Personal Blogging Kevin Smith - the Fiddling Librarian Assistant Director, Cass District Library Violist, Prometheus String Quartet Husband and father of two

Who Blogs?  Librarians  Teenagers  Journalists  Parents  College Students  Everyone

Why do I blog?  Stay in touch with friends and family  Keep me up to date  Organize my thoughts  Practice Web skills  Cheaper than therapy

History of the Fiddling Librarian  Started on Blogger.com in 2003  Moved to Weblogs.us in March 2004  March 2005 moved to WordPress

What are some features of blogs?  Title and statement of purpose  Time and date stamp  Comments  RSS feed

RSS Aggregators  Bloglines - web-based, free  Windows based  Mac OS X  Linux

Where can I go to blog?  Blogger Blogger Good for beginners Easy to use Free hosting  Movable Type Movable Type More feature rich Not free Requires PHP and MYSQL  TypePad TypePad Easier to use version of Movable Type Requires a subscription  WordPress WordPress Similar to Movable Type Free software Requires PHP and MYSQL

What should I blog?  What interests you  What might be interesting to your audience Things of professional interest Politics and current events Hobbies & lifestyle Family  Photos

Photo Blogs  Flickr Flickr 20 MB monthly upload limit 3 photosets Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images Storage of smaller (resized) images Friends and family can leave comments Photo posts can be “blogged” to other blogs

When should I blog?  People who blog often are read more frequently and  People who write interesting blogs are also read frequently  Maintaining a balance between these two elements is challenging

Blogging Etiquette  Be careful  Don't write anything that you don't want read by everyone  Don't get Dooced!

Finding Blogs     Blogrools

Questions?