Good Library Blogs and Why They Are Good

The modern web is chock full of blogs on just about any topic anyone can think of. For instance, if you are interested in Australian fungi, there is a blog for that. When it comes to libraries there are plenty of people out there who feel like they have something to say or show the rest of us.

It is an understatement to point out that not all blogs are created the same. The best catch you right away and hold on to you as long as possible, despite embedded links tempting you elsewhere. A good blog (and here I guess I am being critical of my own) will give you the opportunity to find out more about why it was created and by who. Navigation bars and wordcloud tags are some of the best tools blogs can offer to help readers learn what they are all about.

Here are three blogs I've encountered recently that do a good job.

Tame The Web

It is no surprise that most library blogs focus on Internet technology. After all, if you want to learn about Web 2.0 applications, for instance, it just makes sense to look on the web. Likewise, if you are a tech savvy librarian who would like to share your expertise, a blog makes for a great soapbox. What is particularly good about Tame The Web is that it aggregates from other useful blogs. The blog is maintained by Michael Stephens, an Assistant Professor at the Dominican University's Library School and is almost entirely composed of material drawn from other sources. . . with attributions, of course.

Clearly Stephens spends a decent amount of time looking at other blogs. This is probably why his blog does a number of things well.

• Entries are short and to the point. Clearly, he assumes that the people coming to his blog have a library background, and therefore will share is appreciation for similar things. This means his posts can do away with introductory comments and just focus on the good stuff. Take a look at this June 2 entry. It is just a video with a title and attribution to the blog he got it from.
• Images! Video! There is nothing worse than arriving at a blog that looks like a wall words. That said, I'm not sure what the picture of Stonehenge at the top of the blog has to do with libraries.
• He has a picture of himself. It is not some self aggrandizing photo taking up half the screen. Just something to show us that there is a human behind the blog.
• Right below the picture he has a navigation bar to all the background information you would want to know about him, plus an explanation for the blog. Doug Johnson has an even better example of this at his library-focused Blue Skunk Blog.

Phil Bradley's Weblog

This is a blog that should not be judged too quickly. It has the daunting look of a wall of words. When I first encountered Bradley's blog my inclination was to click away as quickly as possible, but I started to read an entry and found its strength. It turns out Bradley's chatty prose is very engaging and actually a pleasure to read. So much prose on the Internet suffers from either bad writing or lack of an editor that we just skirt out eyes around it. Obviously Bradley knows how to write well and in a way that does not feel like a slog to the reader.

The blog deals with Internet searching for librarians and Web 2.0 resources. Here are some of its strengths.

• This blog proves that images are great, but good prose is even better.
• Like Tame The Web, Bradley has a picture of himself that gives his blog a human face. Bradley's face is not a young one, but don't let that lead you to think that he cannot write well about the latest technology (I'll admit that the "old people don't know technology" stereotype briefly got in my way when I saw his picture).
• The upper right hand corner of the blog contains Twitter updates related to the blog. This is a better way for people to give feedback and it gives the blog even more currency than comments tucked away at the end of posts.
• A tag wordcloud shows within seconds what the majority of the blog content is.
• Under his picture are links to posts on his other blog, I Want To.

LISNews

This blog is just what it sounds like, a source for library news. People in the library field like to be up on current events and this blog does a good job of serving that need.

• It is always up-to-date with multiple posts every day.
• It is brief. There are no images, but who needs them when the average post is two paragraphs long?
• The top navigation bar has useful pages, such as the "Hall of Fame" where you can see the most popular posts.
• The layout is clean and invites scrolling.

Googlization at Your Library

The recent demise of numerous newspapers and rise of digital readers has left many wondering what the future of the publishing industry might be. our reading attention has demands coming from an ever increasing number of sources and new formats. By extension, it has led many to question what form libraries will take in the future as well. In a talk with a class at UW-Madison titled The Googlization of Libraries Leonard Kniffel, editor at American Libraries, gave his own take on the issue.

The first question he addressed was whether or not format matters. Does it really matter to readers if they have a book or graphic novel in hand? Does it matter if we are reading off a screen? The conventional wisdom would probably be yes. But an editor needs to ask who is going to read the item whether the format matters to them. If we are talking about kids, then you have to go where they want to go, whether it be graphic novels or comic strips. It also matters whether an item is being read for pleasure or work.

Different people will approach reading in their own ways. Leonard gave himself as an example. He didn't come from a house full of books. Instead his hook into reading was his third grade teacher reading Laura Ingalls Wilder to him.

One of the most interesting aspects of the talk was a point Leonard made about the sentimental image libraries use in their advocacy. He brought up Chicago Tribune critic Julia Keller's cautioning that sugar-coated stories of good old libraries can cause more than good (in fact, in a piece for PBS she explains how the modern library is a young, technologically-enhanced, institution-- a afar cry from the library of her childhood). Nostalgic images make libraries seem quaint and reinforce dusty stereotypes. Ever since I decided to go into the library field I have thought that libraries had an image problem. Often their advertising and public relations seems outright hokey or old fashioned, even if the institutions themselves are anything but. Most of my friends and family, educated and not, have little knowledge of the services libraries provide. Not because they are dumb, but simply because no one has told them.

As Leonard explained, libraries still have problems with people viewing them simply as book warehouses. Politicians who don't visit them see them as great candidates for the budget chopping block once things get tight. From this we get the increasingly too common refrain along the lines of, "Everything is on the Internet, so what do we need a library for anyhow?" One example Leonard gave was of one man's effort to discontinue funding for a Florida library system in Alachua County. He figured that chain bookstores and the Internet filled the library's shoes just fine.

One last point: Leonard talked about the challenge of making people understand that Google and the Internet are not competitors with libraries. As a defacto library representative among non-library folk this is something I encounter on a regular basis. Nothing could be further from the truth. As most people find out, after thinking the issue through, they actually complement each other nicely. I think that many people have an easy time seeing that books are actually enhanced by Internet resources. The challenge right now is showing them how books and librarians enhance Internet resources.

After all, if he had to choose, even Bill Gates would take a library of books over computers.