I’m not a huge TV watcher, but there’s something about finding a good blog which reminds me of finding a good TV show. It’s something to look forward to – the next episode or the next blog post. And it’s always a shame when a TV show you liked is cancelled, or when a blog you enjoyed stops posting.

Cancelled TV shows have their reruns and dvd sets, which have their own benefits, but they lack the excitement of viewing a new episode where you really have no idea of what’s going to happen with the characters or how the plot will develop. Most discontinued blogs also have a half-life where they exist as a static web page, and sometimes I get a lot out of reading posts which are several years old. Yet I think that blogs, more than other forms of writing, are creatures of their time. When a post is taken out of its time, it can lose something. Blogs also change and develop over the months and years and that’s one of the things which makes them interesting.

My point is that it’s better to read a blog while it is being written, rather than retrospectively, after it’s stopped.

Last night I was looking through the list of Australian blogs on Libraries Interact. It’s been a little while since I’ve taken a good look at all of the new-to-me blogs that are there. The saddest thing about doing that is that I found a number of well-designed and well-written and innovative blogs which I’ll never really know because it looks like they’ve already been discontinued or abandoned.

I would never criticize anyone for discontinuing or abandoning a blog, as I’ve done both of these things myself. There are good reasons why people do this. I think it’s better if people create blogs and try blogging, only to stop it later on, than if they never try blogging at all.

But abandoned and discontinued blogs aren’t the main subject of this post. What I want to do acquaint myself, and hopefully other readers of this blog, with some of the newish (or at least new to me) Australian blogs.

Here are four which caught my eye. In alphabetical order:

Accidental Aussie
I was particularly glad to find another Australian librarian who’s interested in legal KM and other things relevant to law librarians and special librarians. I also like how this blog pays attention to the similarities and differences between Australia and the USA. I’m kicking myself for not finding this blog earlier.

Angels have the phone box
I like this blog because it’s thoughtful and very different from other librar* blogs I’ve seen lately. Posts often consist of a haiku poem accompanying a picture. It speaks to the right-side of the brain, which is sometimes neglected in the blogosphere. The author of this blog is a New Zealander living in Australia.

Bibliothekia
The tagline of this blog is “21C Libraries / Technology / Web 2.+ / Social Networking / Learning 2.+” So it’s not surprising that there are a number of tech-focused posts here. What I like about Bibliothekia’s approach is that he often links to directly various reports and websites, sources which I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.

Stained Glass Waterfall
Stained Glass Waterfall has some insightful commentary on 2.0 issues, he also has entries about conferences and other library events he’s attended. There are some detailed posts about work-related technology projects, although my favourite would be the lo-fi post with the picture of the walkman with auto reverse.

Statistically Speaking is the name of the Australian Bureau of Statistics blog for “librarians and other like-minded information professionals featuring the latest information, news, tips and stories relating to the Australian Bureau of Statistics”.

It is updated regularly, with about 4 to 5 posts each week, usually highlighting a new or relevant statistical release from the ABS or other government body.  I easily find something useful to my library service on a regular basis also, whether its library funding numbers, updated local demographic figures and more.

I have become a lot more aware of what the ABS is putting out now as a result of this blog and have been able to be more proactive in keeping our library managers aware of information relevant to or about our community.

This is definitely one to get in your feed reader

Today I’ve released an updated version of our popular Aussie Library Blogs page. The page is now built dynamically created using a WordPress plugin that I’ve created with the assistance of the other THALI members. This new way of managing the list of Aussie Library Blogs is exciting in a number of ways including:

1. It is now easier for us to add and manage new links
2. Links are now always in alphabetical order
3. There are options to show “live blogs” and “abandoned blogs”
   (for us to consider a blog abandoned it has not been updated within the last 6 months)
4. Links are still in the categories of “Personal Blogs” and “Corporate Blogs”

This is a new initiative and as such there may be a couple of bugs and other issues that we’re yet to fix. In particular if we’ve, listed your blog incorrectly, put your blog in the wrong category, or haven’t listed your blog and you’ve asked us to. Please contact us using the our contact form, or leave a comment to this post, and we’ll fix your listing as soon as possible.

As the author of the plugin I also ask that you to let me know if you have you any questions or comments about the plugin.

Western Australia’s ALIAWest has joined the blogosphere with Biblia. Billed as “A virtual conversation for librarians in Western Australia”, it hopes to make Biblia (a newsletter , once upon a time – see the newsletter’s archives) “more accessible to today’s generation of library workers”.

I look forward to hearing more about ALIAWest events and WA library events in general (hopefully I’ll be participating, too!).

Oh, and this has got me wondering – how does your local ALIA group communicate with you?

I was as excited as anyone when I saw that librariesinteract had launched, plugging the yawning gap that had appeared in the world of Australian library blogs (the Australiobiblioblogosphere? The biblioblogosouthernhemisphere?). The need for ambitious, inclusive, widely read projects is obvious.

What I have been thinking about, though, is the application of blogs for smaller projects and addressed to more specific readerships.

MPOW is sending me and my colleague Sarah to ALIA 06, and we figured that a blog might be a good way to provide instant interaction with workmates in faraway Sydney. After all, the traditional method of reporting back after the event is pretty unhelpful – a monologue delivered after the event as item 3.2 on the agenda, with the write-up bunged on the intranet and never looked at again. Any idea what your colleagues got up to at ALIA 04? Me neither.

The way we see it, our conference blog has the following characteristics that are different to most blogs:

1) Focussed readership – our target market is specifically library staff at MPOW. It’s a way of breaking down the barrier of time and distance in order to make ALIA 06 meaningful to the library as a whole. (Anybody is welcome to join in the conversation, though!)
2) Short term – we expect the blog to be wound up shortly after the conference
3) Gradual build-up with a burst of intense activity during the conference itself
4) Archived in a meaningful way*

Has anybody else looked at using blogs in this short-term focussed way at their library? What kind of projects have they been used for? Has it been useful? Are there any pitfalls we should look out for?

We’re looking forward to seeing how the blog works out. You can keep up with it at http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/aliaconference/ Maybe we’ll be presenting about it at the next library conference we get to?

*Probably the Sydney eScholarship Repository, which is an interesting project itself. Come and hear about it if you are coming to ALIA 06.