CILIP Course on Blogs and Wikis

This is an introduction to the course 'Blogs and wikis: an advanced guide'. It will be looking at a variety of different types of software and activities that can be undertaken to improve information provision. This Portal is designed to assist in that process and to act as a resource that can be used by course members, so feel free to add to it yourself. This is an example.

Outline of the day

• 09.30 Registration and coffee
• 10.00 Welcome and introduction
• 10.05 Weblogs and RSS feeds - an overview/refresher
• 10.45 Coffee
• 11.00 Doing more with weblogs - images and audio
• 11.30 Using storage/filing services
• 13.00 Lunch
• 14.00 Using bookmarking services, web monitoring tools and group

search engines

15.00 Tea

15.15 Introduction to wikis

16.00 Latest developments

16.15 Review

16.30 Close

The growth in weblogs has continued, and shows no sign of stopping - new weblogs are still being produced at the rate of about 1 every second of every hour of every day.

Major weblog search engines have now changed, as new ones have taken the place of the old. Ones to consider using are:

• Technorati at http://www.technorati.com/
• Ice Rocket Blog search at http://www.icerocket.com/
• Topix Blog search at http://www.topix.net/blogs
• Google Blog search at http://blogsearch.google.com/
• Ask Blogs and feeds at http://uk.ask.com/?o=312#subject:bls|pg:1
• PubSub at http://www.pubsub.com/index.php (This has now died; link remains for reference.)

Keeping up to date with library/information science weblogs at:

• Libdex Library Weblogs http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html
• Internet Public Library Weblogs http://www.ipl.org/div/blogs/
• Blog without a library http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/
• Law library blogs (mostly US) http://library.law.wisc.edu/wisblawg/blogslistpublic.htm
• DMOZ library weblogs collection http://dmoz.org/Reference/Libraries/Library_and_Information_Science/Weblogs/
• British Librarian Bloggers http://groups.google.com/group/britlibblogs
• Librarian weblog feeds http://www.pageflakes.com/philipbradley.ashx?page=4541261
• Liszen - search 500+ librarian weblogs http://www.liszen.com/
• Brit Blogs (British, not necessarily library oriented) http://www.britblog.com/
• Justia Blawg Search - search law blogs http://blawgsearch.justia.com/

* Using RSS to create and enhance current awareness services

Blog Juice Calculator at http://www.text-link-ads.com/blog_juice/ Input your site/weblog details and get an indication of how important your weblog might be.
Check with Technorati to see how many links etc. are coming to your blog at http://www.technorati.com/. Just input the entire URL for the weblog and hit enter.
Check on the page strength as well using http://www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php - although designed for webpages, it's worth trying for weblogs as well.Alexa at http://www.alexa.com gives some basic information on a weblog or website.
Use the Google link: http://www. option to see how many sites link to yours.
Socialmeter at http://www.socialmeter.com/ provides information on links etc. to your blog from other sources.
Bloginfluence at http://www.bloginfluence.net/en/ provides some useful facts and figures.
Are you an A-List Bloglebrity? You're probably not, but this is a useful tool to quickly use Technorati to see who and how many have linked to you in the last 6 months.

All weblog software will provide you with different templates to set up a weblog. However, if you're unhappy with the basics, the following are some examples of different ways that you could format your weblog. Although these are not library related, there's no reason why you shouldn't adapt the concepts to your own purposes.

• Superfluous Banter http://superfluousbanter.org/ Dan Rubin’s blog flows sideways, left-to-right instead of up and down. The clever interlocking columns draw your attention to the comments on each post, and the date they were posted.

• Odds and ends photoblog http://odds-and-ends.net/photolog/ It’s true that a lot of photoblogs follow the one-photo format for their blogs, but Lim Zhi Xin’s has a stunning vertical format, excellent typography, and no-nonsense navigation. Every photo is detailed with descriptive text on the permanent page, and contains a technical description of the photograph and the equipment used to take it.

