Something to occupy my time... - "Nothing worth while, nothing too boring... it's a perfect blend..." (no feed)
An excerpt: "Well, isn't this just fantastic? I'm officially a loser. Yes, my name is Jill, and I have finally stooped to the lowest form of boredness ever imagined. HA!
I'm actually 'working' right now. If you call sitting on my bum at the campus library a job, I'm set for life! The people are really nice though, and I get paid to do my homework. Oh YES!"
Aesthetik Musings - "and other slightly insane diatribes..." (RSS feed)
The author Rebecca is a graduate student in the University of Rhode Island's Masters in Library Science and Information Studies program.
From Steven's comments, we learn that Mikko Saari is a librarian-to-be, also using del.icio.us. And Mikko has a blog:
www.melankolia.net - "Life and opinions of Mikko Saari" (RSS feed)
BTW, with Mikko, BentleyBlog and icontemplate, I count 10 del.icio.us library bloggers.
Ooh, ooh, and the inseasonlibrarian, who may very well be Linda of The In Season Christian Librarian. But then again, maybe not.
Oh look, and jessamyn too.
The Gospel According to Library Dave - "Don't take my word for it...okay, do." (no feed)
Chuc Mung Nam Moi (no apparent feed)
Daynah is a Programmer Analyst II for the University of California Riverside Library System.
Library Diva - "Am I really a librarian?" (RSS feed)
Marian the Librarian is Dead - "The trials and tribulations of a library administrator/interesting person." (no feed)
...as if you needed any. But I like giving the occasional glimpse into the late-night inner workings of a LIS blog hunter.
So Steven talks about library bloggers who use del.icio.us. He counts four. I immediately think of five and begin to write a comment to that effect.* But I quickly start to wonder whether there are others to be found lurking within the social bookmarking latticework. Working through a series of possible bookmark categories, including libraries, library and librarianship. I note the user names of the people bookmarking in these categories. And by following the user name links, I come across the following, another library blogger using del.icio.us:
Easy Librarian - Musing on Digital Library,Topicmap,Knowledge Organization System" (RSS feed)
So that makes six (seven if you count Karl Siewert, occasional contributor to memepool). This same obsessive behavior leads me to wonder if jlm has or will have a library blog for us to share with you.
*[The five user names are librarystuff, planetneutral, tangognat, simanoff and mamamusings. The individual pages are at http://del.icio.us/user_name]
Well, I've received two comments on consecutive days from someone named moreno, who strongly desires to promote the "biggest librarians blog in brazil." Admittedly, the blog looks interesting, but the transition in tone from the first to second comment is quite off-putting.
To my regular readers, please excuse the following rant:
[rant]
1. Please don't tell me what I "need to publish." I appreciate all suggestions and regard them as such. Suggestions, not obligations. Coercion is unwelcome.
2. Give me a chance. I do have a day job after all. Immediately following up a friendly, legitimate request the next day with seemingly condescending remarks about my linguistic faculties and/or cultural bias does not move you up the priority list.
3. There's an email address to the right (hasn't been there long), so please use that for suggestions of this variety. That way, I won't feel compelled to use this forum to air my grievances.
[/rant]
Of course, I can relate to the over-enthusiasm of a student and respect the pitfalls of cross-cultural text-based communication via blog commenting. And I really like the phrase "We have feed." So having said my piece, I offer the following:
Bibliotecários sem fronteiras - "ação, formação e informação" (RSS feed)
A sample: "Wer denkt das Bibliothekare langweilige Menschen sind der hat zwar zu 99% recht aber dafür ist das eine Prozent um so wilder. "
Oikothen oikade - "Being the Ramblings of a Classical Scholar Manque" (no feed)
Lee's recent experience reminds me of the trends I saw while in grad school: "When I told my advisor in the library science program that I wanted to go into old/rare book & manuscript library work, he simply said, 'Well, we don't have anything like that.'"
Since my life is more than shoes... - "I thought I'd share it with you" (no feed)
A little confusing as the posts say Andy, when the author is reallly Janet, except for the most recent post, which is actually Andy. Anyhow, it's Janet who just started work at the NC State library.
and i write a letter from a one-way train "welcome to the blogtacular world of a quirkyalone, 20 something female who likes poetry....music....arguing...and crushes. in fact, i may have a crush on you." (no feed)
From the "proof of library employment post":
"I was in the worst mood this morning. can anyone raise their hand and tell me why? no? i really can't either. i slept a little late, there was snow, traffic was crapolicious, and then i got to work, missed the campus bus by 1 minute and had to walk the 10 minutes in freezing wind to the med school to then walk inside for another 5 minutes to get to la biblioteca.
i mean, it wasn't a big deal. i was just being pissy. BUT THEN! ok, you need background on this little story.
i've been working at the library for over a year now and it hasn't been pleasant all the times, but i do indeed have fun making friends with all the med school kids and doctors."
