Helibtech meeting at Sconul

Yesterday, I went to an Helibtech meeting at SCONUL. Helibtech:-

aim of HELibTech is to provide a starting point for anyone interested in library technology in Higher Education. Its particular focus is UK but many of the issues will be relevant elsewhere.

The meeting was arranged by Ken Chad to try and get more content editors on the Helibtech wiki. Therefore, at the meeting with some other members from Plymouth University, Canterbury University and University of West London amongst other places (I won't say who they are, as i'll explain why later).

Anyhow, in the meeting we discussed what needed to be done. How to increase interest? What we would do? Organisational stuff. We also discussed creating content biographies to put on wiki (hence no names mentioned above. I'll do that on this blog at a later date).

The good thing about it was the networking (even learning one month too late about Chrismash. Anyhow, we'll soon have more on this. Hopefully, we'll have a hashtag for the site.

Any queries etc or any thing you might thing is of interest either mention here, or better still over on the wiki.

Is there a library community in the blogosphere? Or has it moved to twitter?

I have blogged for nearly five years. And in that time it seems (to me) much has changed. I love blogging (mostly) and even did my masters dissertation on the subject. I might sound like an old man (wait, I AM AN OLD MAN), but I feel that the library blogosphere has changed. I enjoy blogging because it creates a conversation, especially when you get comments.
I blog, but also comment on blogs in the library blogosphere. What really annoys me though is I may comment on a blog and I get no response. Many bloggers do responds to my blog and comments and thats good, because it creates a readership, a relationship and a community. But when people don't respond it creates. Nothing.
The thing is, within the UK we have some really socialable librarians and bloggers. http://woodsiegirl.wordpress.com/ have created new Professionals Information Day. Not only was their blog used to advertise this event, but to have a social event after but a social meet up after the event.
Other bloggers Like Owen Stephens, Phil Bradley, Dave Pattern and Brian Kelly amongst others have created library mash-ups in an inexpensive manner.
This has created a conversation and a social gathering point (whether it maybe if you were at the events or read about it). This creates community.
So what is my point? I feel within my period as a blogger, people don't communicate so much via the comments section (or do I mean MY comments section?). In many ways this is due to the loss of some great library blogs like library crunch and shifted librarian has reduced her blogging. But my biggest thing that now the comments section seems to be found at twitter. I mean i'm a user of twitter (but not a regular user), but most of my comments and conversations seem to come via twitter. Twitter users answer my questions. It seems that the conversation has moved to twitter.

Library Mashup slideshare presentation

(Found via here). Having previously discussed Nicole Engard's book Library Mashups : Exploring New Ways to Deliver Library Data, I noted she has a slideshare on the subject of the book here. Interesting too.

New library mashup website released

(Found via twitter). Owen Stephens has set up a website for UK mash ups here. Includes an upcoming events page, how to organise your own event, Ingredients, Techniques, Recipes,Menu suggestions and Projects.

Liver and Mash today

The fourth installmet of Library mash up starts today in Liverpool. Like many i'll be unable to attnd but following it by twitter with the following hashtag #mashliv. More information on todays proceeding can be found here. All those there (physically and digitally), enjoy.