Professional Blogs

Librarians-in-training can gain insight into the library world by reading blogs written by librarians in the field.  One can easily find one or 50 to follow!  (I don't recommend trying to follow that many, however.)  But, I do suggest that you take a look at several to try them on, as it were, and see what is happening in their world.  Living in an age of instant access comes in handy sometimes.  We might as well take advantage of it and virtually visit several librarians and their libraries and see what we can learn.

I follow several blogs for personal enjoyment in my free time and I also read several blogs each week at work.  I follow YA literature reviewers to help me in my selection of books for my small library.  I also follow professional organization's blogs such as ASLC.  I have played with the idea of writing a blog myself, but this journal is my first attempt.  I have a new appreciation for how much time and effort goes into writing a blog that offers the right mix of substance and humorous anecdotes that would cause others to jump for joy to read!

Free image by Pixabay 

The blog written by Abby the Librarian caught my attention immediately.  She graduated with her MLIS degree in 2006 and started blogging in 2007.  She is a youth services librarian in a public library in Indiana and I was hoping to learn a few things from her.  She has not disappointed me! She shares her ideas freely with her readers and I have already implemented several of them at my library.  I have used some of her preschool story time programs and tips to bring in after school kids for programs.  In looking at her blog as a whole, you see she blogs most often about literature for all ages of children birth through teens and sharing ideas for programming for preschool-middle school.  She is well known in the youth services circles and occasionally has guest posts from other bloggers.  She writes about the highs (author interviews and presenting at ALA)  and lows ("When to call it quits with a program") of youth services librarianship.  I plan to keep following her as I enjoy her writing and more importantly, she makes my job easier.  

The second blog I started following this semester is written by an academic librarian who is the library director in a small, liberal arts college library.  Jessica Olin started writing her blog in 2011 as she wanted a place to communicate directly with library science graduate students and new professional librarians (Olin, 2014).  Because of this desire to connect with new librarians, she named her blog: Letters to a Young Librarian.   I enjoy following her blog because she does address topics that those of us that are new to the profession want to know about (even if we didn't realize it yet!).  She writes with candor and humor and also invites guests to write on a regular basis.  All of those factors lead to an interesting and informative read.  It reads as part advice column and part day in the life of a librarian.  It does lean more heavily towards an academic librarian but she is sensitive to that fact and covers things more generally and invites guests from other types of libraries for balance.  It is difficult to pinpoint what she most often writes about, but I guess one could say she writes about what it's like to be a librarian!  :)   Some of my favorite posts have been: To shush or not to shush , Small libraries are big with me,  I got a job, now what?, and Visiting other libraries to name just a few.  I will continue to follow Jessica's blog as well, as I find it informative and I always learn something new. 

References:

Johnson, Abby (2014, April 5).  About this blog.  Retrieved from http://www.abbythelibrarian.com

Olin, Jessica (2014, April 5).  About this blog.  Retrieved from           http://www.letterstoayounglibrarian.blogspot.com