If you've not been near Ning for a while, you'll find it has a new skin. On the surface, it's now a dead easy to build and use community website. And it's free.

(It used to be a mashup-building site for propellor heads. The techie stuff is still there, but you don't need to go near it.)

Jenny Levine, through her blog The Shifted Librarian, has been showing librarians how they can extend their services beyond the conventional boundaries of place and time. She doesn't just talk the talk, she walks the walk as well. She is authoritative on both library and technology matters. And now she's leap-frogged the usual internal processes to create an experimental community presence for the American Library Association.

If you include me, 97 people have signed up already. And it was only launched three days ago. Members can include their profiles and photos, write blog posts, contribute to forums, link up to each other and, of course, have conversations. Although targeted at members of the ALA, anyone can join and see what's going on.

The Ning sites score because they are focused. This one is for librarians and for those interested in the subject.

Here's what Ning has to say about itself:

Ning is the only online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds.

You can make it public or private and for anything - and anyone - you'd like.

Why not see if there are any groups centred around your interests and, if not, create one?

One warning: if you make it private, you can't provide public RSS feeds. You have to make do with email notifications of new postings. Fortunately, the ALA's Ning site is public so you can take feeds from various places, including the blog and the forum, and see what's going on without even signing up.