Thanks to those of you who added a link to your blog at the Academic Blog Portal or mentioned it in your blog. Last week I put out a call for all academic librarian bloggers to add their blog to a new wiki for academic blogs. I pointed out that it actually has a section for academic librarian blogs. For once we were not ignored or treated as the forgotten child of higher education. Initially I was a bit letdown that only a couple of bloggers, certainly no more than 15 or so, added their own blogs to the list of 10 or so I started the wiki section with. But things picked up later in the week and now there are at least 30 blogs there (although one is more of a library blog than a personal blog – but why be picky at this point). It would be nice to see wikipages, not just links, for all the blogs on the page.
I still have to believe there are more than 30 academic librarians blogging. There’s got to be hundreds of librarian blogs, and I would imagine that academic librarians represent more than just a small segment of the total. I recall that Michael Stephens did a blogger survey, and I believe he had some data to suggest there are lots of academic librarians blogging. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find the survey data at his blog.
Why bother adding your blog? For discovery – that’s why! I saw that a blog called Library Voice had been added to the portal. I had never come across this blog before. Its author is Chad F. Boeninger, Reference & Instruction Librarian, web manager, and Business & Economics Bibliographer at Ohio University. Within a few minutes of looking over Boeninger’s posts I came across one about a tutorial he created for Academic Search Premier. What a great discovery. I immediately contacted Boeninger to see if he might be open to sharing his Captivate file. Thank you Academic Blog Portal for leading me to it.
Just this morning I discoverd a blog called David’s Random Stuff by David Free, a Public Services Librarian at the Decatur Campus Library of Georgia Perimeter College. I’m going to add it – and others as I come across them – but please help build our area of the blog portal by adding your own personal or team blog or getting colleagues that are blogging to add to the Portal. SO, please do like the Geeky Artist Librarian and be sure to mention the new University Librarian Blog section of the Academic Blog Portal in your blog. Get the word out there.
I just got around to adding my blog to the wiki. I was a bit confused since there is a “Library Science” section under Professional and Useful Arts as well as the University Librarians section under Other Parts of the Academy.
Personally, I think the later classification makes us less academic and more of a support service.
That issue aside, I followed the FAQ and placed my blog under Library Science and added an “Other Blogs that talk about” section on the University Librarians page.
I wonder whether you’re thinking about Meredith Farkas’ survey. Given that 72 of the roughly 170 responses were from academic librarians, yes, I think there’s strong evidence that more than 50 academic librarians have blogs. Some of them, to be sure, write anonymously/pseudonymously in a manner that makes their academic librarianship less significant.
As far as I can tell (which isn’t very far), there are at least 550 active blogs by library people, not including “library blogs” (that list is long and in its own wiki). I’d expect more than a hundred of those to be from academic librarians.
I trust that this particular wiki page will cross-link to other wiki liblog pages? So far, it doesn’t, and that’s sort of a shame: We seem to be proliferating wikis and blog lists with relatively poor cross-referencing. (Something you’d expect librarians to excel at?)
Walt – good idea, but it’s hard to know what all the wiki blog directories are – I know of the blogwithoutalibrary wiki – but that’s library blogs – not personal blogs – still a link there could be of interest.
Thanks for mentioning the Farkas survey – but I did find information about the Stephens survey at his blog – just no link to the actual data. But you confirm that there are more academic librarian bloggers out there. Guess the word will have to get around.
Eric – without getting into faculty status issues I’d say academic librarians are academic support professionals. So are instructional technologists, instructional designers, information technologists, etc. We all play a role in what happens in the learning spaces, but we are not primarily responsible for creating or developing the curriculum, etc. There are institutions where librarians teach library instruction courses – perhaps for credit – which is more academic than support – but what do the other faculty think? All that aside, I think the distinguishing factor is that within the academy the library is not an academic discipline unto itself – which is the significant organization factor the way Henry Farrell has set up the blog. I’m just glad we’re represented.
Sorry..looks like my survey stuff is rather hidden. Take a look at this:
http://tametheweb.com/blogpeople.html
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsphotos/267314966/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsphotos/267317154/
I’m not sure if it was here or another blog I read, but there is also the Blogging Libraries Wiki.
Try this link: http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links/index.php?title=Welcome_to_the_Blogging_Libraries_Wiki
Bonnie Shucha at the University of Wisconsin Law Library keeps a regularly updated listing of blogs by law libraries. If you check the institution affiliation to the right, you can which blogs are affiliated with academic law libraries:
http://library.law.wisc.edu/wisblawg/blogslistpublic.htm