The Middlebury Blog Network

The “Blogging at Middlebury” blog has been renamed “The Middlebury Blog Network” and is now using the Translucence theme.  As well, it has been reconfigured to aggregate selected posts from the Midd blogosphere.  Blog owners interested in having their blogs listed on this site currently need to contact Joe Antonioli.

6 thoughts on “The Middlebury Blog Network

  1. Carrie Macfarlane

    Thanks Alex, it looks nice and I like the new name!

    A few questions: How are posts selected to display on “The Middlebury Blog Network”? To me, some of our LIS blog posts look a little out of place there (for example, posts that describe area goals, posts that refer to “you” meaning LIS staff). Any chance we could feed just posts tagged “The Essentials”? Or at least provide a label/link for each post that says what blog the post came from? To an outsider, I wonder if the mixture of posts would be confusing–for different audiences, on different topics, etc. Providing context (where the post came from) might make the whole page make more sense.

    Thanks for doing the work and considering these changes!

    Reply
    1. Alex Chapin Post author

      We definitely need to come up with a strategy for selecting posts to be included on the “The Middlebury Blog Network” site. In keeping with the intent of the original version of this site, posts should be selected only from those blogs that have asked to be included (i.e. those listed in the site’s sidebar under Middlebury Blogsphere).

      For the launch of this new version of the site, I have selected a number of blogs to syndicate posts from. These are listed in the sidebar under Contributors. I tried to include a variety of blogs, some from academic depts, some from administrative units, some from faculty. I chose blogs that were particularly active, or generated a lot of comments.

      The plugin that aggregates posts from blogs at Middlebury has a number of options. Currently it is configured to be updated manually from the selected blogs. The plugin also supports only the inclusion of posts that have been manually reviewed and approved…

      re: LIS posts
      Perhaps you’re right, perhaps we should just include LIS blog posts that are labelled “The Essentials.”

      re: Diversity and Source of Posts
      The diversity of sources for posts listed on this site could be confusing… I added to the tagline of the site a note that these were “selected posts from the Midd Blogosphere” Maybe more explanation is needed?

      Reply
  2. Mike Roy

    I think we should create a tag called ‘midd blog network’ and use that tag for those posts that we think make sense to be aggregated. That would take all the guess work out of it.

    — mike

    Reply
    1. Alex Chapin Post author

      We could create a tag specifically for the Middlebury Blog Network aggregation site. Alternatively, we could have the aggregator just pick up all posts tagged with “Library Spotlight”

      Reply
      1. Carrie Macfarlane

        I’d suggest not creating a tag specifically for the Middlebury Blog Network, unless you’re willing to go in and add the tag yourself. We haven’t been all that successful in getting “The Essentials” tag out there, and adding another tag to signal a public audience might be equally unfruitful.

        “Library Spotlight” could work, but it probably wouldn’t get posts that are really tech-oriented…but we’ll see!

        Reply
  3. sohbet

    We could create a tag specifically for the Middlebury Blog Network aggregation site. Alternatively, we could have the aggregator just pick up all posts tagged with “Library Spotlight”

    Reply

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