K-State Libraries: Digital Initiatives

Docs to Blogs

There's a new, simple way to get documents created by a word processing application (like Microsoft Word) posted to one of our blogs on TypePad, without the usual formatting nightmares or cut and paste headaches.  All you need is a Google account and access to Google Docs, and the steps outlined below.

1. Login to Google Docs
2. If your document is saved elsewhere, upload it using the "Upload" button near the top left of the Docs screen, just under the Google logo.   You can upload documents in .txt, .doc, .html, .rtf, .odt and .sxw formats.  It will open for editing after it is uploaded.
3. If your document is already in Docs, just open it for editing.
4. Find the "Publish" tab in the upper right corner and click it.
5. On this screen, you have two publishing options.  You are interested in the 2nd choice - publishing to a blog. You'll need to set up options the first time you do this, so click the setup link ("set your blog site settings")
6. On this page, you'll pick some non-intuitive things, so follow along (click the tiny thumbnail for a screenshot):
   1. Click the radio button for "My own server/Custom"
   2. Select "Blogger API" from the API dropdown
   3. Copy and paste this URL: http://www.typepad.com/t/api/xmlrpc.php  into the URL box
   4. Enter your TypePad userid and password in the boxes, and the name of the blog to which you're posting your document.  Make sure you enter the full name exactly as it appears on the blog, for example, "K-State Libraries: Talking in the Library", not just "Talking".
      
   5. Click OK.
7. The settings box will disappear, click Post to Blog to post your document.
8. Click OK in the confirmation box that appears.
9. Go look at your blog and see how cool it is!

If you're a multiple-blog author, just edit the settings to change to a different blog before you publish.  Another neat thing you can do is edit a document you've already posted to blog from inside Google Docs. Then, when you go to the Publish tab, one of your options will be to re-publish the previous post with the new document - handy for fixing typos or updating information!  The only flaw I've found so far is that it seems reluctant to assign a title to your post based on your document's name - you may need to login to Typepad and assign a title to your post, but that's a small price to pay for the convenience of directly publishing documents you've already created.

K-State Libraries and Google

While sitting at the Digital Curation Conference today, I flipped over to my browser and googled the terms "ojs pkp." I was looking for the official OJS page to get a piece of documentation. I no longer bookmark anything, and don't really use my del.icio.us account to help me get to frequently used pages (I use it for other purposes) since it's nearly always faster for me just to google what I want. Anyway, I did the search, and guess what came up in fifth position? This page, from our little old Conference Reports blog (which was, incidentally, recently cited in Library Journal as an example of good blogging practice in libraries). Why so high, one might ask. Well, blogs do a great deal of interlinking internally, between archives, main pages, permalinks, and so forth, so fare well in a ranking system such as Google's, which relies heavily on link frequency.

I did a search for "library conference reports" and we came up number four. A search for LibX brought up our page at number eight (the www.lib.ksu.edu page, which happens to have been blogged), ironically above the VT Libraries page for their version. I tried "assignment planner," and we came up seventh, which is great, but KU was higher (grr). Remember, there are thousands of libraries out there, and we're getting top ten Google results for search terms that do not include our proper name. There are companies that invest thousands of dollars in getting ranks like that, so this is great news.

Try this out. Look for library terms we blog about, and see where they come up on Google. If you find something good, leave a comment below.

Oh beware, little bloggers, what you write

So this is actually pretty cool. I'm at Access 2007 in Victoria live blogging the event on the Conference Reports blog. Thursday morning, about 8:30 PST, Jessamyn West gives the opening keynote. Somewhat later, Amanda Etches-Johnson from McMaster U gives a talk on the Endeca overlay on their catalog. Well, this morning, I notice that Jessamyn had read what I had written about her talk and commented on it, so I replied to that, and she added another comment, despite the fact she's already left, I believe. I'd like to think that she has all of our feeds in her feedreader and stays on top of them every day, but I highly doubt that. More likely, she has an alert service set up somewhere hip that lets her know when new uses of her name appear on random blogs. Pretty cool, though.

