My apologies to Jenelle. This one slipped through  our net. Enjoy some fresh new blogs. Kathryn

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Woohoo lets get all bloggy for Blog Day!

Five from Jenelle are -

TVnewser – Part of Media Bistro, this blog is for anyone who is as hooked on the goings on in TV news media as I am. As they say… ‘it is news about the news’.

Stuck in the 80s – The blog of one of one of my favourite weekly podcasts. Very addictive!

Skullset – A favourite photoblog of mine, lots of people watching and scenes from urban LA.

Tasty blog snack – Blog by Justine Ezarik (aka iJustine) – lots of videos to keep you coming back for more. You should at least visit so you can see her hugely popular AT&T iPhone bill.

The Purse Blog – Forget shoes, I am a bag girl. This blog satisfies all my bag-lady needs.

Blog Day 2007
Blog Day

I’m playing around a little with the restrictions for Blog Day 2007 and going for a combination of blogs I’ve recently come across, blogs I’ve re-discovered and blogs that continue to delight with new content…admittedly that last is stretching the rules ever so slightly. Some of my interests of late have veered toward the esoteric and the obscure. So here are 5 blogs that have crossed my path:

• language hat – I’ve always had an interest in words and translations, nevermind changes across editions. I came across this blog in the blogroll of an old favourite that ceased a year or so back.
• Dark Roasted Blend – I’m a little undecided on this one at the moment, however I’ve linked to the post that attracted my attention rather than main page. This blog is picture intensive covering interesting quirks.
• The Presurfer – This is an old favourite that I’ve not read in a long, long time, a site for generalists. It’s been running since 2000.
• xkcd – one of my favourite cartoons, it appeals to the geek philosopher in me.
• Arts & Letters Daily – Another old favourite I’ve recently returned to. I used to cite articles from it regularly in my early blogging days. Somehow I overlooked it when populating my aggregator. Revisiting the blogroll of my old blog reminded me of its absence in my current reading.

One of the primary blog discovery tools I used, or used to use and now lament, is the humble blogroll. These days I read most blogs via an aggregator and rarely visit the actual blog. In doing so I miss the bits around the blog: the look and feel, the colour, the typesetting, and the blogroll. Some sites have extensive rolls and others keep it tight. It was always a delight to happen upon a long and interesting list, plenty of food to pick at, avenues to explore. I would jump from blogroll to blog to new roll and on, finding myself in faraway places, feeding on curiosities ranging from the mundane to the outlandish.

Following on the theme from the Thali, in celebration of Blog Day 2007, here are 5 blogs, new to me this year, which I am enjoying.

Annoyed Librarian – the devil’s advocate in many a discussion, with a particular rant over Library 2.0 at present, which has been picked up across the biblioblogosphere. Always good to hear a dissenting voice – makes you think hard about what you believe.

Library Voice – I was fortunate to attend a very practical presentation by Chad Boeninger at Computers in Libraries 2007. His blog continues that theme, with very practical techy, library type stuff.

Walt at random – one of my favourite library writers, gives me plenty to digest and mull over – I hang out for his Cites and Insights newsletter every month. His blog gives me a fix between issues.

OPLIN 4cast – I spent the day at OPLIN in April. This blog focusses on four key issues for the time and brings together links from various sources to give a good round up of the topic. Often they are links to sources I have not seen.

Uncontrolled Vocabulary – I have to jump on the bandwagon here with Kathryn. The podcast is awesome, its informative, casual and lots of fun.

These are my five new(ish) subscriptions for BlogDay2007

1. Social Networking Libraries – Research on social networking tools and their use in libraries.
2. iLibrarian — News and resources on Library 2.0 and the information revolution.
   The title kind of reminds me of Tarzan movies. I Librarian, You Jane?
3. Ambient Connections via Ron Edwards — Innovations in game, mobile and other cool technologies that matter
4. infotangle — Elyssa Kroski’s interests in emerging technologies, web 2.0, information and libraries.
5. intranetblog.com — intranet musings, best practices, case studies and evolution.

BlogDay2007

BlogDay2007 is here! Here are five blogs that I have found especially interesting:

Presentation Zen: Focused on creativity, design and giving good presentations whether at conferences, classes, work or wherever. Although it’s primarily about public presentations, it also has lots of great advice about being creative and presenting information (eg statistics) clearly – relevant for most of us who do this type of work now and then.