• Josua Ink http://www.joshuaink.com/ An interesting approach, which I wouldn't have thought of, but clearly he’s hit something right, with flowers cascading down all sides, elements of photoshop guidelines present on top of the design to highlight intellectual designer power, and a footer that wakes up when you poke it.

• The Big Noob http://thebignoob.com/ Their site takes the one-column layout to a new high, going from a wide, tall banner to a highlighted story, then breaking into three columns. However, there are nice graphical touches everywhere, from the portrait images to subtle shadowing. A random quote highlights the top, and links are scattered in the far right column. The length of the three-column section needs improvement, and the colors could be improved as you move from top to bottom. However, it’s a great source of inspiration in the little things it does well.

• Snook http://www.snook.ca/jonathan/ A nice use of three columns, without ever looking confused or crowded.

• Binary Bonsai http://binarybonsai.com/ As minimalist as it's possible to get, with a nice use of Flickr images at the bottom.

"Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication" - take your pick. Basically used in conjunction with a newreader or news aggregator such as Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com to pull varied content into one single place for easy reading. The weblog should provide multiple ways of adding a weblog into a feed.

Mine at http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/ allows you to add the feed to over 50 different resources by using Addtoany at http://www.addtoany.com/. Other approaches are the Top Rank resource at http://www.toprankresults.com/tools/button-maker.php. Alternatively, if you don't want lots of little buttons on the weblog, use one single button, and let your users choose their own feed for their own reader at MultiRSS http://www.multirss.com/. On the other hand, if you do like buttons, you can create RSS type buttons for anything that you want, and simple link the image to the URL by using the Button Maker http://kalsey.com/tools/buttonmaker/.


Other useful things that you can do with RSS is to create 'tag clouds' of the tags that you have used in postings. ZoomClouds at http://www.zoomclouds.com/ simply requires a URL and it will create a tag cloud for you, which can be cut and pasted into a weblog or webpage. Alternatively, allow you users to tag pages as well using Wanabo at http://www.wanabo.com/

If you want to provide an RSS feed for a page that doesn't have one, try FeedYes at http://www.feedyes.com/. Simply type in any webpage that you choose and it will create an RSS feed for you. Alternatively try Feed43 at http://www.feed43.com/, FeedFire at http://www.feedfire.com/site/index.html Users can manually select and summarise news and then disseminate it using the latest internet syndication technology - considerably reducing the time taken to create daily or weekly news bulletins. Ideal for information and public relations professionals whose customers need to know the latest news as it happens. No hosting on your site, and no software to download.

Submit your weblog to multiple sites to increase awareness of it using Feed Submitter at http://www.feedsubmitter.com/. Alternatively, use Pingoat at http://pingoat.com/ to 'ping' weblog search engines. By pinging, you let the services know that your blog has been updated and hence, they crawl and index your site, publishing your blog contents, thus increasing your blog's popularity.

Take other feeds, create, mix and match and put them on your own site or weblog using Feed Digest at http://feeddigest.com/

New addition: Another one that you can try is KickRSS at http://www.kickrss.com and there's an example of this working at http://www.kickrss.com/BritLiBloggers

Finally, a nice tutorial on using RSS can be found at http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/. If you're from a legal background there is a very readable article on using RSS in a legal context at http://www.abanet.org/lpm/lpt/articles/slc11061.shtml

Your weblog can become an integral part of your site, providing people with information on what you're doing, obviously - but it can do much more than that. This section will look at some of the things that you can do to enhance the weblog.


