Reading Other Blogs - Thing 2

Typically I do not devote much time to reading blogs. I am struggling against the feeling that I am drowning in a sea of content, particularly when it comes to professional development as a librarian. It seems that there is no shortage of bright, articulate librarians blogging about the profession, along with dozens of conference Slideshare presentations that I could lose myself in, not to mention the daily avalanche of emails from several listservs that I subscribe to. The drawback to such an abundance of information is that my purpose as a librarian is to spend my time getting things done instead of spending all my time reading about the actions of others. To be sure, it is instructive and wise to keep current on professional trends and topics of concern, and to be able to read about how colleagues are assessing their information literacy programs, for example, but I've learned that it is difficult to follow many blogs, etc. and remain productive at the same time. Now to the point: I checked out the blogs of several fellow 23 Things participants just before writing this post, and I've also been following several other library blogs some months now using Google Reader.

After taking a look at the Delicious list of bookmarked 23 Things blogs, I decided to investigate those tagged "rare books/special collections" as well as those tagged "digitalrepositories." I was hoping to break out of my bubble as an academic reference librarian a bit. The particular 23 Things participants' blogs that I checked out included:

Jen the Librarian - Good to find someone from the U.S. in this seemingly U.K. dominated activity. Jen has some great advice for library students about how to prepare for a job.

Notes from the Basement - Alison has an interesting story, abandoning a Ph.D. to work in archives. I also really liked the color scheme of her blog.

Girl in the Moon - I like this writer's style. Entries seem to be coherent and flow, and graphics are used tastefully for illustration. I'm also really intrigued by her work environment. As someone with a history degree, I can easily see myself working with very old and rare books, intrinsically interesting simply for persisting so long.

Links (w/o much commentary) to other library blogs I follow:

ACRLog - Authors of entries vary, official blog of ACRL.

thewikiman - Academic librarian

Information Wants to be Free - Meredith Farkas. Need I say more? One of the leading lights of the profession, she seems to have found a balance between getting things done and writing about it.

Annoyed Librarian - Just what it sounds like: biting humor and sarcasm.

Agnostic, Maybe - Public librarian

Library Babel Fish - One of InsideHigherEd's blogs, Barbara Fister always seems to have something insightful to say about current library issues.

Happy clicking!