So later today, I'm sitting there live blogging a talk when Donna writes to me and asks me to please tell her that the person from McMaster I harangued (I asked a funny question of Ms. Etches-Johnson--well, funny to me and Jessamyn, at least) was not Amanda E-J, when, of course it was. Donna pointed out to me that Amanda E-J had been kind enough to use our blogs as an example in something she wrote, so I should really be nice to her. Well, I was nice, and I don't think she's too annoyed by my ranting question of yesterday.

So, while I'm sitting there reading this email from Donna today, Amanda, a propos of nothing, picks up her laptop, wheels it around in my direction, shows me our conference reports blog on the screen, and asks if that is ours. Why, yes, I said, why? (Thinking, oh crap, did I say something mean there about her talk--really, I didn't.) Well, someone from Endeca's Canada office had seen it (within mere hours of its publication, mind you) and written to her, asking to have a conversation about some of her ideas in the post. He was a bit confused about the fact that some guy named Dale from Kansas was writing about her talk, adding a few of his own editorial asides, not that Amanda was writing the post, but we both found it funny that he reacted to it. Again, he probably has some alert that trolls for his company's name and found my little post.

There's a point to this story: people read and process our blogs in ways we cannot control and do not intend. Far from being a cautionary tale, I want to do a little dance because of this. We're seeing what we said was the point behind blogging. Put information out there, and let people do with it what they will. Thanks to this little bizarre set of events I've related, I met new people, caught the interest of Endeca with my comments (who knows what fruits can grow from such little seeds), and learned that Jessamyn--smart person that she is--cares about how and when her name is invoked. This is great stuff.

Continued Post HowTo

Would you like to use the nifty "continue reading" feature for your longer postings?  Here's how.

Blogging Stats

First, some basic summary stats, then some commentary/analysis.

Page Views (140228 total)

• Bulletin 24161
• Talking 12593
• News 12193
• LLC, ShortCuts, Out, GenRef, DID = 4-6K
• Strat Planning News, Annex, Fitness = 3K
• 509, Chat, Instruction, Circ/Reserves Students, Service Status, PR Team, Strat Plan Steering = 2K

Average Daily Views

• Talking 56
• Bulletin 52
• News, Blogs = 20s
• Circ/Reserves Students, LLC, ShortCuts, GenRef, DID, Out, Dean's Scene = 10s

Wish Week Wrap-Up

In case we didn't take your call this week, this may be why:

New Blog Questions

If you would like to begin a new blog, here are the questions you'll need to answer:

1. What do you want to call it?
2. How public do you want it to be - password protected, not listed & not indexed, listed but not indexed, indexed, promoted?
3. Who will the authors be, and what are their email addresses?
4. What kinds of things do you want to write about?  This helps you come up with categories, so you can have a starter set.
5. Is there anything you want in the sidebars beyond the normal stuff (normal = recent posts/comments, archives, categories, link list to other blogs, syndication link)?
6. Is its intended audience library staff, our users, both, or somebody else?
7. Do you need any other help getting it going - orientation for staff or students?

TypePad sidebar documentation

Made the following changes today to TypePad:

• Created a Site Search typelist, which searches all library Webservers. Currently only found on the DID blog (to test it), but I will add it to all of the public blogs as the day goes on.
• Created a Search Search Cuts typelist, which searches the Short Cuts content on both ada and TypePad. Copied the XSLT stylesheet k-state_libraries and created a new front end called short_cuts using this stylesheet. The only difference is in the displayed header--I removed the link to the general site search and renamed the search results page.
• Edited the sidebar content for Short Cuts. It belongs to the category of blogs that cannot be controlled via a central template.
• For blogs geared toward an external audience, I put the following content in the left sidebar: Library Links, K-State Links, Site Search. The blogs in this category are The Dean's Seen, New Resources, Service Status, Talking in the Library, and News & Events.

Creating Continued Posts

For long posts, it is often preferable to have a short introduction showing with the bulk of the post accessible via a link.  This allows interested people to read the entire post, without having to sacrifice excessive front page real estate.  Posts that lend themselves well to continuation include those with long lists, instructions, or multiple images.  To create a continued post, follow these simple instructions.

Typepad to WordPress

Here are all the links, etc, from my attempt to export the bulletin blog from Typepad and into WordPress. 

