So there’s a Blogdigger group set up for Computers in Libraries. A reasonable idea. It describes itself as “Core bloggers for the Computers in Libraries 2005 conference in Washington, DC.” When the group first appeared, it only included the blogs linked to from the official ITI blog. It seems that a few more blogs have since been added, which is good news. I want to point out that there will be plenty of non-”core” bloggers at this conference as well, myself included. Not to take anything away from the great efforts of the “core” bloggers, but I believe these blogs are equally worthy of your time.

This highlights two reasons why I’d prefer a consensual tagging situation over an effort to aggregate individuals. First, you invariably miss people who are talking about the conference. Second, you’re aggregating posts that potentially have nothing to do with the conference. This isn’t really saving the end-user any time, especially if they subscribe to most of the “core” blogs already. That’s not to say the group doesn’t serve a very worthwhile purpose, just that I don’t feel it provides the strongest return on investment of energy.

Updated: This post has been updated to reflect that the author of the Science Library Pad will not be in attendance at CiL2005.

Well, my great experiment in keyword tagging seems to have been a failure. I’ve contacted Technorati support twice this week with nary a peep, although I thank Dave Sifry for getting in touch with me and connecting me with Dick Costolo at FeedBurner. Dick tried his hardest to pinpoint the problem, but to no apparent avail. So here I am in an awkward position of having advocated for tagging that I can’t even make work on my own (Flickr still rules - cil2005 tag all the way!!!). So much for early adoption. If anyone is successfully using Movable Type and Technorati tagging, please, please contact me as soon as possible. Thank you.

Pay no attention to the post devoid of content.

At long last: Open Stacks #7

Also available via the podcast feed.

I am extremely pleased to bring you an interview with Michael Stephens, best known in the blogosphere as the author of the Tame the Web blog. The topic of conversation is the forthcoming Computers in Libraries conference.

18 minutes in all, 16 of which is the interview. I’d love to get some feedback on the interviewing concept, a skill with which I have no experience. Apologies in advance for any volume inconsistencies.

Thanks to everyone who has been voting for the show over at Podcast Alley. The new one-vote-per-month system is much more equitable, but I’ll need your continued (non-monetary) support to gain some presence in the rankings.

OK, after some digging, I’ve discovered that Feedburner was giving me a variety of problems, not the least of which was disabling any functionality of the Technorati tagging. It was also not updating very efficiently, even after pinging. Therefore, I have made the quick decision to delete that feed and resume regular syndication via the old RSS 2.0 and RSS 1.0 feeds. I truly apologize to anyone who made the transition already on my request. This post is yet another attempt at getting the Technorati tagging plugin to work.

Update 3/10/05: Since publishing this post, I’ve been contacted by both Dave Sifry of Technorati and Dick Costolo of FeedBurner. Both expressed deep concern about my user experience and have been helpful in trying to sort out my issues. At this point, I’m not going to ask you to switch feeds again, but I want to assure you that FeedBurner provides a quality service that I can safely recommend to those who will find value in its features (particularly the Blogger-using podcasters who can take advantage of SmartCast). Responsiveness always plays a role in my assessment of tech companies and Dick get a big thumbs-up from me. Sadly, the tagging issue remains unresolved, but I’m starting to think the issue is related to either the invalidity of my RSS feed or some problem with my pinging mechanism. Stay tuned…

Please pardon the test post. My attempt at Technorati tags didn’t work, so I have to do some analysis.

After some reflection, I wanted to ramble a bit more about using an agreed-upon tag to collocate resources related to the upcoming Computers in Libraries conference. Writing this post also gives me the opportunity to test out the MT TechnoratiTags plugin, which couldn’t be much easier to implement and use is proving to be more of a pain in my buttocks than I had imagined.

Anyway, I must admit to some frustration at the lack of feedback and discussion about using a common tag across the various folksonomical sites, such as Flickr or del.icio.us (sorry for the lack of hypertextuality, but it’s late and I’m lazy). Still, I’m confident that this is a good idea and that, as information professionals, we need to insert ourselves into the folksonomies turf and show what we can do with our “Information Organization and Access” skills. We’re already lagging behind other efforts in this domain. Exhibit A: the Northern Voice blogging conference. They had the complete package: a conference website built as a blog, updated before, during and after the conference; an aggregator featuring all of the participating bloggers at the conference; AND organized tagging. Granted, there was no discussion about the tags, just an edict from Ronald Tanglao declaring northernvoice to be the tag of choice, but the results are undeniable. Here are the aggregated results of the northernvoice tag in Technorati, Flickr (658 photos!) and del.icio.us.

Applying this to content related to Computers in Libraries seemed like such a commonsense idea to me, but I realize now that I may have been presumptuous on a few different levels.

First, in all likelihood, no one reads this blog anymore given my extended hiatus and lack of worthwhile content. Totally understandable, although those of you who kept me in your aggregator were immediately alerted to my return. There are also probably some who are only subscribed in their podcatcher and therefore miss any of the text content (any feed I subscribe to with my podcast aggregator, I also subscribe to in Bloglines).

Second, most people aren’t going to this particular conference and therefore couldn’t care less. OK, fair enough, but I’d still like to know what term you’d use to search for content related to the conference. I like to believe that we do this kind of collocation for the particular benefit of those who can’t be there in person, making those perspectives essential.

Third, most people, even in the blogosphere, are not necessarily “early adopters” and therefore haven’t really participated in any tagging-based sites. Thus some education might be in order, although I don’t fancy myself the ideal candidate. Still, I’d be happy to guide anyone who expressed interest.

As the Northern Voice conference demonstrated, consensus tagging is only one part of the picture, but it’s the part I’ve tried to motivate, however unsuccessfully. I’d love to see Information Today (or anyone with the skills/resources, for that matter) take up the reins and demonstrate that the LIS world is not going to be left in the dust when it comes to organizing digital resources.

Incidentally, with the publication of this post, there should be a Technorati tag page for cil2005.

I’ve decided to test out FeedBurner as part of my endeavor to keep better track of the number of subscribers to my feeds. So the new and preferred feed is here. It’s based on the old 2.0 feed, so it handles enclosures if you’re using a podcast aggregator, but will work just great for text in your regular old RSS reader. If you’d consider switching your current feed over to this new one, I’d be much obliged. If you don’t, that’s OK too. I anticipate no change in the functionality of any of the current feed offerings.

I had exactly one response to my request for feedback on a consensus tag to be used for the Computers in Libraries conference next week. Sad as that is, the one respondent voted for cil2005 and I concur, so allow our majority of two compel you to use cil2005 for any Technorati, del.icio.us or Flickr tagging you do in relation to the conference.

I have something a little different planned for this week, so I’m going to hold off on posting any audio until later in the week.

In other news, Chris over at Podcast Alley has changed the voting procedure to a one-vote-per-month approach. It’s a much more sensible, equitable voting system. He’s reset the vote tally, so if you’ve heard and liked the show, I would certainly appreciate your vote. I’m currently in the top 100 for the month, but we can do better than that, can’t we? And if you haven’t heard the show, what are you waiting for?