Not sure how we missed this one:
The InfoMan's Blog - "Thoughts, directions, ideas, and concepts that came across the email inbox and mind of John Burke." (no feed)
There's probably no connection here, but the association of title and description is compelling:
LIS - "freedom" (no feed)
The Land of Anne - "The Land of Anne is the realm in which I reside." (no feed)
Anne is a:
Librarian
Knitter
Rocker
Punk band guitarist/singer: Skatey-Eight
Zinester: Adventures in AnneLand
Owner of two Boston Terriers
One New Thing - "Weblog of Lynette Reville, a new librarian in Australia, who is on a library-like quest to find One New Thing to learn every day." (RSS feed)
Librarian Levin - "Here you're sure to find the steamy adventures of Rachael Adele, live from library school in Boston." (no feed)
LS 500 blog - "summaries of articles read for LS 500" (no feed)
Update: There appear to be blogs for everyone in this class, as I came across another today: LS 500 Angelia Campbell's BLOG (no feed)
This feisty young college student and branch library employee is the author of two blogs:
The OGT Blog of Super Justice - "THE JUSTICE BUNNY PUNCHES ARE ABOUT TO BE DELIVERED" (RSS feed)
OGT's Happy Land of Turtles - "Tortoises stay out" (RSS feed)
A grad student who goes by the name of ladyblog produces the following:
From the everyday life of... (RSS feed)
A sample: "Bit by bit I find myself being drawn into the world of librarians. It's sinister and evil the way they draw you into their own little world with it's own language and mannerism."
So I've been toying around with del.icio.us and am finding it so simple, effective and amusing that I'm making lifestyle changes to take advantage of it. If you're not familiar with del.icio.us at this point, it's basically a communal bookmark locator. If I see something that I want to mark as I'm surfing, reading, etc., I can use a bookmarklet to post it to my del.icio.us page. In this way, it is no different from how I used my Sideblog. The difference is that my bookmark becomes part of a huge bookmarking network. If other people linked to the same URL, a count will be shown. I can easily add category tags and, should I use the same terminology as others, our bookmarks will be collocated. (An exploration of comparative tag selection - deprived as we are of a controlled vocabulary - would certainly prove to be an interesting academic exercise for some enthusiastic grad student).
What I like is that this page of my bookmarks is easily added to from any computer where I can use a bookmarklet and accessible anywhere I go by both myself and any interested parties. It can replace both my Sideblog and my collection of links in my sidebar. By using a set of category tags consistently (hello controlled vocabulary), I can organize the links with a minimum of effort. I've been itching to do something different that would be easier to maintain and I think I have my answer. So if you're interested, feel free to check out my del.icio.us page and for updates as they happen, grab the feed.
If you aren't taking the time to read Marjorie's Catalog, I highly recommend starting from the beginning and soaking in every word. Marjorie, who is still looking for a publisher for her first novel, has the internship of her dreams in the NPR library and she's telling all. I find the whole experience fascinating and have learned a ton from the interesting questions and her approach to tackling them. Then, there's the whole job opening sub-plot...
Canuck Librarian - "Personal blog for a young information specialist" (no RSS feed)
Stephen Francouer, the Teaching Librarian, reports (on DIG_REF) that he has started a new blog:
Digital Reference - "Exploring the intersection of reference services, technology, and instruction." (RSS feed)
Note: I thought the blog seemed familiar and checking our archives, I found that I had discovered it back in August. But it looks like Stephen is finally ready to devote some energy to it, so it's worth re-directing your attention.
Today, I discovered the blog of one of my few good acquaintances here in Madison, IN - local reference assistant and soon-to-be-MLS-holding library employee, Jerry Yarnetsky. He can claim responsibility for introducing me to the potential of blogging, during my practicum last January. The library employs a staff blog that he started (I really should ask if he'd mind me sharing it with y'all) and I've been hooked ever since.
He also headed up the Harry Lemen Photo Collection, a major digitization project of a local historic photo archive. Well worth a look.
His blog:
Life on the River's Edge - "Fact and fiction of life in America's Most Beautiful Rivertown, Madison, Indiana." (no RSS feed)
Thinking Out Loud - "Librarian, reader, writer, video-gamer, amateur techno-geek." (no RSS feed)
Get It All Down - "I'm Writing as Fast as I Can" (no RSS feed)
Steven passed this along, which I suppose confirms that Open Stacks will be the temporary home of Blogsource-worthy posting.
Kristina Wright - "Writer, Rock Star, Library Assistant, Grad Student, Princess" (RSS feed)
Also, I'd like to congratulate John Hubbard on recently celebrating his one-year anniversary of running Library Link of the Day.
