Bonus Entry on Other Professional Bloggers (Or, Professionals Who Blog, Rather)

As part of our blog assignment for this particular course, we were supposed to pick a few bloggers who update from the field to follow and then report back on who they are, what they talk about, etc. This has been a particularly interesting task, and for me I think it has been a nice introduction to something that is really stressed in library school (follow professional bloggers! Read professional publications!) but without being assigned is just another "thing I should really do." So without further ado, I give to you the librarian bloggers I have chosen to follow along with for this semester.

Academic Bloggers

Librarian Meg has been a blogger that I have been personally interested in following. A little while ago I went into Kristin's office hours and had a lengthy chat about which kind of library I might be best suited for, or would enjoy working in best. The final outcome was possibly a rather innovative public library, or a fairly small academic library such as my own alma mater. In any case, she suggested then that Librarian Meg, a UMSI alumna, might be a good person to follow and/or get in touch with. She works at a small university in upstate New York, and it has been nice to follow along with the daily challenges she faces at work, which seem like things that a typical librarian at a small university would deal with. She talks about things like one-shot workshops where professors want her to teach citation. I liked that her thoughts on this were something along the lines of "Where did everyone get the idea that librarians are citation experts? And furthermore, the professor is the one grading it, shouldn't they be the ones teaching citations to their specifications?" But she chooses to buck up and teach citation, along with some other things she thinks are useful, because face-time with students is invaluable, and a librarian should leap at every opportunity they have to interact with students. She also discusses the challenges that I think many librarians face which have to do with marketing. Librarians are not naturally good marketers (imagine that) and therefore she saw that their ebook system, Overdrive, was being severely underused. She had to figure out a marketing strategy and implement it so that the system would see more use and thus justify the cost of such an expense. This struck a chord with me, too, especially as I think about what courses I should be taking next year. I had already heard about a cognate course in the School of Social Work, I believe, and it was was Marketing for Non-Profits. I was already thinking that would be a great course to take, especially if I am interested in public libraries, but I think it would be beneficial to take even for people going into academic libraries, as Meg is. Of course, I can't expect to learn everything I need to know about marketing in a semester, but it should give me a little more solid footing than I would otherwise have.

Letters to a Young Librarian is a blog run by Jessica Olin, the director of a small liberal arts college in Delaware. I think that her blog title says it all. Her posts aren't actually in letter format (it makes a little sad that they don't start with "Dear Young Librarian,"), but she writes about topics as a season library veteran honestly and in an easily accessible way. My favorite post of hers was a recent recap of her first year as director, and it really struck me because everything she said about feeling like she was totally in over her head every day, and then ultimately realizing that she was going to be okay, really resonated with me as a student. That's how I feel everyday. So it was nice to know that even the tried-and-true librarians feel the same as us beginners. I even commented and thanked her for being so honest. She also spoke at one point about being persuaded by her readers to go to ALA Midwinter, and how she was glad she went after all. I liked that because I am 100% that person who doesn't really want to go to social events because it just seems so exhausting and people end up having to drag me out. I always have a good time when I'm there, but it's a struggle to go. I expect I will need friends and colleagues in my career to drag me to conferences. She also discusses her family history--her mother and grandmother were librarians, too! How sweet! I think there is a kind of wonderful passion and familiarity that so many children grow up with when they have librarians for parents or grandparents. I think it is not all that unusual for children to follow in those footsteps, which is really sweet and encouraging.

Miscellaneous Bloggers

These bloggers don't really fall into a specific category of professionals. They are librarians, or librarian-types, and discuss things relevant to the field.

Annoyed Librarian is a blogger I found to be really funny and interesting. It's written by "anonymous," and hosted by Library Journal, so it's kind of an "official" library blog. I really liked AL's sardonic voice and her perspective on certain issues such as the whole demise of libraries due to e-books. She talks about e-books and how if we get rid of paper books then the gap will only widen between the poor and the more wealthy, and education will suffer, which I think is absolutely true. I am from a poor area, and I know that many of the patrons we served at the public library couldn't use a computer, let alone own one. And an e-reader or tablet? Nobody even knows what those are. What I find to be actually more interesting than the AL blog posts, though, are the comments she inspires, which often turn into a kind of librarian flame war. This is odd because librarians are notoriously the nicest people around. I've learned that when "enthusiastic" is used in job descriptions (and it is very often used in job descriptions), they really mean "young and fresh out of library school," which is a bonus for me right now. The flame wars are fascinating to read through, while at the same time horribly discouraging. When commentors routinely make comments such as this one: 

"Yes, there is a glut of MLIS degrees, a dearth of jobs, and a trend toward downsizing professional library staff through attrition. So under what delusions do people continue to pursue a master’s degree program in a low-paying field with bleak to non-existent prospects for either full-time employment or a liveable wage? I have little sympathy for anyone who accrues 40K in student loan debt on an MLIS and then cries foul because they cannot find a job in the field. As the old saying goes, a failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. I hear Wal-Mart is hiring." Follow the comment thread here

I get pretty upset. 40k in student loans? That's cute. My only hope is in the Career Development Office's figures of 98% post-graduation employment. I see a lot of success stories coming from last year's alum and this year's soon-to-be alum already. I guess I have to have faith in the strength and quality of my program, the school's alumni network and prestigious name, and myself.

InfoDocket has been really interesting to follow for the semester. It's another blog hosted by Library Journal, and it's written by Gary Price. I like it because it is a hodge-podge of library news from all over. If it is noteworthy and a library somewhere is doing it, or it applies directly to libraries, InfoDocket covers it. This blog is updated several times daily, which makes it really challenging to keep up with, so often I only read the full post if the headline grabs my attention. It has been so much fun following it though! I have pulled links from a few different posts and sent them to friends on Facebook. Namely, when InfoDocket announced that the Library of Congress had created an online exhibit to the cosmos in honor of Carl Sagan and the newly updated Cosmos series that Fox will be airing hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, I was able to share that on my fiance's wall, and he thought it was great!  And one of my current roommates is a huge music buff, and I was able to share on his Facebook wall that the Library of Congress had announced the digitization and release of over 80,000 songs and other materials on American Folk Music, and he was really excited about it, too! I very nearly shared a recent post about Marvel's public release of their API on another friend's wall who is trying to break into the comic book industry, but I decided that he probably wouldn't really know what to do with a public API, and neither do I, if we're being honest here. My point is that following InfoDocket has been really exciting to me both as a librarian who is interested in what libraries around the country and around the world are doing, and as a person who just likes to share interesting information because it's neat and I think someone close to me would benefit from it (or is that just the secret definition of being a librarian?).

I'm going to conclude by saying that I'm glad I was prompted to set up an RSS feed for this class so I can actually follow professionals who blog, and that I believe I will keep up this practice going forward in my studies and my schooling.

And finally, because I really liked this and want to share it here but don't want to create a separate post, photographs of today's librarians at ALA Midwinter. Such great photos of how we are not all old ladies shushing people!