Week 6, Assignment 11- Technorati & tags

Bleh! There are a lot of numbers out there, aren't there? Personally, for the most part, I don't care if anyone is reading my blog. I'm not doing it for the money etc. However, if I was doing a blog for the library, or for a business, etc, I definitely WOULD care. It is definitely helpful for the reference and research librarians to know which sites are popular, and for the appropriate staff to know how to market our libraries, and engage our users. Outreach is essential for our organization or else we won't reach our patrons. So these statistics about how many hits libraries are getting, and learning about how to tag the posts, etc. are important from that point of view.

I did the Discovery exercise. My first time through I was very unimpressed by Technorati. It looked boring. IceRocket seemed much cooler, and drew me in faster. It took me a while to find what I was looking for on Yahoo and Google. In fact on Google, I never did find "Collaborative" and "Library and Information Science". I gave up after a while. After going through all of the material for this assignment, I did go back and go the Challenge. I signed up with Technorati, and submitted my blog to be claimed. I didn't set up a WatchList though.

One thing that is frustrating is that even with RSS feeds, there is still so many places and so many sites to use. Lots of resources, and some of them do different things, but there are some overlaps too. It wasn't mentioned, but I also like Google Analytics, and I think that might cover some of the same material that these sites had as well. At least with Google, all the different appls are under one account. I don't have to go from site to site, trying to remember user names and passwords for each one etc.

Numbers are really not my thing though, and although I'd love to make money at this stuff, I know it's not going to happen. I'm not writing a Disney blog, with paid sponsers, I'm not writing a booksellers blog and selling books. I'm just blogging here about these 23 things. Nothing commercial about it, and it really doesn't matter how many visitors I get or anything else.

Okay, enough. Onwards to a lighter assignment in #12 I think.

Week 4, Assignment #8, Third Clip

http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?sub=2787046&site=27957

Getting dad a library... outreach, customer service, etc... I can relate to this one on a number of levels. My dad does go to the library but my mother doesn't. She doesn't understand computers and probably wouldn't be able to use the modern card catalogs. The only books she reads are the ones she buys at the second-hand store. My dad goes to his local library, uses the internet, and is friendly with the librarian. Then again, he also works for WRMLS now too.

For me, I waited until our local library joined CW MARS before I got our family a library card. We go once or twice a month, but I am only getting things for my 3 year old daughter there. The staff is nice, but the space is tiny, and the hours are limited. As a consequence, I've also become a patron at other nearby libraries as well. Wendell has a bigger library, with better Saturday hours, but they don't have good internet service and their catalog isn't online that I know of. Actually, I'm not sure if I've seen their library catalog. I just browse the shelves and look for something interesting. They aren't part of the CW MARS thing and still check out books and do library cards the old fashioned way. Leverett is good, but out of my way, so I haven't spent much time there. Since it's so close to the elementary school though, I'm sure the kids use it a lot. I've heard good things about Pelham too, but haven't gotten over there yet.

Customer service has got to be difficult for local libraries. I know their staffing is limited and so are their resources, but if they want to draw people in, they really need to be on their toes. I think for the most part the ones around here are doing that, but I'm sure it's a struggle.