Chronicles of Bean - "Musings by me, a librarian by education and a techie by passion. Why do you care?" (no RSS feed)
Well, it wasn't my intention to become the de facto Blogsource, but I'm finding it impossible to not share the good stuff I'm finding.
SHUSH - "a website for the conservative librarian" (no feed)
I'm fascinated by the author's notions of good, bad and ugly, but will let you pass judgment for yourself.
GoddessLibrarian - "Reading, Writing and whatever else I want." (no feed)
About the author: "FYI--I used to be Jen Rice. But then I got married. So now I'm Jen McIntosh.
After having many jobs in many different libraries in the Capital District, I am proud to say I have finally gotten my dream job (well, except for the freelance writing for Sports Illustrated. That hasn't happened yet). I am currently a YA Librarian at the East Greenbush Community Library in East Greenbush, New York, just east of Albany. Right where I want to be!"
A section of this post was deleted on January 26, 2007 by request of the section's subject.
The author of this third blog was working as a library assistant, but is now doing temp office work:
Reading Nation - "The things I learn by reading, writing and driving in Southern California" (no feed)
I'm intrigued by this implementation of aggregation, especially as it has gone undetected by me up to this point.
Aggy - Pulling SLIS Together :) - "Aggregator blog for Indiana University SLIS" (RSS feed)
Seems a little thin on sources, but I very much like the idea and am curious to know if the SLISer behind it has a blog of his/her own.
Update: I haven't even posted yet, but slisblogs.com is owned by a mysterious character named elw, who can be found posting to Geek-Guides.com.
Also, one of the sources is the blog of a doctoral student at SLIS, who also is part of the Blog Research on Genre (BROG) team:
Professional-Lurker - "Comments by an academic in cyberspace" (RSS feed)
So perhaps you've been wondering why LIS Blogsource has been so quiet lately. Well, we're in transition. More on that when it happens. We (being Steven and I) had hoped to hold off posting blog stuff until said transition was complete, but I need to point out how nicely the blogosphere has taken up the cause in our stead. And there's just too much going on to hold out any longer, so here are some highlights.
1. Waterboro points out a new blog:
On The Shelf - "Peabody Institute Library news, book reviews, and other items of interest." (no feed)
2. Jenny points out the return of both Library Techlog and ...useless miscellany.
2A. She also points out that the Riverdale (IL) Public Library has initiated, in conjunction with other local agencies, an E-Newsletter for the Riverdale community. Very nice.
3. LibLab - "I work in a computer lab in a library where I teach computer classes and have the lab open to the public. Libraries can be strange and wonderful places, depending on the day." (no feed)
4. Waughblog, which Steven mentioned on December 16th, has relocated.
5. Kilted Librarian on Call (nee' Subterranean Homesick Blues) has been doing some nice refgrunting lately.
5A. Library Girl has a new reading journal in blog form entitled There's No Such Thing As Too Many Books (RSS feed).
6. Looks like we'll have a new librarian blog when the author of A Work Untitled makes her way to library school. Good luck!
7. Another individual on the Master's track:
Invisible Library - "The Blog of a Radical Librarian, in which there is no shushing." (no feed)
8. And finally the blog of Laurence (Larry) Sloma:
Arbitrary Content - "Asphalt Ramblers and Manglers of Foreign Tongues" (RSS feed)
I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting, which is precisely why I just had to get this stuff out of my head. We'll be back up and running soon (for which my pathetic short term memory will be most thankful).
Somehow I was drawn into doing a vanity search for the article that I wrote last August (about which you've no doubt heard too much from me already). Two interesting new references emerged.
I found a blog written in Japanese that has a post referring to the article. Dying for a translation, I went to WorldLingo.com and got the following (italicized):
Librarians are great filters of information and relying on a select group to provide your daily information can be a great time-saver.
Being calling filter, so without being, it is from the just a little
わ? . If so, this statement is read, as for those where it is
expected to books staff blog, never is not just story of library
industry, don't you think? it is.
Reason #4 - You are unique.
One of the problems with librarianship is image. Stereotypes of librarians abound. Publishing a blog is an opportunity to demonstrate your individuality
and thereby work to dispel some of those pervasive myths. Even if you don't think of yourself as unique and fear being
redundant, your voice is yours and yours alone, So join the chorus.
"Stereotypes of libraryans" "myths" っ て here probably is what
semantic what. When it is Japan, however the "library cartoon home
page" the air does that way.
The people of the staff of the metropolitan, making the book, however
also it is good, to appeal, such how probably will be?
Compared to *1 honesty and image processing this thinks as proper with
main business of workshop, but therefore in addition to you take the
labor which is suitable to photographing, furthermore plainner
contents than photographing work (w
My sentiments exactly. Now if someone out there has a reading knowledge of Japanese and would care to proffer a more reasonable translation, I'd be much obliged.