Add a poll to your weblog using the BlogPolling voting system at http://www.blogpolling.com/. No software to install; simple add the javascript that they provide you with to your site or weblog and they take care of the rest. Alternatively, the system that I use on my own home page ( http://www.philb.com) is dPolls at http://www.dpolls.com/. Simply ask the question, decide on the options, and cut and paste the resulting code onto the weblog or webpage. Another option is Vizu at http://www.vizu.com/


Add a chat box onto your weblog by using Gabbly at http://www.gabbly.com/. Not only is this a useful resource, particularly if you embed it into your weblog or web page, it's a very useful training aid, since you can use it to paste in URLs, click on them with the user and 'drag' the chat box to the page that you've mentioned, so that you can show them whatever you want to about it. You can see this one in action on my own home page. Alternatively try ChatCreator at http://www.chatcreator.com/


Create a map of your users. gVisit http://www.gvisit.com/ allows you to input a URL and it will tag onto a map the last 20 visitors to your site/weblog. You see this in action again at my website.


How about adding personal slideshows, allow users to play music, show the time, and so on? There are some useful options at Blogbox at http://www.blogbox.com/


Adding images to a weblog is a simple process. The easiest way of doing this is to use one of the many photograph sharing resources that are available on the web, and you'll find a list of some of the most well known at http://www.philb.com/photographs.htm. Every weblog authoring tool should have some way of letting you add photographs however, and at Blogger ( http://www.blogger.com) there's a small icon at the top of the posting option to add a photograph - simply point to the URL of the image and it will be added in. My preferred option is to use the service offered by Flickr at http://www.flickr.com which provides a 'blog this' option at the top of images; they don't even need to be your own!
Alternatively, try using WebShotsPro at http://www.webshotspro.com/ and there is a discussion on using this and Flickr at Library Clips.


Some examples of how libraries and librarians are using images are: 'Murder by the book' at http://www.flickr.com/photos/theloudlibrarian/sets/1282646/, which was an event held at APL, or the Librarian Trading Cards at http://www.flickr.com/groups/librariancards/. Alternatively, do a search for library tours on Flickr, or follow the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/librarytour/


Adding a audio file (generally referred to as a 'podcast' to your weblog isn't a difficult process. A podcast allows users to download the audio file onto their own mp3 player or iPod, or listen to it online. There are many reasons why you would want to do this - to record an event (such as an author reading), record memories as part of a project (an old soldier talking about his life), or as a guide around a library, useful for induction purposes. An example of the latter is the library induction tour provided by the University of Sheffield at http://www.lbasg.group.shef.ac.uk/downloads/. A good introductory article (written for American School librarians, but with useful information for all) is at http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/apr06/Eash.shtml.



Podcasts are not difficult to create, although there are a few steps that you have to go through first. On the hardware side you will need to have a microphone (preferably with headphones, but you can manage without) connected to your computer so that you can record what you want to say. Next, you require some software to record what you want to say - the software that I've used is called Audacity at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. You then plan what you want to say, and then record it. My recommendation would be to limit any podcast to a maximum of about 10 minutes, partly because people have a limited attention span, partly because we're not professionals, and partly because it's quite a nerve wracking thing to do!


Once the podcast has been recorded you create an RSS feed file for it. This is simply a special text file with an RSS extension that also includes a particular enclosure tag. There is a nice tutorial on creating such a file at http://make-rss-feeds.com/making-an-rss-feed.htm An easy alternative however is to simply record the podcast, have it hosted by a third party service such as the Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org/create/ and provide a straightforward URL link to it.

[Note: Many of the following resources require email registration before you can use them. If you don't have access to an email package during the course, there are several email packages that allow you to create temporary accounts. Tempinbox at http://www.tempinbox.com/english/, Spambob at http://spambob.com/ Pookmail at http://www.pookmail.com/ Mailinator at http://www.mailinator.com/mailinator/index.jsp or Spamgourment at http://www.spamgourmet.com/

One of the major problems that we have with storing, sharing and using resources is that they are quite often large, difficult to send via email, or they're simply on the wrong machine. There are plenty of ways in which these problems can be overcome however. A very simple way of storing files for your own use is to utilise Googlemail at http://www.gmail.com which provides over 2 gigabytes of space for emails. Of course, with an email you can add in attachments, so simply email yourself a copy of your key files and store them on the Google server. However, there are plenty of other resources that you can explore that will do similar jobs - some will also allow you to collaborate on documents real time.

