We Work Together But Don’t Read Each Other’s Blogs

Here at ACRLog we’ve made some efforts in the past to encourage academic librarians to explore the faculty blogosphere. On at least two occasions we posted about conversations taking place on faculty blogs and we even offered a guide to some faculty blogs for those who wanted to explore on their own. Only you, the readers, can tell me if any of those articles spurred you to start regularly reading a few faculty blogs or if you blog – did you add any faculty blogs to your blogroll?

One of my must read faculty/academic administrator blogs is Confessions of a Community College Dean. The Dean has great insight into the inner workings of the higher education institution. This post was particularly helpful to me in my work as an academic administrator. Recently, while looking over the Dean’s blogroll I noticed that he didn’t link to a single academic librarian blog or any sort of librarian blog. When I look at almost any faculty blog there are no librarian blogs referenced. Then again, when I look at most academic librarian blogs (or the blogs of academic librarians who occasionally write about academic issues) they don’t include any faculty blogs in their blogrolls. So what is going on here?

We work together. We serve on committees together. We deal with the same students and administrators. Shouldn’t we pay more attention to each others blogs? I wrote to the Dean and asked him to share his thoughts on that. I think he made some good points. I have to agree that there needs to be a WIIFM factor for faculty. I do think there can be as much in it for them as for us when we read their blogs.

While the Dean didn’t exactly take up my issue of why faculty and librarians aren’t reading each other’s blogs he did write a thoughtful post about the changing nature of the academic library and I suggest you read it.

BTW, if you like reading faculty blogs we are looking for someone who would be willing to write a monthly post for ACRLog that would summarize what’s being discussed on different faculty blogs. If you are interested in taking on this assignment and becoming a regular contributor to ACRLog – send a message indicating your interest via our “Send a Tip” link on this page.