Vicki’s LIS 757 Blog

Since I was one of the presenters this week I don’t have much to add in terms of comments about the readings or have any additional comments about wikis just yet!  But I will say that if you don’t get to play with all the links we provided I think the bit on blikis are quite nifty and is worth checking out.  I think they are particularly interesting because our group used both a blog to present and a wiki to collaborate, so why not have one tool?  There are obvious reasons for having a blog and a wiki as separate entities but what do we think about having a new manifestation of them combined?   (I look forward to upcoming conversations about them.)  I also really enjoyed the Wikipedia: TourBusStop, and thought it was a neat way to “explore”.  I also think you will enjoy checking out wikis from the back end by playing around with our group wiki, lis757wikimania.  At first it was a little scary because there’s a little more to it than just copy and paste.  You have to know the “wiki language” a bit to be able to make your links work (my great challenge — thanks for the help Tamara!), however once you found your grove it was as easy as pie! As for the case studies, I’m particularly fond of the Ohio University Libraries Biz Wiki and the this take on library research guides.  I also am interested to follow the Wiki WorldCat (WikiD) Pilot to see where it goes, because as Heather said in her comment to our presentation it is great to read the Amazon & Chapters reviews but you never know when they are coming from a publisher, so it will be interesting to read patron reviews and to see how the WorldCat deals with publisher posts.

OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) should be simple, but I’m having a tough time wrapping my head around it.  The article on OMPL 2.0 draft spec was interesting but I needed some background first so I hit the Wikipedia article on OPML.  Aha! Though it’s not crystal clear I think I understand it a bit more.  I was confused by what they mean by, an OPML is a format for outlines.  I didn’t really see the link with RSS feeds until I read Wikipeida, who puts it simply and says OPML is now commonly used to “exchange lists of RSS feeds between RSS aggregators”.  Beyond this I found the Wikipedia article little too technical but I think I get it enough to see how libraries can use OPML to offer groups or bundles of “feeds” on the same topic.  Rather than add each feed individually, they can offer an OPML link that would allow the users to subscribe to all the new library events eg., children’s events and adult events under the heading of event. Or in the case of academic libraries the user can subscribe to all the feeds on Canada Heath as an example from the University of Manitoba.  Hopefully I’m on board and understand OPML, I’ll have to check out the other course blogs to see if I’m on page. J 

Stephen’s OPML Generator was really good at explaining OPML in a simple way that I understand!  Wish I had checked this out before the other sites haha.  It was relatively easy to create my own OPML compiling about 5 feeds that I like to read regularly (at least I think I’ve done it right).

Feed2JS (aka Feed to JavaScript) “just a cut ‘n paste away” you say?  No knowledge of XML you say?  This was a great site, I loved the “why are you doing this?” section, straight to the point. I liked how the instructions were written in plain English with minimal technical jargon and the step by step explanations were clear.  The RSS2HTML site was a little more serious and scary than Feed2JS.  It gets right to the point, option 1, option 2, alternatives, no explanations, no easing into it.  While the instructions were clear it was a bit overwhelming for someone new to all of this. Even though I’m using wordpress and you can add a feed using the “add a sidebar widget” option, I tried out Feed2JS and it created a JavaScript cut and past for me in seconds!  It was really easy to use but I couldn’t figure out where to paste the script it had generated in my wordpress blog to make it work.  Thanks to Heather who I messaged and called in a panic, I realized with wordpress you have to use their tool.  How does it work for those of you using blogs other than wordpress? 

I choose a feed from KMworld (great site!) that is related to what I hope to do for my final paper.  It worked relatively well but I’ve hit a stump!  The first problem is that KMworld asks that you link to their site as part of your RSS feed and you use their logo.  For the life of me I cannot figure out how to do this on word press.  If you check my link in the sidebar you’ll see the title link “www.kmworld.com” doesn’t work, the article links work just fine though.  The second problem is finding a way to include their logo.  Does anyone know how or is this even possible with wordpress? DIGRESSION à while I’m on the subject of HELP I can’t get wordpress to do what I want!  I thought I’d throw this in and see what everyone has to say: a while ago I said I’d look into adding an about page with a picture.  I went through the steps and filled that section out using the wordpress templates but I can’t figure out how to get it to show up!  Any suggestions as to what I’m missing or doing wrong would be great!!

The social skills feed collections from the Seattle Public Library would have been quite useful in my undergrad years when it was all I could do to get a few good, current sources for my psych courses.  However, this page of their site was not very good at explaining what exactly it is you are looking at and how you can put it to use.  It’s great that we know it is a feed from the Seattle Public Library’s catalog but if we didn’t know what feeds were and we ended up here it would be nice to give us a brief note on what it is.  Sure, it explains that is an RSS feed meant to be displayed in a newsreader (which by the way they do not link to any of the examples provided – also would have been handy), but when you click on the link it doesn’t give you a feed to add it actually shows you the list from that feed.  So is this website the alternative to a newsreader, do I still need a news reader, exactly how to I make the best use of this information that has been kindly compiled for me?  When you click on the Social Skills Feed hyper link just below the Library title it takes you to a quick catalog search.  Even now that I’m familiar enough with RSS feeds I found this site quite confusing.  I think it’s a great idea to get feeds from typical searches but a little help and direction with using them would be great. 

The vendors were a bit better at explaining the new ability to turn your alerts into RSS feeds.  Ebsco’s  RSS feed information release was good in its intro blurb but the screen shots it provided came with no explanations of what you were looking at and what it meant.  This may be clear for alert subscribers, but not for someone like me seeing it at the first time.  However, the Engineering Village 2  and ProQuest RSS explanations were good.  They explained what it was, how to do it and most importantly I think they would made sense to someone who is not so familiar with this new RSS business.