One of the things that first drew me towards librarianship, and that draws me still, is that it is a profession that encourages a multi-faceted, eclectic range of interests. The more things that fascinate you, the better. This aspect of being a librarian is perfect for me because, honestly, there’s not anything that I’m not interested in. Perfect that I found a job that encourages that. Now if I could just put down my other interests enough to focus on it. On a daily basis, I do my actual job very well. I get things done, I go the extra mile, and I try to anticipate things that need done before they become an issue. That’s not a problem, and I enjoy it. The aspect of my job that I wish I could focus more on is this, this blog, these thoughts about librarianship (or even future librarianship, in my case), technology, information, and the internet. I’m focused in spurts, perhaps, but obviously I’d like to take this blog to hand and create a consistent, interesting webspace that people will seek out and enjoy. Consistent is the key word, there.
Wednesday I was lucky enough to go to a pre-conference for the Washington Library Association (WLA) up in Tacoma. The workshop I attended was called “Rev Up Your Online Services: Blogs, RSS, Wikis and Other Dynamic and Low-Cost Technologies”. Jenny Levine and Michael Stephens, of The Shifted Librarian and Tame The Web respectively, presented it, and they did a phenomenal job. I’ll post a full write-up soon. The reason I mention it here is that it really gave me a burst of inspiration to get back to this blog and write, and even moreso to participate in an online community of libraries and librarians that is growing and thriving, and even further to do my best to participate as a librarian with the non-library community and spread the library word. It inspired me to do all that and also, evidently, to write really long sentences.
It’s been a busy week, and not long since Wednesday, but one thing I’ve been working on is to keep up better with what other librarians out there are writing. I’ve got some catching up to do, so I’m taking things one step at a time. Since I attended their conference and found it inspiring and insightful, I figured it only right that I keep up with Jenny and Michael, at the least.
So, to prove that I’m paying attention, and because it is absolutely post-worthy in its own right, I join both of them in welcoming Mary Ghikas to the world of blogging (I’m on the fence about the word: biblioblogosphere). Mary is the Senior Associate Executive Director (or SAss E Director – a much better title) of the American Library Association. I agree with Jenny that the new generation of librarians don’t feel very connected with the ALA, and I think that including the sort of personal transparency that is a blog could do a lot to help with that. The blog is called The Green Kangaroo, which is a great name with an even better explanation, and I’m looking forward to (hopefully) keeping up with it.
It appears as though this may be part of a larger campaign to launch multiple ALA blogs (you’ll notice that The Green Kangaroo is, supposedly, blog #10). However, of the others listed, the YALSA Blog is the only one that seems to have been active (since Jan. 2006), but they do have some content worth checking out. I’ve just recently heard of the Alliance Library System and the Second Life Library project, and of course I find it totally fascinating. Between these two blogs, I think the ALA is off to a good start in becoming an association to which the next-gen librarian will be able to relate.