Writely at is a word processor that lets people work on files together in real time. This product has been purchased by Google and along with their shared spreadsheet offering it can be found at http://docs.google.com/. There's an interesting write up of it in use from a librarian perspective at: http://frequanq.blogspot.com/2006/11/collaboration-using-google-docs.html

Writeboard at http://www.writeboard.com/ Writeboards are sharable, web based text documents that let you save every text edit, roll back to previous versions, and compare changes. Solo or group use.


Web collaborator at http://www.webcollaborator.com/ works in a similar fashion. (This was not responding 11/11/06 but may just have been a glitch, so I'll keep it in for a while longer).

SynchroEdit at http://www.synchroedit.com/ is a browser-based simultaneous multiuser editor, a form of same-time, different-place groupware. It allows multiple users to edit a single web-based document at the same time, and it continuously synchronizes all changes so that users always have the same version. (Sandbox demo only at the moment)

QuickTopic Document Review at http://www.quicktopic.com/docreview gives you an instant private space for gathering comments on any HTML document (Microsoft Word documents too). Your group can comment on each paragraph, directly within the document, and you can also display, sort, and print the comments separately. Comments are all in one central place.

Rallypoint at http://www.rallypointhq.com/ Create and share online pages with team members, across the hall or across the globe. (This was not responding 11/11/06 but may just have been a glitch, so I'll keep it in for a while longer).

WideWORD at https://wideword.net/ With WideWord you can invite any amount of friends or partners to collaborate on a document with you. All you need to do is enter their email address and we send them an invitation straight away. WideWord ensures that the document remains secure.

You can also create and arrange meetings with other people using MeetWithApproval at http://www.meetwithapproval.com/

Lazybase at http://lazybase.com/ allows anyone to design, create and share a database of whatever they like. (This was not responding 11/11/06 but may just have been a glitch, so I'll keep it in for a while longer).

CL1P at http://cl1p.net/ Share data between computers - cut and paste, drop on a page, let others have access.

SoapBX at http://soapbx.com/ allows you to create presentations, hosted online. SlideShare is another resource, allowing you to upload PowerPoint presentations and share them, with other people being able to comment on them. It's my preferred option. http://slideshare.net/

If you want to save/store/send large files there are a number of other resources that you can use:

Dropload at http://www.dropload.com/ Dropload is a place for you to drop your files off and have them picked up by someone else at a later time. Recipients you specify are sent an email with instructions on how to download the file. Files are removed from the system after 7 days, regardless if they have been picked up or not. You can upload any type of file, mp3, movies, docs, pdfs, up to 100MB each.

RapidShare at http://rapidshare.de/ Max is 50MB per file for free accounts

YouSendIt at http://beta.yousendit.com/ Files up to 1GB

SendOver at http://www.sendover.com/ A file transfer service specializing in those large files that email just can’t handle -- up to 2 gigabytes! (This may have been taken over by another service, but I'll keep the link in just in case.)

WhaleMail at http://www.whalemail.com/ Any size files any time. Commercial product.

Bookmarking services extend the power of your own bookmarks or favourites. They can all be stored in one place, tagged, shared with other people. Great for archiving material.

• FURL at http://www.furl.net/ Furl will archive any page, allowing you to recall, share, and discover useful information on the Web. Browse your personal archive of Web pages, and subscribe to other archives via RSS.

• Del.icio.us at http://del.icio.us/ Bookmarks - save yours and everyone else's. Use del.icio.us to: Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, restaurant reviews, and more on del.icio.us and access them from any computer on the web. Share favorites with friends, family, and colleagues. Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone's favorite - they've already done the work of finding it. Explore and enjoy.

• Squidoo at http://www.squidoo.com/ allows you to create 'lenses' to focus on particular subjects. Update them easily.

