Feevy Fever

Sarah over at The Sheck Spot, while asking me about joining Library Links, alerted me to this neat app called Feevy. Basically, it creates a nice dynamic collection of blogs - or any web content that has an RSS feed (flickr, delicious, etc). So, rather than blogroll of static links, you can have a nifty display with the blogs' latest posts.

Since this is relatively new, and not overly customizable (yet), I thought that for a blogger with a large links list, the display might become unwieldy. However, in terms of library use, I figured this might be a cool app for my library blogs. This way, readers of one blog can get a quick taste of what's going on on the other two blogs (and this would work with any feeds you might happen to have on your library's homepage - and some of you cool libraries have a few!). I used the unobtrusive "liquid" style on our main blog, and the funkier "classic dark" style on the Teen Spot blog. I like this. Now I won't have to do as much cross-posting as I currently do, and the adults can see what's up over at the Teen blog without subscribing to it or leaving the main blog to take a look (and vice-versa). Cool.

Join Library Links!

The Library Links community blogroll is up and running!

Thanks to Josh and Chris, who jumped in to be testers and gave me some great feedback. And we already have a couple of other folks who have joined up, so I'm excited.

I hope you'll join us, and maybe talk the blogroll up a bit on your site.

Librarian Blogroll

So, I have an idea. Actually, it's not my idea, but I am thinking of borrowing the idea to use here. What is it, you ask? Well, it's a librarian community blogroll. There I go with that "community" thing again. I am just going to keep screaming "librarian community!" until everyone participates....

Anyway, while I was merging my blogs, I went over the blogrolls on each. I immediately noticed that in only a few cases, the links on one blogroll overlapped with the links on the other. And not even half of what I read on a regular basis appears in any of my blogrolls. Because, Let's face it, there are tons of great librarian/library blogs out there, and we can't possibly read them (or in some cases find them) all.

I've thought about simply linking to my reader, but, for me anyway, blogging is not only about posting, it's about linking, directly, to others. This is how bloggers gain and expand readership.

The concept is simple, and I belong to one such community blogroll that has not only helped bump the readership of another blog I have, but has lead me to some great blogs that I likely would not have stumbled across on my own. It goes like this: You cut and paste a piece of code and add it to your blog. Then, once you have done that, you let me know and I add you to the blogroll. That's it. Simple.

Concerned about "too much stuff" in your sidebar? Don't be. You can post the list anywhere in your blog (another page, perhaps), or you can use the handy scrollbox code to display the list in a compact form.

Josh, are you willing to be a guinea pig and help spread the word?
I need a couple of people to jump in so that I can get a roll going. Let me know if you would like to be one of the test blogs!