggers to the “Let’s Blog Click06″ blog.
Feed
July 9, 2006 at 20:10
If post is large, then comments window appears at bottom of the screen without being obvious.
July 9, 2006 at 20:11
There is no preview commet=nts..but I’m sure we can plug in something???..certainly we can set up a scrambled word verification.
July 9, 2006 at 20:12
Thispost is not in “house style”…way too cluttered, too many words, too fussy. Will try again when the great cable under the sea is fixed.
July 9, 2006 at 20:23
Need to change info that appears on the browser bar. Current title is “Andreas 04″, picked up from the template.
July 9, 2006 at 21:35
It’s all very exciting. I’m starting to feel exhausted now, but very pleased and looking forward to blogging here!
July 10, 2006 at 07:40
Looking good. Awesome effort.
July 10, 2006 at 07:48
Thanks snail..now all it needs is content and an audience…and any changes you guys want made.
July 10, 2006 at 07:53
Sorry, just posted in my cat’s name.
July 10, 2006 at 15:59
Hi, it’s great to have a site like this, great effort indeed. However, as a user, I find that the ‘Categories’ quite hard to use, as in they are referring to the same post. Anyway, thanks for setting this up. Cheers.
July 10, 2006 at 17:45
Hi. Same person as Sirexkat here. Thanks for your compliment Hoi.
Yes, I understand about the categories. we only have one “real” post, and I assigned it all categories so that we could see them on the sidebar. The sidebar only shows categories that have a post assigned.
Word Press claims to have subcategories, but they are not quite what librarians would call subcategories. They have a rather dysfunctional parent/child relationship. Will keep working on them…watch this space.
(BTW we welcome “make it better” feedback like yours)
July 11, 2006 at 11:12
Hi Librarian Kathryn,
I noticed your comment about putting the post in all the categories so they would appear in the side bar. With a little editing of the template you can get the same result without needing to have one post in all the categories.
We had this similar issue with a WordPress Blog I worked on while I was working in the Library. The link below is to information about the template tag that creates the category list.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/list_cats
Hope this helps, I look forward to making this blog one of the many in my aggregator.
-Corey
July 11, 2006 at 12:18
Lovely template, guys. Very nice to read. Thanks for the link!!
July 11, 2006 at 15:17
As a library student and a librarian (and a library clerk/officer), I wonder are there any non-librarians out there who blogs and at the same time, really looking forward to read something from a library student points of view…. (thinking aloud)
July 11, 2006 at 21:08
Thanks Corey, we will investigate!
Where is your blog?
Howdy Genevieve! Would you like to join us? (I thought about asking you but wasn’t sure if it would be too overwhelming given your existing blogs and the fact that you are group blogging on Sarsparilla already…)
Hi Hoi – non-librarians who blog? I think there are millions
Would you like to contribute to our blog as well?
July 12, 2006 at 09:24
Hi CW,
My personal Blog, since moving out of the Library and onto a project here at the same Uni is at.
http://techxplorer.wordpress.com/
I guess I’m cheating a bit here by using the WordPress hosting website.
The blog that I set up, and used to manage, is at the following URL.
http://library.usq.edu.au/wordpress/
Hope this helps.
-Corey