Costumes and Connections

It is hard to believe that it is the end of October already. This morning we are busy trying to create Halloween costumes for my neighbor’s annual party. As usual, we are down to the wire and have about two hours to complete the creative venture. We are costume challenged at this house. Inevitably, when we get to the party and see the amazing ideas people have come up with, we think “We’ll come up with something better next year!” Well … it’s “next year” again, and we our design efforts are still on the weak side. The party, however, will be great fun and we are looking forward to the event!

Also on my list of “things to do today” is a fifth blog post. As I was reflecting on this experience yesterday, it occurred to me that the vast and growing number of personal blogs are a bit like a town square – not geographical, but topical. Whatever your interest – whether it be gardening, cooking, your relatives, politics, writing, art, religion, medical diagnosis, etc. there are blogs available in a “meet and greet” forum. I still struggle with the sheer number of blogs available. Being the type of person who likes detail and depth, I could go on a blog hunt and never return if I didn’t need to sleep, eat, and work! I found myself viewing some truly creative and entertaining blog sites, often having nothing to do with libraries or librarianship. For this final post of the month, however, I thought I’d note two blogs that are specifically related to the library work I do instead of the random blog searching I’ve been doing!

The first is the School Library Journal SLJ Blog, found at http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/620000062.html.
I found this while searching for blogs related to children and libraries. I use SLJ (along with other review journals) to select picture books for my library, but I often have no time left to really read the articles, unless they apply quite specifically to my area of responsibility. I like this blog as it provides an opportunity to skim topics of interest without taking too much time away from the day’s schedule of activities.

The second is Jenny Levine’s Shifted Librarian blog, found at http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/. This blog comes up time and again as a link on many of the library related blogs I’ve viewed over the last month and, like the SLJ blog referenced above, is a blog I will probably review regularly in the future. Concise and current, her work is worth the review time!

Book Blogs

I love this season, and as far back as I can remember I have always loved autumn. The colors of the leaves when the early morning or late afternoon sun shines at just the right angle appear almost translucent. I have often wondered if we love most the season when we were born. I was born in September and love the fall, while my sister was born in January and loves the winter. My own children claim the season of their birth as a preferred time of year. In recent years, when people mention a favorite season, I have often asked what month they were born. So far, their answers support my theory. My “poll” however, is informal and I keep no records.

Anyway … back to the topic at hand for this class - my most recent blog adventures! I was researching book club Websites when I came across BookBlog, a blog for an online book club, at http://www.bookblog.net/. Participants “meet” once a month, the last full week of the month, and the book discussion consists of blog posts and responses. Moderators alternate each month and are responsible for posting the opening question and facilitating the discussion. Anyone is eligible to join in the book discussion, but as noted in the FAQ link for the blog, if you become a member of the group, you can post to the main page and participate as a moderator. If you are looking for some practical blog applications for a public library, this one might be of interest, either to participate in, link to, or emulate!

I had another unexpected blog “sighting” and I thought I’d share that here as well. We host a mother-daughter event at the end of January each year at our library. Children bring dolls to the party and earn chances to win an American Girl doll when they check-out books in advance of the event. I was shopping for the prize doll online when I noticed the Help Felicity blog found at http://www.americangirl.com/movie/felicity/world_blog.php. This blog has been set-up to market the television premiere of a November 2005 movie starring Felicity, one of the American Girl dolls, but it is also a discussion blog for the books that have Felicity as the main character. Of note are the numbers of responses on some of the blog postings. The question posted on October 23, 2005 had 231 posts as of about 10:00 AM on October 28th. Apparently, some of Felicity’s readers have found this blog!

Finding Blogs, Picking Pumpkins!

My last entry included links to two Websites … a bit of a digression on my part as I try to determine how best to navigate the blogosphere. I’m still not sure, given a 40 hour work week and two classes at Dominican, how to be efficient in determining which blogs I want to spend time reading and reviewing. The sheer quantity of blogs available via the Internet makes every personal, community, corporate, and association communiqué that is available in blog format a possible candidate for my time and attention.

I’d be interested to know how many new blogs are added to the mix daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Conversely, how many disappear into obscurity or cease to exist over the same time frames? I’d be curious to know as well how some blogs “rise to the top” in terms of popular interest – what chain of events occurs to give a particular blogger a following? Certainly already established professionals in a field or celebrities have name recognition, but a lot of blogs seem to gain popularity in a grass roots kind of movement—someone told two friends, who told two friends, etc.

