Last Friday I had the honor of giving the first talk in the newly resurrected Margaret Chisholm Lecture series. Over 100 LIS students, alumni, and faculty spent a portion of their evening talking about the read/write web with me. LIS on a Friday night? My kinda folks for sure. I even got to meet my Flickr friend Jen Waller face to face. Nice!
They made some great posters for the event:
And had a big screen:
Here’s a pdf of my slides for the event: Libraries and the Read/Write Web. [11 MB]
Someone asked about what I read to keep up with all of the cool things happening on the web and in libraries. I managed to recommend using a feed reader and name a few blogs. I didn’t give a very exhaustive list mostly because my incoming self selected information stream is such a blur. I probably couldn’t name a quarter of the weblogs I subscribe to, I just pick out the interesting bits when they pop up.
To make up for my weak answer I promised to list some blogs that could make a little starter kit for keeping track of what’s happening with libraries and the read/write web. You’ll notice it is mostly non-library blogs. I’m not slighting library blogs, just highlighting the point that we need to get outside of the library and related writing.
Tech stuff
Gizmodo
NYT Technology
Design
Signal vs. Noise
information aesthetics
swissmiss
General
kottke.org
Lifehacker
TechCrunch
Misc
Pasta&Vinegar
Pink Tentacle
Wired Top Stories
Libraries
Librarian.net
LibraryCrunch
LibraryBytes
The Shifted Librarian
Swiss Army Librarian
Two more points. First, don’t click around to all of these sites every day. Use a feed reader to bring the information to you. To learn about that, see RSS in Plain English. Also, don’t limit yourself to these blogs and their feeds. Find some blogs relevant to you and your hobbies. This will get you in the habit of checking your reader frequently.
Thanks to everyone that made it a great event.