Christopher Hamb, from the Grainger Engineering Library, University of Illinois, is talking about creating a blog from scratch. He described their situation as “we want a blog,” then someone asked them “why?” So they had to come up a rationale. When they asked for money to investigate proprietary blogging software, the answer was “no.” So they looked at what they had — they are a heavy-duty Microsoft shop — and they adapted Access to become blog software. He’s showing blog posts and they look just like posts using standard blog software such as Blogger, Typepad, and the like. But there’s no spellcheck.

The Grainger blog pulls in news from Slashdot, CNN.com Technology, Engineering talk industry headlines, and Moreover engineering news. Also adds new titles at the university library that are relevant to the engineering library.

How to market the blog. Linked from engineering library homepage and public access page and listed on U of IL library blog page. Now university has license for Movable Type, but engineering library still using the home grown software.

Most users are on campus and within engineering school. Many come from search engines. Wants to add customized RSS feeds, online resource of the week feature, and Engineering Library kiosk integration.

May Chang, Web Development Librarian at North Carolina State University, began by dispelling 2 myths Brian Kelly propounded an hour ago. She likes technological tools and she’s “not a boy” and U.S. library budgets are not huge. That’s why she went with open source, because it doesn’t cost money. Interesting comparison table for community tools. Horses for courses. Look at Low Threshold Applications.

Forums (bulletin boards) are still used. Products include OpenBB, phpbb, and Phorum. Public website for Business Information Newwork uses phpbb. Professor uses for classwork, but forum is maintained by library. Blogging software includes b2evolution, Blosxom, Blogger, LiveJournal, and rediff.com. To overcome negative connotations of blogs as person diaries, she called it news blog. The blog allows multiple blogs. Also used on intranet. RSS feeds (Abilon, Bloglines, FeedReader, FeedDemon, Bloglet, and more). Desktop Widget - use for clock, weather, news. Confabulator.

Wikis have niche use. Great for true collaborative working on a document. Using MediaWiki to create. IM helps with presence awareness, realizing the online status of staff. AOL IM can’t talk to MSN IM or Yahoo IM. Third party multi-protocol IM clients (Gaim, Trillian). Open source IM, Jabber. No ads. She’s showing screen shots of single protocol IM client: Exodus. Now it’s Gaim/Miranda.

Podcasting uses: anything to do with voice. Lots of new stuff coming.