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That clever sj scooped me by writing about the BloggerCon II session a few of us librarians/information professionals are trying to organize.

We’re still figuring out the content and what we want to accomplish with it. Given Dave Winer’s parameters about having no panels and only a room with people and moderator to facilitate the discussion, it should be an interesting session. Anything can happen; anyone could bring up any topic.

What I think it will accomplish is: give librarians/information professionals a forum for asking questions about blogging, as opposed to listening to panelists who may or may not address issues people want to hear about. I think this will be different from previous programs about blogging and librarians that have occurred in recent months because it will not be a showcase of blogs, it will not be a “how to” about blogging, it will not be sponsored by any particular professional association, the audience can drive the discussion, and it will be affordable to many because it will be free.

Anyone with any level of blogging experience and those who haven’t blogged, but are curious about blogging, should be able to learn something from this session.

Topics that may be discussed include:

• why blog
• what a blog can add to your organization
• knowledge management and blogs
• convincing managers that blogging is a worthwhile activity (was: selling blogs to management)
• marketing blogs to the library’s/librarian’s customers
• what to do with the blog/what content to select
• RSS/Atom feeds and aggregators
• who within the organization should blog
• blogs for internal use vs. public blogs
• how librarians’ clients can benefit from a weblog
• how librarians can use weblogs to inform themselves and others
• what do library users want from a library blog
• features of blogs that meet libraries’/librarians’ needs (added 3/28; Thanks for the suggestion, MJ!)
• how is a blog different from a Web site (added 3/29)

Right now this session slants toward special librarians because we know there’s a strong interest among special librarians in this geographical area to learn about blogging, but many of the topics on the list are relevant to many different kinds of librarians/information professionals. We welcome librarians in all kinds of libraries and people interested in these topics.

This session is not intended to be only for librarians. It will be a lot like the medical weblogs session at the first BloggerCon in that it seeks to bring librarians and other similar information professionals together in a forum, but will not exclude people who do not work in the profession. Anyone with an interest in this and related topics is encouraged to attend. I use the term “librarian” to describe the session because in this context, it seems clearer than to just say “information professionals.” Since there will be many hardcore information technology workers at the conference, I use the term “librarian” to clarify which kind of information professional the session refers to. Hardcore information technology types are welcome to participate in the session, of course, as is anyone else.

Some form of this proposal will magically appear on the BloggerCon blog in the near future.

It has been difficult to sell this session to the conference organizers because they do not think there is enough interest in it. If you’re interested in this, please help get the buzz going and encourage people who are interested in this discussion to attend. If you have ideas for topics to add to the list, please comment below or e-mail me. (I’m having problems with my profiles section. I’m borrowing someone else’s instead.)

Addendum 3/17: YES! Jessamyn of librarian.net fame reports she’s coming to BloggerCon II, will be at the libraries/librarians/information professionals/anyone interested in this topic session and encourages others to come, too.

Addendum 3/18: YES! A library user told me tonight that he definitely plans to be there, too. He also suggested that if for some reason the session doesn’t get on the schedule, we round all the librarians up for lunch. Sounds good to me, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be on the schedule.

Addendum 3/21: This session is on the preliminary BloggerCon II schedule.

Addendum 3/25: It’s official: I get to moderate!

Addendum 4/2: BloggerCon draft and more info

Clarification 4/5: This session is incorrectly attributed to the Special Libraries Association Boston Chapter. Several of us planning the session are affiliated with that professional association, but this session is not officially sponsored by, supported by, or connected to that group.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2004 at 11:53 pm and is filed under BloggerCon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.