• Netvouz at http://www.netvouz.com/ Netvouz is a social bookmark manager where you can store your favorite links online and access them from any computer. On Netvouz you get your own bookmarks page which gives a good overview of your favorite web sites and easy access to them. You organize your bookmarks in folders and tag each bookmark with keywords and can then browse them by folder or tag, or search for them. And if you have a blog you can also publish your bookmarks on it via an RSS feed (JavaScript and HTML feeds also available).

• Spurl at http://www.spurl.net/ is very similar to FURL

• Buddymarks at http://buddymarks.com/ Store and share bookmarks online.

• Hyperlinkomatic at http://www.hyperlinkomatic.com/ is like bookmarks on speed.

Create search engines to focus on exactly what interests you and your users.

• Rollyo at http://www.rollyo.com lets you choose up to 25 websites and create a search engine that will only search on those sites and no other.

• Yahoo has recently produced their Search Builder at http://builder.search.yahoo.com/m/home

• Eurekster Swicki at http://swicki.eurekster.com/ allows you to focus searches on particular sites, while allowing broad searching as well. An example can be seen on my home page.

• Personal Search Syndication is available at http://www.pssdir.com/ and it will also email results direct to your inbox.

• Google Search Builder at http://www.google.com/coop/cse/overview and one of mine is at http://tinyurl.com/yf6qbl

There are many ways that you can monitor webpages, and also discuss them with colleagues.

• Conversate at http://conversate.org/ lets you create instant online discussion spaces. It's simpler, faster, more polite, and less annoying than group emails.
• StumbleUpon at http://www.stumbleupon.com/ Search, browse, review and share great sites.
• WatchThatPage at http://www.watchthatpage.com/
• TrackEngine at http://www.trackengine.com/servlets/com.nexlabs.trackengine.ui.Login An online bookmark system that alerts of content changes to those bookmarked sites via email.
• WebSite Watcher at http://www.aignes.com/ Great, but commercial.
• ChangeDectection at http://www.changedetection.com/ for updating visitors to your website, or use the Monitor version at http://www.changedetection.com/monitor.html to keep up to date on others.
• ChangeNotes at http://www.changenotes.com/ This free service monitors the web pages that interest you and notifies you by email when they change. You might like to monitor the web pages of your work or former work, clients, customers, industry groups, competitors, friends and family, hobby sites, school, clubs, and community sites, etc.

The obvious way to look at wikis and how they can be useful is to look at a couple. The Blogging Libraries wiki at http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links/index.php?title=Welcome_to_the_Blogging_Libraries_Wiki lists a large number of library weblogs. The Wikipedia is probably the best known of all the wikis that are available, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. I have also created a test wiki, using PeanutButter wiki, at http://ciliptestwiki.pbwiki.com/. (Ask me for the password!) The format style to use with the wiki is at http://yummy.pbwiki.com/WikiStyle A few of the things that you can do to get yourself started with the wiki are:
* One * (asterisk) + a space at the beginning of a line makes a bullet point.
* Use # + a space at the beginning of a line to make a numbered list, like this.
* Nested lists are made by doubling the * or # for subpoints
* To make something bold, put 2 * (asterisk) before and after it: **word**
* To make something italicized, put 2 ' (apostrophe) before and after it: ''word''
* By using 2 _ (underscore) before and after, text can be underlined: __word__
* Strikethrough is done with (space +) 1 - (dash) before and 1 - (dash) (+ space) after: -word-
* One ! at the beginning of a line makes a huge headline
* Two !! make a big headline
* Three !!! and more--up to 6--make successively smaller headlines
* If you use two capital letters in a word with lowercase letters in between, PBwiki will automatically recognize the word as a link to a page.

Compare wikis using WikiMatrix

There are a number of resources that you can use to keep up to date with what is happening.

• My 'I want to' webpages at http://www.philb.com/iwantto.htm
• Web 2.0 Explorer weblog at http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/
• Solution Watch at http://www.solutionwatch.com/