or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk



Library Blog Search

   August 31st, 2010

LISZENSometimes when I am working on a post, I wonder if another library blogger has already covered it - an am afraid I'll look kind of dumb rehashing something.

So I thought, wouldn't it be great to set up a Google custom search engine to search all library-related blogs? Before I did, I checked if anyone already created one, and it turned out Library Zen had - four years ago (I'm even further behind than I thought).

LISZEN Search searches over 500 library blogs, and has an accompanying wiki to keep track. If you write about the library world, add yourself.

Something related that would also be nice is a custom search of just library websites - so it would be easy to quickly see what other library's policies are regarding ebooks, or circulating laptops, or how much they charge for printing, etc. But considering the breadth of libraries and the complexity of maintaining it, just using regular Google might be more realistic.




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10 Responses to “Library Blog Search”

  1. Stephen Francoeur Says:

    In 2006, David Rothman and Frankie Dolan created LibWorm, which lets you search across a vast swath of blogs by librarians.

  2. Kerri Says:

    Thanks for posting this info. I had not run across LISZEN before — interesting idea!

  3. Swiss Army Librarian » Library Blog Search :: Brian Herzog « Nogginquest’s Weblog Says:

    […] via Swiss Army Librarian » Library Blog Search :: Brian Herzog. […]

  4. Twitter Trackbacks for Swiss Army Librarian » Library Blog Search :: Brian Herzog [swissarmylibrarian.net] on Topsy.com Says:

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  5. Brian Herzog Says:

    @Stephen: Thanks for the link – LibWorm looks like it might be more expansive.

    @Kerri: You are very welcome.

  6. Maggie Jackson Says:

    Brian,
    I am enjoying all the links and humor you provide. I just wanted to let you know that several people in my class are following and enjoying your blogs. Thank you for the newest link.

    Oh—and class is going well so far. Thank you for asking!

  7. Jo Alcock Says:

    I had a similar idea to you a little while ago. I was aware of LisZen and LibWorm, but I believe people have to manually submit their blogs to these. I was also keen to create a custom search for the UK, in a similar fashion to the Australian Library Blogs CSE which was highlighted in Nicole Engard’s Library Mashups book.

    I used the UK Library Blogs wiki which includes both librarian blog and library blogs – initially discovered by myself and other admins, now an open wiki; and tagged them as such in Google CSE so that you can amend your search to just one type of blog (I too thought it may be useful to search library blogs to compare library policies, opening hours etc.). Feel free to have a play, or read more about what I did on my blog post – Creating a custom search engine for UK Library Blogs.

  8. Brian Herzog Says:

    @Maggie: Thank you, and I’m happy to hear you like my site.

    @Jo: Thanks for the tip. I couldn’t get your site to load when I just tried it, but I’ll check back – it sounds exactly like what I meant.

  9. Links of the week: September 3, 2010 « A Modern Hypatia Says:

    […] at Swiss Army Librarian, has a great post noting that someone put together a way to search library and librarian blogs. (I’ve added this […]

  10. Simon Petersdorf Says:

    I seriously loved reading this web site. I’ll surely place you in my favorites part.