Comments on: Thinking About A Library Blog

By: Barbara Fister

Barbara Fister — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 23:45:19 +0000

This is extremely cool. We’ve been talking at our library about how to make our new books page more visible. Well, this would sure do the trick.

I admit – we have had students come to the reference desk with Amazon printouts: “do we have this?” There’s a lot about Amazon’s search that frankly drives me wiggy, but the cover art and reviews and “search inside” features are attractive. I have privacy concerns about recommendations based on storing personal information but I know people have come to expect them. Now if we could have a “related records”-type linking system based on common citations… hmm, dream on Barbara.

By: Edward Vielmetti

Edward Vielmetti — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 22:13:02 +0000

Hi, I’ve updated the wall of books notes at

http://vielmetti.typepad.com/superpatron/2006/01/wall_of_books_u.html

I’m still thinking about how I can make this more useful or usable (and a fair bit of it is for me so that I can snag new books even though I am not at the library very much).

The history of library patrons doing real work with catalog interfaces is pretty broad, if you look more generally at the people who are not librarians trying to get data in and out of bibliographic systems. What happens more often than not is that patrons get frustrated by creaky and baroque library software and instead turn to Amazon and its well documented web services interface for their browsing needs. There’s a ton of Amazon based services out there.

By: steven bell

steven bell — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 11:38:06 +0000

I had read about the superpatron blog. Thanks for bringing it to the attention of ACRLog readers. It, like the library blog at AADL, is a bit of an anomaly. The library blog at AADL is certainly a good example of how a library blog could blend well with its community. I think superpatron is not likely to be much duplicated elsewhere (in other public library communities) – although it would be nice to have patrons who show their appreciation in this way – want to help build the digital library. If there were more library patrons like Vielmetti than the OCLC “Perceptions” report would have been quite different.

By: Lisa Hinchliffe

Lisa Hinchliffe — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 04:32:59 +0000

It relates to a public library but fascinating to think about along with the question of whether patrons read library blogs is the new SuperPatron blog (http://vielmetti.typepad.com/superpatron/):

“Superpatron is a weblog for library patrons who love their libraries, who take advantage of everything they have to offer, and are always on the lookout for great ideas that libraries around the world are doing.”

Maybe users are more interested in “creating the library” than we thought?

Take a look at the Wall of Books (http://vielmetti.typepad.com/superpatron/2005/12/visual_wall_of_.html) – what a great way to browse!

By: Scott Walter

Scott Walter — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 16:43:41 +0000

There are some user statistics included as part of this early study of the Georgia State blog experience (one of the richer blog programs currently coming out of an academic library):

Vogel, T. M., & Goans, D. (2005). Delivering the news with blogs: The Georgia State University library experience. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 10 (1), 5-27.