Learning with Blogs Selected blogs that will enlighten and inform every library professional by Mary Ellen Quinn
The Blue Skunk Blog by Doug Johnson Johnson is the director of media and technology for the Mankato (Minn.) Area Public Schools and a regular columnist for Education World and Library Media Connection. He says on his Why the Blue Skunk Blog? page that he “started blogging reluctantly” as a way to share his writings, presentations, and ideas. Johnson blogs about issues that librarians and teachers face every day, especially when it comes to using technology in the media center and classroom.
EarlyWord by Nora Rawlinson
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Rawlinson has extensive experience in the library and book worlds, and hers is definitely a go-to blog for anyone involved in reader’s advisory and collection development. She provides numerous timesaving tools to help “stay ahead of public demand and identify hidden gems”—including book news, “heavy reserve alerts,” and links to publishers’ catalogs and movie trailers. There is also an EarlyWord Kids component.
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King is digital branch and services manager at the Topeka and Shawnee County (Kans.) Library. He describes his blog, which he started in 2003, as being “about library websites and emerging digital technology.” King is good at explaining library applications for trends in technology. Since he doesn’t assume that everyone is an expert, King’s blog is a good way to get acquainted with new and emerging technologies as well as to find out what other libraries are doing. Typical posts are “What can you do with a Facebook Page”; and “Twitter explained for librarians, or 10 ways to use Twitter.”
august/september 2009
David Lee King by David Lee King
american libraries
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ike other professions, librarianship shares its knowledge through journals and books. Blogging is the brash new kid on the block, getting louder all the time and demanding more of our attention. Blogs bring immediacy, interactivity, and informality to our ongoing conversation about what it means to be a librarian. But how do they stack up as learning tools?
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of English-language library-related blogs. For this article, I started with blogs I already knew about and followed the trails from those blogs to others. To narrow down the choices, I decided not to look at organizational or library (as opposed to librarian) blogs. Final selection was based on several factors, including visibility (as determined by numbers of comments, mentions by other bloggers, and Technorati profile), longevity, and activity level, as well as content. On the content side, although these blogs are good current-awareness tools, they are more than bits of news and collections of links. They offer insight and reflection as well. Most of the bloggers present frequently at conferences and workshops (in some cases, as a result of their blogging), and several use their blogs to share their presentations with a much wider audience, upping their value as continuing-education tools. In addition, these blogs have a strong identity and a distinctive voice.
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