There has been much written recently about the nature of library weblogs and the overlap that happens when everyone links to the same item. Steven would like to have a way of filtering out redundant posts. Catalogblog calls for more topic-centric library blogs…. I wonder if library blogs are going through the same growing pains that regular blogs went through years ago – there are too many blogs, pointing at the same links, how to cope?
I wonder about having the information you get from library blogs pre-filtered. Yes, it would save time, but isn’t filtering information what librarians are good at in the first place? I would guess that a librarian would be more able than the average reader to quickly glance at a link to the librarian action figure or david hasslehoff singing in an Eskimo outfit, note that it is of no interest and everyone else has already linked to it, and move on.
Is there anyway to quantify the time you’d save by weeding out links to a common library topic before you decide to also segregate all the good commentary attached to the link you find redundant?
I don’t think that to be a librarian blogger you automatically have to be contributing to the profession in the more traditional sense, by providing a human filtered SDI service on librarianship to your blog readers. I greatly enjoy reading the slice o’ life librarian blogs created by libraryblooze, tinylittlelibrarian and malelibarian centerfold. I suspect that once the semester starts and the students come back, I’ll have a few stories like that to tell myself. I decided to start blogging because I wanted to write more even it was very informal, and I wanted to be able to tinker with my own web site.
I think that sometimes you don’t need a reason to start writing. Sometimes your focus, niche, or the story you have to tell evolves over time. Sometimes content restriction (a man blogging about knitting) can build up a targeted core audience. If that is your goal, cool. I find myself restricted to a particular area of librarianship at work enough, that if I posted exclusively about it during my off-hours I would probably go insane. I think that all of the more free-flowing librarian blogs do serve a purpose, as they might humanize a stereotyped professions to a non-librarian reader in a way that a more focused professional development library blog couldn’t accomplish.
I know I’m fairly new to the whole blogging thing, but for the moment I’m happy to blog about whatever I’m thinking at the moment without wondering if I’m meeting the needs of my “audience,” whoever that may be. *Hi Mom!*
I’m probably being unnecessarily defensive here because I’m cranky about having to drive on the masspike tomorrow morning, and I feel like the kottkes and rebeccabloods of the library blogging world are making feature requests and suggestions that might exclude a lot of the library blogs out there.
Hey, thanks for the plug!!
I don’t think we need to filter blogs, either. I mean, it did get a bit much to see the action figure on almost every site I went to, but like you said, it’s easy enough to skip past. And hey, I knew nothing about David in the Eskimo suit, so isn’t it a good thing you’re not filtered?
The library world is a fairly small one, so there’s bound to be some overlap. But I don’t think that means we need to start a quest to streamline things. I’d be a bit pissed off, actually, to find myself having my links dumped just because they’d been mentioned somewhere else that I’d never seen. It’s my blog and I’ll post what I want to, darn it.
“humanize a stereotyped professions to a non-librarian reader in a way that a more focused professional development library blog couldn’t accomplish”
Bingo, that’s what I’m talking about. Librarians are not just a bunch of niched individuals. In school, I became very interested in so-called “holistic” librarianship, but it’s so much more than just crossing the gap between tech and public service; it’s about, to use the buzzwords du jour, “actualizing the complete person.” So let it flow freely…it’s all about you, whatever that may be.
Redundancy all over again
Tangognat blogs:”Is there anyway to quantify the time you’d save by weeding out links to a common library topic before you decide to also segregate all the good commentary attached to the link you find redundant?”While I don’t know the technical answer…
I really wrote that whole post just to plug tinylittlelibrarian and put up a link to that Hasslehoff video : )
I know the guys at librarystuff and catalogblog were NOT standing on the mountain bringing forth the stone tablets of library blogging, but I do think that there is plenty of room for as many types of library blogs as there are individual librarians. And I worry about that type of inclusiveness being lost when we start to speculate about library blogs posting the same links or wish that a particular type of library blog be created.
For people that have a wish list of subject focused library blogs that don’t exist yet, could they act as mentors to library school students who might wish to set up and maintain such a blog as part of a practicum?
Hey, if you enjoy what you’re doing, why worry about it? Your weblog isn’t “like everyone else’s” and you think about what you’re writing–more than enough reason to justify a weblog.
(Here’s what I consider enough reason: “I want to do a weblog.”)
(And here’s my — um — disagreement with another brilliant blogger: I don’t buy into the post-Dylan reasoning: “So I would not feel so all alone, everybody must [start a weblog].”)
I feel that enough reason NOT to do a weblog is “I don’t feel like doing a weblog.”
I was impressed that the creator of Humpday Havoc decided to be a reader for a while. Maybe they’ll start writing again later (or contribute to a collaborative weblog, or write for traditional media, or…). Nothing wrong with that. Not every situation requires or is best served by a weblog.
Keep doing what you do, as long as you enjoy doing it.
You’re getting blogged down here! *Hi Tangognat*