Collaborative Blogging, Blogger Networks
Well, I can’t really go anywhere anymore where people already know who I am are without someone asking me about blogging.
“I want to read roughly three weblogs daily. What would you recommend?” asks a science librarian.
“Well, it depends on what you want to get out of reading weblogs, where you’re interests are,” I respond.
“I want something that will give me a nice overview of the issues in special librarianship.”
That got me thinking. I really enjoy reading LISNews because it touches on so many aspects of librarianship. It’s very broad, though, and carries lots of items totally irrelevant to special librarians. The ResourceShelf is similarly fabulous, but also doesn’t quite fit the bill. Is there a similar blog for special librarians? I don’t know of one. If there really isn’t one, what would it take to do one? Who should contribute? Where should it live? Then, I thought, “Geez, if I’m thinking these things, why shouldn’t I be the one to start it?” Well, I can think of lots of excuses. The two big ones are that I don’t have any space in my schedule for a new project and I really need to keep my computer time limited so my wrists can keep healing.
But then I thought, “Why couldn’t the Special Libraries Association do this?” It seems like it’d be something perfect for members. We experimented with a conference blog last year that seemed to work well. The biggest concerns I could see for doing this through SLA relate to association membership and potential conflicts of interest with the association.
With this idea fresh in my mind, I caught a National Public Radio piece on bloggers forming networks, highlighting Pajamas Media (formerly known as Open Source Media), a new venture bringing some major bloggers together. Hhhmmm …
12/7: Steven Cohen mentions PeopleFeeds on Library Stuff, one potential solution to creating a collaborative site.
December 7th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
As far as special librarians go, I would even say that it depends on the field. In aerospace or engineering and special libraries, I’d have to recommend Dave Hook’s blog and STLQ.
Yes, I think that SLA could and should aggregate member blogs — but I don’t really see it happening.
December 7th, 2005 at 5:35 pm
Oh… and I just saw this: http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/itbloggingsection/ (courtesy of EngLib.info)