The iron curtain has lifted, but that doesn’t mean that LISZEN: Trends is feature complete. Those that had a sneak peek over the last two weeks will notice the the site is now more visually appealing.
Feed Me
For those that aren’t aware, LISZEN: Trends is a real-time/social library tool, much like Digg (except for librarians). It allows you to submit news, vote on news, and subscribe to news. There are currently three choices of RSS feeds:
Queued:
When an article is first submitted it goes into the Q. Subscribe to this feed if you would prefer to view news before it goes mainstream. You can, also, view this by clicking on “Discover LIS Trends.”
Published (recommended):
Once a submitted article receives a certain number of votes (currently set at 4) it becomes “published.” Subscribe to this feed if you prefer news that has been sorted out and reviewed by peers.
All:
This feed contains both “Queued” and “Published”
If you are wondering, “if LISZEN: Trends requires 4 votes to get published, why is there news with 2 votes on the published page,” fear not. During testing the setting was at 2 votes, but will now require 4 on future posts. The aim is to have about 35% – 40% of daily submissions make it to “published” status. This means that the number of required votes will be adjusted periodically to ensure balance, and that your not bombarded with news.
Categories
What I am still looking for is help on finalizing the “categories” within LISZEN: Trends. Here are the current categories:
- Academic Libraries
- Books
- Cataloging
- Censorship
- Children
- Continuing Education
- Employment
- General
- Humor
- Programs & Events
- Public Libraries
- Special Libraries
- Technology
- Video
- Young Adult
One is still able to tag posts, but broad library topics for categories would help. QUESTION: If you could categorize the library profession into 15 general areas what would they be?
Since I mentioned tagging, I want to draw everyone attention to the tag cloud for the site (nice, ehh).
… And More
Since I don’t want everyone repeating the same errors to me, here are things I am aware of:
- “tell a friend” link does not work (yet)
- Avatars are gone? (For a bit, but they will be back)
With finals quickly approaching my response time to emails will suffer. But feel free to post any observations, bugs, compliments, and suggested categories in the comments.
That’s all for now. In the words of Dylan Baker, a LISZEN: Trends beta tester, Get Trendy! And get over to LISZEN: Trends…