Sue Polanka, head of reference and instruction at the main library of Wright State University, sent a message to the OhioLINK membership today about a new blog she is moderating called No Shelf Required:

No Shelf Required provides a forum for discussion among librarians, publishers, distributors, aggregators, and others interested in the publishing and information industry. The discussion will focus on the issues, concepts, current and future practices of Ebook publishing including: finding, selecting, licensing, policies, business models, usage (tracking), best practices, and promotion/marketing. The concept of the blog is to have open discussion, propose ideas, and provide feedback on the best ways to implement Ebooks in library settings. The blog will be a moderated discussion with timely feature articles and product reviews available for discussion and comment.

No Shelf Required will be moderated by Sue Polanka, Wright State University. The role of the moderator will be to articulate discussion topics, provide feature articles and product reviews, and ask poignant questions to the group in order to stimulate open discussion and collaborative learning about Ebooks. The moderator will also provide audio content in the form of interviews with librarians and those in the publishing industry.

The blog has been running for about a week, and already has topics like:

• Should eBooks be updated? (A topic for discussion)
• Book Sales Increase at Year’s End (Copy of a press release)
• ALA Program – The Future of Electronic Reference Publishing (Announcement of an upcoming ALA program)
• XReferplus – Credo Reference, Oxford Reference Online, Greenwood Digital Collection and Gale Virtual Reference Library (Product reviews)

It sounds like it is going to be an interesting place to keep an eye on, particularly since ebooks can/could be a disruptive influence on library services. Good luck, Sue!

Meredith Farkas is conducting a survey of those in the library and information science profession who blog:

After two years [since completing the first Survey of the Biblioblogosphere], it doesn’t take a survey to see that the library blogosphere has changed a great deal. So many people now are blogging who would never have considered it two years ago. While I felt like I knew of most of the library blogs out there in 2005, I know that I probably barely know 1/10 of them today. Something that was once seen as incredibly risky to do (and still is depending on how you approach it) is now thought of as a way to make a name for yourself in the profession. The number of libraries that are blogging has exploded as well. All of these changes have made me very curious about what we’d find today if we did the Survey of the Biblioblogosphere.

I don’t know how much uniqueness there is in my readership over Meredith’s broad appeal, but if this is the first time you’ve heard of the Biblioblogosphere Survey and you blog about a topic in the library and/or information science arena, I encourage you to read her posting and take the survey.