what gorman got right what is lisnews? strengths and weaknesses history statistics news a look...
TRANSCRIPT
What Gorman Got Right
What is LISNews?
Strengths and Weaknesses
History
Statistics
News
A Look Behind the Scenes
People
Geeky Stuff
The Future of LISNews
Today
What Gorman Got Right1. Bloggers Ain’t Editors
2. Blogging is not always scholarly
3. We are boosters and hopeful
4. We do move too fast
5. Some of us are fanatical digitalists
6. We are quick to judge and criticize
7. We write too fast and emotional
8. Sometimes we only need random facts and paragraphs
LISNews is not…
• A meblog (journal)
• “interactive electronic diary” where the unpublishables communicate our thoughts.
What is LISNews?• Online librarian
community• Slashcode powered
weblog• Mailing list• RSS Feeds• Collection of blogs• User comments• News • Place for a discussion
of ideas
What Else?• A database of :
– 14,000 news stories, links and articles– 16,000 comments– 3,000 journals (blog) entries
• LISNews is a loosely connected group of librarians and others who share things they find interesting
• LISNews is an online collaborative community of librarians (and others) who take time to educate, inform, infuriate and amuse others
• LISNews is just one of over 100 library blogs that can be read @ LISFeeds.com
Strengths and Weaknesses• Strengths
– Open: comments, journals, discussions, submissions, and multiple authors
– Collaborative – More visitors, submissions, comments, stories
and participation– Community that supports site financially– Fast server– HTML decent enough to be displayed on most
browsers
Strengths and Weaknesses
• Weaknesses– Open: Comments, journals, discussions– More visitors, more submissions, more comments and
more participation– HTML only decent enough to be displayed on most
browsers– Too fast and/or too slow – Too many and/or too few authors– Inconsistent– Untrammeled by editors (see Gorman, 2005)
History
• November 2, 1999 [1.0]
• March 2000: PHPSlash
• December 2002: Dedicated ServerLISHost.org
• August 2003: Slashcode
• January 2004: Alone once again
The News
• Why do people visit LISNews? 1. News
2. Comments
3. Journals
4. Gives librarian fetishists a place to find their soul mates
5. Community feeling
6. They have a voice
7. Class assignment
8. Recommended by friend/colleague
All The News That Fits
• What makes a good story?
• What makes a popular story?
• How do we find our stories?
• Stories are the comments
• Let’s post a story!
People
• A community of about 4,000 “librarians”– Diverse: Age, Politics, Jobs– Argumentative– Funny– International– Don Saklad
• Geeks
My Role
• Editor• Author• Programmer• Systems administrator• Help desk• Ombudsman• Referee• Babysitter
Geeky Stuff
• Pentium IV 2ghz
• Red Hat 7.2
• 1.5 gigs of ram
• 2 - 75 gig hard drives
• Uptime of >30 days
• Load average usually around < 0.5
• ev1servers.net in TX
Slashcode
• Slashdot Like Automated Storytelling Homepage• Via Slashdot.org• Open Source• Themes, Db Abstraction, Db API, Perl Template
Toolkit, Plugins, multiple-sites• Apache (1), MySQL & mod_perl
4.5 Things Slashcode Uses(all written in Perl)
• Applets: Little programs that run inside Apache process. These are essentially web pages that build HTML
• Tasks: Programs running independently from Apache. Run by SLASHD. System tasks like building RDF pages, html pages, sending email.
• Modules: Slash.pm, Utility.pm, DB.pm. These are the perl libraries that define all the objects and functions used by everything else
• Utilities: Run as needed. Daily emails, stats, user controls, template control
• Themes and plugins
The Big Picture
• Are blogs over-hyped?
• Are we journalists?
• How does LISNews compare to:– Other library blogs?– Library Journal, American Libraries or ITI
Publications?
The future
• 2005 Milestones– I’ll post my 10,000th story– We’ll have more than
• 20,000 comments• 15,000 stories• 6,000 journals• 4,000 user accounts• 30 million hits
Improvements• $$ Funding?? $$• Expanded coverage
– More things in the long tail
• Post more interesting, useful and original stories• Better mailing list, html, customizable• News alerts• Journals that have URLs• Journals section• User email accounts• CSS/XHTML• Scale some modules down (moderation)• Bug fixes• Prettier• Easier to use
