Posts filed under 'Administrative Matters'
Tomorrow, at this time, I will be on a plane heading to North Carolina. Right now, I am using the two hours between the end of my work day and the start of the Harvard bloggers meeting–yes, I will be at Berkman tonight–to tie up loose ends and clear my desk, e-mail inbox, and general workspace for my two week absence.
Although I plan to spend a lot of time reading (and probably even more time navel-gazing) during my holiday break, I doubt that I will be updating my weblog often, if at all. So, check for updates in January when I return (with any luck, well-rested and refreshed) . . . And, by the way, if any Wilmington NC bloggers/blog groups have any activities planned, please let me know.
December 18th, 2003
The Google robots are back and wreaking havoc on my referer log. I have not checked my referer stats in some time so I do not know if this started before or after I rearranged my blogroll and other sidebar information. My guess is that the link that I added for my aggregator was picked up by a robot and this started my aggregator indexing woes, again. Unfortunately, until this is sorted out, I have removed my blogroll. I have also, sadly, decided to no longer use the built-in aggregator.As strange as it may seem, I hate a referer log inundated with graphic search requests more than I love the convenience of my aggregator. I could probably figure out how to keep Google from indexing my aggregator and avoid the very troubling and offensive search requests ending up in my stats, but with two classes, a full time job, and a thesis to write, I am a little short on time and patience to play around with this blog. To say the least, after spending four hours on Sunday trying to solve my weblog formatting and indexing woes, I am very unhappy and cranky. *sigh*
I may have to revert to the awful red (…she says with a shudder) default blog or permanently move to my “secret” Typepad weblog. All I want to do is spend time on creating content for this site with the option to slightly (and easily) customize my blog (e.g., choose background and text colors and the location, content, and number of blogroll/sidebar items) to match my content. Am I asking for too much? *sigh, again*
Even if I move my blog, I do want the Harvard weblog book project (for lack of a better title) to happen. As frustrated (and thwarted) as I feel by technology and my abilities to deal with it right now, I still really like that idea. And I am glad to see that other people like the idea, too.
September 16th, 2003
Last night, after finishing my required reading from Wynar’s Introduction to Cataloging and Classification and the AACR2, I was in the mood to start organizing things. As you can see, one of the things I started to work on was this weblog. My sidebar, for example, has been reorganized quite a bit.Of course, to do this I had to remove some blogs from my blogroll. If your site was removed, please do not take it personally. If you click on the links and subscriptions button in my sidebar, you will find a page listing all of the blogs that I love, adore, and read regularly. Most likely, your blog is there. If not, it will be in a few days when I finish my blog reorganization project.
I am surprised that after one cataloging class (tonight is my second class) I suddenly have a better understanding of and a greater interest in how information is organized. In cataloger mode, I spent hours arranging and rearranging my blogroll, considering the appropriateness and usefulness of various categories, worrying about collocation. I am still not quite happy with the arrangement (and the gratuitous line spacing), but this version, at least, feels much more logical and organized.
In addition to obsessing over organization, my new cataloging mind is noticing all sorts of things. For example, I noticed that the subscription list for Harvard’s weblogs does not ignore initial articles in its index. As a result, La Familia Brophy is filed under L instead of F and The Laughing Librarian is filed under T instead of L. This is something I had not noticed in the six months that I have had a weblog at Harvard, but after reading about indexing and online catalogues, this jumped out at me.
This new way of seeing things could be very dangerous. Who knows what I will notice next…
[Update: "Gratuitous spacing" problem temporarily solved by giving in to a bulleted list format. I just lost all of my links and had to make links for everything again. I am afraid to do anything else at the moment. I know that this is problematic for some browsers and will try to fix this later when I have time. Many apologies to anyone who is having trouble viewing my sidebar right now. Minor formatting frustrations like this make moving to Typepad very tempting. I found their list/sidebar editing nearly idiot-proof--particularly good for the technologically accident-prone like myself.]
September 11th, 2003
I really need two blogs.
A couple of days ago I read Jessica’s blog post about Curious George Goes to Wordsworth and the world of children’s literature, and it reminded me that one version of this blog was a children’s literature weblog.
That was a really good idea. I collect children’s books. My academic background and studies have focused (partially) on the history of childhood and children’s culture. In an ideal world, I would combine the MA in children’s literature with the MSLIS in library science and archives management at Simmons and then find a professional position working with rare children’s books and illustrated works.
On the blogging side of this, there are not many children’s literature blogs out there, and there are tons of resources for news and stories. *sigh* And it would be so much fun.
Unfortunately, I have this blog, and although I am constantly changing things around, I am afraid to make a huge thematic change. That is a definite way to lose readers, and I like my readers quite a bit :-). Plus, my blog title would not make much sense if I changed the theme…I really like my title…and my tagline.
I know that this is my blog, and the theme and content are my choice. (That’s the beauty of blogs, right?) But I am feeling very indecisive and looking for input. So, please feel free to comment. I probably won’t do anything in the end; I am just in a navel-gazing mood and feel the need to share.
A few of my favorite online sites for children’s books in special collections:
July 31st, 2003
The past few days I have noticed very strange referrals from various search engines in my referer stats so I decided to investigate. I was relieved to find that some of the news feeds in my aggregator were the source of all of the strange search engine hits.
Daypop, which I added over the weekend just out of curiosity, was the biggest troublemaker. People searching Google for any of the Daypop Top 40 items ended up hitting the page for my aggregator because, it seems, my aggregator is being indexed. Although I sort of liked the illusion of having readers, I did not like the creepy and sometimes obscene combinations of search terms in my referer log. Plus, my inner librarian was not comfortable with (unintentionally) luring people to my page with information that was not there.
So, I removed the troublesome feeds, and now my blog will return to desperate obscurity, excepting the people searching for Latin dictionaries and the Lindisfarne Gospels, Miss Piggy and Mister Rogers, and–my personal favorite–library party blogs (and all of the variations).
Has anyone else noticed weird search engine hits in their referer logs because of aggregator indexing? And is it particularly useful for search engines to index aggregators? Or is this a possible glitch in the improvements to Google indexing that Jessica (aka J of J’s Scratchpad) observed? Just wondering.
July 30th, 2003
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