I came across the Internet Public Library’s (IPL) list of blogs while searching for the “best blogs” using Google. This list consists of links to hundreds of blogs, organized in more than twenty different categories, including reading, cooking, education, history, medical, entertainment, political, sports, science, and travel, to name a few! A table of contents provides a starting point. Additional categories of interest to me covered sites about blogs, blog search tips, blog directories, blogs about library science, and a list of best blogs. You can find the IPL list at: http://www.ipl.org/div/blogs/#bestblog

One of the blogs I linked to from the IPL list was from the Teen Services Librarian in Wilmington, Massachusetts, Nathalie. This is a great practical example of possible blog use in a public library setting, targeted to a specific group of patrons, in this case, teens. You can check out her site at: http://wilmlibraryteenzoneblog.blogspot.com/

Since it is another extraordinarily beautiful blue sky Sunday in October, we are off to our favorite farm to pick out pumpkins … one of our traditional family treks, and a nice alternative to sitting in front of the computer for the rest of the day. We actually get to go into the pumpkin patch to choose the "perfect" pumpkins. Our Halloween 2004 editions are shown here, just for fun!

Words and Blogs

When I begin to become familiar with something new – a term, a concept, or an idea – I have often noticed that what was previously unfamiliar seems to “appear” with frequency after my first experience of it.

I am reminded of a time in my life when I decided to learn a new word each day. I was in my early twenties, just beginning a professional career, and always on the lookout for an opportunity for self-improvement. Unfortunately, the “new word” plan lasted about a week. I still remember, however, the first new word I grasped: Ubiquitous – “Being or seeming to be everywhere at the same time, omnipresent.” I remember it because an older, experienced veteran at IBM (where I was employed at the time) said: “Claudia, when will you ever see or use that word?” He was teasing a bit, of course, but I responded: “I don’t know, but it really is a cool word.” At which point I opened an IBM product manual – one of the relatively boring technical documents I needed for some reason. The opening paragraph of the first chapter said something along the lines of “While this occurrence has become ubiquitous, …” Ha! I said, and read the sentence aloud. After I proved to my coworker that the word really was in print before my eyes at that very moment, we had a good laugh.

I am never sure in life whether these events are completely random or serendipitous, but I am noticing the same thing now with the whole concept of blogs and blogging. Blogs have lived in the background of my consciousness, where I have been vaguely aware that they exist. Now that I have to create my own blog for this class, I seem to hear the term everywhere. Listening to a radio program in the middle of the night, the co-hosts were discussing the difference between Websites and blogs (though they really didn’t clarify this too well!) Listening to a soon-to-be published new author in a children’s literature class, she referred to her editor’s blog. The host of a different radio program I was listening to in my car began talking about Barbra Streisand’s blog, specifically how it was her venue for airing a lot of strong political opinions. And my list goes on … it seems as if blogs are becoming ubiquitous in my world!

With that said, here are a couple of cool links to a few (somewhat related) Websites:

A.Word.A.Day: http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/index.html
You can view today’s word, opt for a free subscription with advertisements from sponsors, or a $25 per year subscription with no ads. Maybe I will try that short-lived self-improvement plan again!

Corporate Blogging Survey 2005: http://www.backbonemedia.com/blogsurvey/index.html
While this site has information and research directed to corporate blogs, it does provide a better answer than my above noted radio hosts did to the question: “What is the difference between a blog and a Website?” The sections titled “Lessons Learned – How to Build a Successful Blog” and “Analysis and Commentary of the Survey Results” (Specifically, Question 9: “What can you do with a corporate blog that you could not do with a Website?”) helped clarify the distinction.

Blog Beginnings ...

It is a beautiful fall morning, the first Sunday in October. I am enjoying the quietness of the early hours while the rest of the family still sleeps. What better time to tackle the class assignment I have been postponing – my first blog entry! Other than brief descriptions about Weblogs from this Internet class, and occasionally references heard on radio programs I listen to while driving, I have little to no exposure to this process, as a creator or a reader. Consequently, I have been hesitant, even reluctant to begin.

Being a novice, I elected to follow Michael Stephens’ recommendations and suggested links for a variety of library related blogs. Once I started reading the entries and following the links at these sites, I realized I could easily spend hours at my computer, unaware of the passage of time. So … for this first entry, rather than relate my hours of navigating, I have chosen a personal favorite site from the online blog bibliography created by Susan Herzog and found at http://blog-bib-liblogs.blogspot.com/.

Many of Herzog’s links are for blogs that are academic in nature, and having a daughter in college, I found them relevant and in some cases, fascinating, but one link in particular was broader in scope, with a wealth of information for a wider audience. This site includes Weblog and Blog pages created by Dr. Anne Clyde of the University of Iceland: http://www.hi.is/~anne/weblogs.html. Definitions, history, directories, resources, and lists of both library and other blogs are noted, all with links for further information. Links to weblogs about blogging are also included. It is easy to get an overview of the blogging phenomenon from this site without being overwhelmed in the process! In addition to providing an excellent introduction to the topic, this site has in-depth information and a wide range of related links.

All in all, the “world of blogging” intimidated me a bit when I started this morning, but now I am encouraged to continue!

This is my first post

Hello! My name is Claudia and I am blogging for LIS 753 at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. Over the next six weeks, I will be posting five entries about libraries, the Web, and technology.