Wanting to find out what other librarians are saying about Library 2.0? Or perhaps you can’t remember who talked about “Fighting the Stereotypes!” a few weeks ago. Welcome to the search engine for librarians!The search engine is called LISZEN, and the quote above is from the creator's post announcing its launch last month. LISZEN searches library and librarian blogs, is powered by Google Co-op, and was put up by a "future librarian." (Note: It's optimized for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2. Download now!)
How can Filipino librarians take advantage of LISZEN? Well, instead of conducting a search using Google or other search engines to find out what librarians have written about online catalogs recently, you're better off searching LISZEN using "OPAC" as a keyword. And just to highlight the difference in results, try "OPAC" on Google and Yahoo. Huge difference.
But one problem that I see is that there don't seem to be too many Filipino blogs being searched by LISZEN. A search for "Philippines" turns up 25 results from 15 blogs, only two of which are owned by Filipinos. So here's what I'll do: list all the Filipino blogs owned by librarians that I'm familiar with, and hope that the owners will add their blogs to the LISZEN list and submit their blogs formally. I've decided not to include purely personal blogs but if you'd like to have your blog included in the list below (not necessarily for LISZEN), just leave a comment.
Aczafra.com (Arnold Zafra)I also hope that the "Institutional and Association Blogs" I listed last month will add their blogs to the LISZEN list. And let's all welcome the PLAI-NCR Council Newsletter to the biblioblogosphere! I hope this means that PLAI won't be far behind.
Baratillo@Cubao (Juned Sonido)
Blah! (Clair Ching)
Clair.free.net.ph (Clair Ching)
The Coffee Goddess (Zarah Gagatiga)
Confessions of a reading addict (Marj San Pedro)
Dungeon Rants (Tropee?)
Events in My Life (Melchor Cichon)
Filipina Teacher-Librarian (Peachy Limpin)
Filipino Public School Librarians (Lilian Ventura)
Librarian at the helm (Hermie Salazar)
Mal'akh (Gelo Bautista)
Monkeywrench 2.0 (Igor Cabbab)
PNU Reference, Serials & Library Science Newsleaf (Roderick Ramos)
Public Domain Works (Cymbeline Villamin)
School Librarian in Action (Zarah Gagatiga)
Check out LibWorm, too. Results for "Philippines" are not as good as LISZEN's, perhaps because LibWorm is RSS-based, and registration (free) is required for more advanced features, but if you're into RSS magic, it will probably be worth it.
Category: Biblioblogosphere