Juice Analytics: On a similar theme, Juice discusses how to present information, dashboards, data visualisation and data mining. This blog veers into business intelligence territory, a good field to follow.

Science Library Pad: I’m not a science librarian, but I have a strong interest in eResearch, the future of scholarly communication and researcher behaviour and science blogs are where it’s at. This blog does a great job of summarising trends and technology as they apply to libraries.

Gaping Void: Smart, funny cartoons about business, life, creativity etc (note: some language).

The Journey Itself is Home: Tour blog by various members of Björk’s band and crew. Fascinating because it gives insights into life on the road, a good example of what many bands are doing with blogs now.

Blog Day is a good time to reflect on what’s in my reader. Right now, I don’t have any non-English blogs that I’m reading, which should be recitified. You can auto-translate feeds using Yahoo! Pipes so it’s easier than ever to keep up with happenings in Europe, Japan and elsewhere (even if the translations aren’t always perfect).

This year I’ve added lots of feeds about research, presentations, and leadership. I’ve dropped a lot of journal TOC feeds (ironically, I just added the TicTOCs project blog).

Blog Day 2007
Blog Day

I think this is my third Blog Day – time flies when you’re having fun!

Five blogs that I find interesting? My picks (I’m going to cheat a bit and call them new, even if they’re only new to me):

Ockham’s Razor, subtitled musings of the lazyst environmentalyst. Written by Clare, “a librarian doing research”, this blog is mainly about environmental issues and what we can do to reduce our impact on the planet.

How to Save the World, written by Dave Pollard. I don’t really know how to describe this blog. I suppose you could say that Dave writes about all sorts of issues to do with the future of our world. Sometimes I find myself not able to read it because I find the ideas so confronting and challenging. Always a lot to learn from this blog. Morgan first brought this blog to my attention – thanks Morgan!

Treasure Trove of Useless Information by Damien Wang, a librarian with the National Library Board of Singapore. Those Singaporeans are doing lots of interesting things!

Matilda. Perry Middlemiss writes this blog, which is all about Australian literature.

Problogger by Darren Rowse. This is definitely not a new blog, but it’s an interesting one if you want to learn more about blogging, ways to improve your blog, and ways to make money by blogging. (Not that I’ve ever considered being a pro blogger, myself. I like my day job too much )

Happy Blog Day! What are your favourite blogs, and why?

BlogDay2007

Happy Blog Day 2007.

Here’s five blogs that have been going for less than a year, that I find interesting:

Mobile Technology in TAFE – Sue Waters is a passionate addict of new technologies and combines her job of finding out about e-learning, m-learning and Web2.0 with that of lecturing in fish farming. Right now she is competing in the 31 Days to a Better Blog challenge.

Uncontrolled Vocabulary Ok, so it’s a bit like calling Big Brother a web site, but it does have a blog and it is new. The main part of Uncontrolled Vocabulary is a weekly podcast that anyone can join in, discussing issues in librarianship raised in the media and online during the last week.

When Convention Fails – New Worlds can be Found – Here is Zane’s description of what his blog is about:

My mum is a lecturer in marketing, advertising and international business. Mum also knows more than I realised about the online worlds I am used to – myspace, online gaming – X-Box and Playatation as well as knowing alot about tools and other things that I did not know existed.
I am a year 10 student in Melbourne Australia and have not had a great time at school due to having chronic fatigue for along time.
Mum gave me a choice to continue in formal education for the remainder of this year (at school) or to work alongside her, learning what I need to and more – that is what she told me.
I have decided to let mum guide me and will be learning from home, using social networking tools and technologies as well as other online materials, mum has found.

Al Upton and the Minilegends A class of 8 and 9 year olds at Gelenelg School in South Australia who are using a blog extensively in their classroom. They each have their own blog. Check out their “6 word story challenge“.

Virtually a Librarian: Kate Davis, who has run a couple of sessions about millenials and libraries moved from the National Library of Australia in mid-July to the Gold Coast. Looks like it sparked her to set up her own blog. I look forward to more from her.

BlogDay2007