The other new reference I saw was an actual citation in a grad school paper, entitled "Blogs as Tools of Preservation." Although the author could seriously use an editor, there is an interesting discussion of authority, credibility and community, all of which leads to an interesting, if somewhat flawed, conclusion. In what I consider a bizarre connection, this paper refers to the same "Librarians are great filters of information" bit that the Japanese author does. You'd think it was the most significant piece of information to be gleaned from my article...and maybe it is.
I tend to oscillate between spending a lot of time online reading blogs and such and reading the traditional codex. Lately, I'm prioritizing texts in book form, which has been a nice change of pace. I recently did something that I've never done before (at least as my memory holds) - I read three non-fiction books in a row.
After finally finishing Cryptonomicon and being something of a puzzle geek, I had to read Simon Singh's Code Book for a little further probing into cryptography and ciphers. Then my reserve for The Meaning of Everything came in and I devoured that with great fervor (again, puzzle geek, who, not coincidentally, has a fondness for dictionaries). And having just finished Fast Food Nation, I'm left with only fiction. Well, actually I have Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which is cataloged as a biography. Anyway, I'm soliciting suggestions for interesting non-fiction. I'm open-minded, but not overwhelmingly patient, so engaging subject matter and style are key. My fiction list goes on for miles - hardly need advice there.
In order to maintain the high pace of reading that I've generated for myself, I've returned my Currently Reading section (courtesy of allconsuming.net) to the sidebar. I figure that if you bookhounds can see what I'm reading, I'll be more compelled to demonstrate some progress or be risk being seen as an underachiever. And we wouldn't want that, would we?
Walt certainly has generated a lot of comments lately. I was catching up on my aggie reading and noticed some commentary on the commons-blog regarding a definition of the term Information Commons. But I lost focus on the thread when I saw Walt remark that "At this point, "information commons" just isn't a way I pull all of this together, just as I continue to be unconvinced that "information literacy" means much of anything (although a couple of old and dear friends are heavily involved in that movement) and also continue to regard the "digital divide" as more hype than substance. (Geez, have I alienated everyone now?)" (bold emphasis is mine).
I was quite surprised since, in my naive mind, information literacy is a very clean distillation of what appeals to me about librarianship. Sure, the term is so much bibliobabble, much like "Interlibrary Loan," "Selective Dissemination of Information" or even "database." To me though, it succinctly synthesizes what I've come to regard as a fundamental goal of librarianship.
A quick definition: "...information literate people know how to find, evaluate, and use information effectively to solve a particular problem or make a decision---whether the information they select comes from a computer, a book, a government agency, a film, or any number of other possible resources." 1989 ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy Final Report.
Somewhere along the way in the grande olde days of grad school, I realized that I, first and foremost, needed to become that person myself. Second, I needed to empower others to "use information effectively to solve a particular problem or make a decision." That was my whole raison d'etre and my driving force as I selected classes and subsequently, a career path.
So I guess I'm mildly stunned to see what amounts to my motto/creed (note blog description) summarily dismissed as devoid of meaning by someone I respect. And I suppose I'm too young to recognize Information Literacy as a movement, rather than an essential, fundamental objective. Maybe I'm just enchanted with its progressive and idealistic ring. All I know is that words and phrases such as these are only useful in so far as they successfully communicates ideas, and the phrase Information Literacy has done a whole lot of communicating to this librarian.
I followed a link from Peter Scott's Library Blog to check out a magazine called New Library World. Thanks to the free access to full-text, I was able to read, in the most recent issue, an interesting article entitled "Job satisfaction among library managers: a cross-cultural study of stress, freedom and job conditions" by Neils O. Pors. Of course, the title spoke to me, given my current position.
The article discusses a survey of British and Danish Library Managers and tries to draw conclusions about how nationality and cultural differences play into the concept of job satisfaction. I'm going to save you some time and pull some summary observations entirely out of their context.
"Age and job satisfaction appear to be independent of each other."
"Overall no difference in job satisfaction in relation to gender was found."
"A tendency to a higher degree of job satisfaction among managers in academic libraries is found."
And the stunning revelations: "Overall, there is a very strong correlation between the level of job satisfaction and the amount of stress."
"A low degree of stress goes together with much freedom in the job."
There are actually some interesting observations that deal with the differences in Danish and British culture, but those of you genuinely interested will seek out the article anyway. However, I had to share the conclusion: "The author feels it is extremely important to raise the job satisfaction of managers. It would be a significant part of the organisational culture with implications for staff satisfaction, recruitment for managerial positions and recruitment of new staff. Managers' job satisfaction is probably one thing that permeates the whole organisation and influences the psychological climate to a great extent."
To which I say, huzzah!