RSS Ecology:

a day in the life of a Web 2.0 librarian

Anne Welsh

Information Officer

DrugScope

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I use Bloglines as my feed aggregator. In the morning, I file things into their appropriate folder e.g. “to catalogue”; “author requests”; “Hinterlands” (the inhouse name for one of the bibliographies I compile). I check Bloglines throughout the day, most days.

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May not sound like a Web 2.0 activity, but many of the blog entries we compile are drawn from catalogue records, so we are inputting data once and then re-using it. 

(Still from Your Life Work: Librarian (1947), http://www.archive.org/details/Libraria1947 )

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Working on this ongoing project means looking at resources in other sectors, some of which yield useful references to blog: 

Blog entries can be very short, but still useful -

Internet for Social Research Methods – online tutorial from Intute.

( http://drugscope.blogspot.com/2007/05/internet-for-social-research-methods.html )

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An enquiry is passed over about arrest abroad. In order to answer it, we’ll use the Elisad Gateway and a range of other sources.

The online references we find will work up into an entry in our newsletter Members’ Briefing and into a blog post, in the style of our post from last July on holiday drug use, which is still referred to regularly: 

( http://drugscope.blogspot.com/2006/07/friday-focus-holiday-drug-use.html )

Filed info. in the Enquiries Knowledge Base and will post as blog article in July, in time for main holiday season. 

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Following on from an enquiry from a local authority, we want to write a briefing paper and resource list on Books on Prescription.

After the meeting, placing approval orders for books we wish to consider. Whatever we take will be blogged about; the briefing paper will be blogged about and any response from it will be blogged about. Each of these blog entries will take about 10 mins to prepare.

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In my role as Book Reviews Editor for Druglink, I contact some publishers and potential reviewers, recording my progress in the reviews (private) wiki.

As we are hiring a student intern, I also spend some time updating our procedures wiki in preparation for her arrival.

I check Bloglines for the final time, and catalogue the urgent items, so they will be included in tonight’s catalogue update and the blog.

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My last action of the day is to run the two catalogue reports for the blog – one for items with URLs and one for items without URLs.

It takes about 10 minutes to run the reports and cut and paste the results into blog posts for the day.

See page on semi-automated catalogue reports if you’re interested in the details of the blog reports.

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Noting references on Connotea.org – especially for reading lists. Takes about 30 seconds longer per reference to add to Connotea as well as pdf … and in future may create reading lists solely on Connotea, since it is possible to export and import in various formats. 

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Blogging to Create Feeds

  Anne Welsh

Information Officer

DrugScope

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