1. I installed WOS and WordPress on my jump drive.
2. I read this post, linked from everywhere, about going from Typepad to WP, and decided that since we didn't use domain mapping, it wouldn't help us.
3. WordPress' Codex section says that the MoveableType instructions should work for Typepad, except for the export part.
4. I exported the posts from the bulletin blog to a file, saved in W:\DigLib\Typepad.  Typepad exports as htm, I saved as txt, because that's what the instructions expect.
5. Following the MT instructions, I got as far as importing the posts.  Author names were recognized as expected (step 4 of importing entries), step 5 seemed to go ok, but I got the "have fun" and some error messages about unexpected values simultaneously. 
6. Looking at the blog that was created revealed no imported posts or content of any kind.

Typepad Posting HowTo

Follow the steps below to create a post on any of K-State Libraries' blogs.

1. Already an author for the blog to which you want to post? Skip to step 4.
2. Email Donna to request an invitation for the blog.  You need a separate invitation for each blog.
3. You will receive an invitation from "KSUL Blog Administrator".  Refer to the Typepad help page for accepting an author invitation if you have any trouble.
4. Log in to Typepad with your Typepad user id and password. 
5. You'll see all the blogs for which you have author rights in a box in the top right corner of the page.  Click "POST" next to the blog to which you'd like to post.
6. On the posting screen, type a short title in the Title box.
7. Choose a Category from the dropdown box.
8. Type your post in the Post Body area.  You can use the toolbar above to add formatting, just like you would in an Office application.
9. You can add images or documents to your post using the icons near the end of the toolbar.
10. Spell-check your post using the last button on the toolbar.
11. Check Posting Status and Comments dropdowns; for most posts the default settings (Publish Now and Open) are what you want.
    
12. Click Preview if you'd like to get a rough idea of how your post will appear, or Save to add your post to the blog immediately.
13. If you'd like to post again to the same blog, click New Post and go back to step 6.
14. If you're done, click Logout at the top of the page.

HDDY meeting

I was looking for some catchy name for our meetings, and just decided to use our initials. I think HDDY looks cryptic and mysterious.

Here's what we agreed to work on:

Wikis

We decided to divide up the task of reviewing the various options. We'll report back at our next meeting on our impressions:

• Yongli - PmWiki, PBWiki
• Harish - MediaWiki, PHPWiki, Twiki (and/or whatever David is using)
• Dale - MoinMoinWiki
• Donna - will scour the earth for reviews and comparisons of these systems

Additionally, I agreed to get around to posting as a user in the BYU MediaWiki instance to which I can post to get an idea of how easy (or not) it is to use.

Blogs

Continuing an earlier discussion, Yongli will take a look at the TP file Donna created and see if she can get her WordPress installation to ingest it.

CSS to make printable version

The following CSS removes the sidebars from the print output, widens the center column, and creates a small buffer to allow for weird spacing in certain blogs:

@media print {.module {display:none}}
@media print {.layout-three-column #beta {margin-left:5px; margin-right:5px}}

The first bit uses the parent class of all sidebar content (module) to hide them, then takes the center column, beta, and gives it a 5px buffer. TP uses greek letters to signify columns, from right to left: alpha (left sidebar), beta (main content), gamma (right sidebar), delta (far-right sidebar in four-column designs).

Incidentally, never knew one could use a parent class like module to declare display:none and hide a bunch of stuff, but was very glad to make this serendipitous discovery.

One last note about printing: this is a rare instance where I would recommend using IE rather than FF. FF renders posts almost as images (treats the div space as an unsplittable whole), so will actually dump the rest of a post that goes longer than a page. Also creates horrid spacing between longish posts. IE renders them as continuous HTML, ignoring the div. I'm sure it was just an oversight on Microsoft's part, not intentionally smart design!

Evaluation points for blogging/CMS software

As requested, here is a preliminary list of criteria we can use to assess the suitability of a particular software for our site. Please feel free to comment away so that we can shape this into a usable list.

• multi-level admin: more than just a central admin person and users, ability to create sub-admin who have rights for certain content but not all
• access-control: what is available for restricting the viewing
• ability for sub-admins to control sidebar content and/or create categories
• clear direction about where a post will appear
• strong editing tools