To enable it, log into your blog, go to the ‘plugins’ menu and click ‘activate’ next to the ‘YouTube’ plugin. From then on, any time you type something like this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne_WXP7lUWM]

it will result in something like this:

(This is a humorous video which I have never watched – apparently it is about libraries)

Note that the actual video remains at YouTube, it is not hosted on any library servers so it will count as internet traffic on quotas.

Thanks to Jennifer Creese for the idea and Robert Buzink for writing this plugin.

librariesinteract.info

Libraryman has set up a Flickr group “365 Library Days Project“. In Michael’s words the aim is “Let’s get as many libraries as we can to sign up for a customized, library friendly version of the 365 project. That would mean that if you decide to participate, you would commit to downloading at least 365 pictures from in, around or about the library you work in, for and/or with.” The photographs could be uploaded to Flickr in batches, rather than daily and at the end of the year each featured library would have an archive showcasing a year in it’s history.

I’ve just been checking out the stats for UQ Library blogs . It’s a bit hard to tell how much is traffic generated by blog owners and how much is students but in many cases the IP addresses give it away. A lot of traffic is from blog owners but this show up because they consistently come from the same IP address where as students are on fairly random addresses depending on which ISP they use and whether they connect from the eZones.

We are also getting many hits from RSS readers which becomes apparent when you look at the most viewed pages . From this page, I can see that BSL leads the pack in terms of views but I’m not sure if the staff have been reading it more than the students – though judging by the popularity of the RSS feed for BSL, I’d guess a lot of students are also watching it. Law, External Students and HSL are also getting some traffic. In this list you can also see posts that have attracted attention. Usually people link to the actual story if they’ve come through an RSS reader – which supports my theory that the BSL RSS feed is being well used.

I had an email this week from a person who didn’t realise that their blog was behind a firewall. Please note that all blogs are behind the firewall (like the intranet) unless you let me know that you want the students (and the rest of the world) to be able to view it. To check, go to an eZone and see if you can load the blog.

The stats for the Search terms is helpful and a bit of a laugh too. Someone out there agrees with Jo on the tartan mini-skirts thing.

I almost forgot – you can get an idea of where people are getting to your blog from by looking at the referring pages . The other menus on the main stats for UQ Library blogs page have lots of other stuff including the Referrers section showing how many people are coming from bookmarks and google too.

If I ever get some time (like between Fez releases), I’ll put some more plugins into Lyceum so we can get more blog specific stats (and those photo avatars that I’ve been asked for might make it in too)

Happy blogging all.