Blogging About Blogs About Blogging

To be quite honest, I found it difficult to sift through the entries in the five blogs we were to subscribe to.  While the topics on each blog were interesting on some level, these just weren't the type of blogs I would normally subscribe to or even have the desire to seek out.  David Lee King's blog focused mostly on his own opinions about how best to give good presentations, including suggestions for helpful webtools for connecting with users and blog readers.  Librarian by Day had similar posts about suggestions for useful webtools for libraries, but her posts were very long and were each accompanied by a long list of links to similar posts.  Again, this might easily attract different readers, but I tend to turn away from blogs who link too much.  It's really good to link back to others for original content or for credit or for similar/opposing views, but if a writer is linking every other word in their posts?  It gets a little distracting, in my opinion.  The blog posts on In the Library with the Lead Pipe ready similarly to published articles in library journals regarding current news topics and how they relate to librarians either in the library or online.  While these posts are very interesting, this is definitely what I would consider a more "scholarly" blog, rather than a casual one. 

Of the 5 blogs in this list, my favorite was The Librarian's Commute.  It's a home-grown blog, where it is still connected to Blogger rather than the author's own domain name.  Each post has a personal touch and I like that a lot.  The author's posts all start out with something she wanted to look for and then her search techniques to find more information about that topic.  Some of her other posts are about trying to understand the reference needs of her library patrons and being a better reference librarian to them.  She also starts each blog post with a photo she took that day.  She does discuss current trends and topics in the library field, but it's not entirely what her blog is about.  Her blog is about her being a librarian and I like that simplicity.

It then wouldn't be surprising to see which blogs I chose from the other list of library blogs.  All three blogs are personal and friendly.  Two are from public libraries and focus more on book picks and reviews, rather than current news topics or library trends.  The third blog is a school library blog which makes me sad that my school library wasn't more like that one!  All three give the reader a look into what the library has to offer to its patrons and the goings-on in the life of the librarian and its patrons:

- Gargoyles Loose in the Library:  This blog is a daily digest of the goings-on at the University Laboratory High School in Illinois.  The school librarian updates this blog every day with a post that sheds light on the events happening in the school and the library or points to anything she finds interesting related to her school, her students, or her library profession.  Her posts are usually accompanied with a photo or two of her students, which provides a window into the library she manages and provides the blog with a very personal feel.  She links when necessary or when pointing to other stories or topics.

- genre X:  This is a book club blog written for the 20s and 30s book club at the Oak Park Public Library in Illinois.  There are 2 authors, both librarians in the Adult and Teen sections of the library.  Their blog comments on which books are going to be discussed at their monthly meetings and the reasons why that book was selected.  They also alert readers to library events (including Trivia Night and a Guitar Hero Competition!).  There are also posts which expand the discussion about particular authors they recently read or even a comparative analysis of book covers.

- Shelf Talk:  This blog is written with the sole purpose of reviewing and suggesting new books to read.  The blog is managed by the librarians at the Seattle Public Library (a city which boasts the largest per-capita library circulation in the country).  This blog is updated daily and by different librarians, which gives the reader a new perspective and feel each day.  There are book reviews and suggestions for children, teens, and adults, so they cater to a very large audience of readers.  While this does not have the same specificity as genre X has, it did catch my eye first among all the other public library blogs listed.

I have to be honest once again and say that I am very picky about what I read online.  I get easily turned away if there is too many gadgets on the page or there is even just too much text not easily identified and organized.  While doing the other reading for this class, I came across this blog post (which I tagged on delicious) to a blog post about creating a prominent and informative "About Me" section of your blog.  Since I read this post before browsing the blogs for this exercise, I was more attuned to understanding the person (or persons) behind each blog.  For those blogs which I picked out or which I liked from the original list of 5 blogs, the "About" section gave me a sense of who the author(s) were of the blog and the purpose of the blog.  If I could find the "About" page or if the "About" page was not informative, I just could not bring myself to care about that blog.  This may seem rather harsh, but it harks upon the importance of building a successful blog.  It's the same reason why books have an "About the Author" page; an actual person writes these posts/pages and it is important to know who they are and what they're doing in order to understand the posts/pages better.