Professional Blogs

Throughout this semester I have been following two librarian’s blogs. The first blog I’ve been following is Information Wants to be Free, written by Meredith G. Farkas. Meredith is a librarian at the Portland Community College in Oregon. She is also a lecturer at San Jose State University’s iSchool. She began her blog in 2004 and her posts cover a wide array of topics within library and information science. Her blog contained so many posts about so many different topics I found it to be a little big overwhelming. I wanted to read through posts that I found relevant and useful to my job, so I started with her teaching posts. One post, “Free and Cheap Technologies to Supercharge your Teaching,” was an interesting read and helped me think about new ways to use technology in my classroom. There are tons of links included in this post about different technologies that can be used in the library. One of my favorites was Where in the Library is Carmen Sandiego? This activity uses QR codes to take students through an interactive mystery game. While this is specific to the Lafayette College Library, I think I could create something similar for my students. I read through her teaching posts, too, but a lot of Meredith’s other technology and teaching posts relate to higher education.

The second blog I’ve been following is called Mr. Library Dude, written by Joe Hardenbrook. Joe is a reference and instruction librarian at Carroll University in Wisconsin. He started his blog in 2011 and it also covers a large range of topics within library and information science. Most of his posts are related to academic libraries and the next most posted about topics are technology and public libraries. Because there were so many posts throughout the past four years he’s been blogging, I decided to look mainly at his teaching posts. I thought these would be the most beneficial for me to look at in relation to my job as a media specialist. I really enjoyed reading his teaching posts because they gave a lot of useful tips I can use in my own classroom. He also provides real world examples of lessons he’s done with his own students. These examples include the lesson plans and resources to use if you’d like to do a similar lesson. My favorite teaching post is titled “Library Instruction: No More Lecturing, NoMore ‘Death by PowerPoint.’” While this post was older, written in 2011, I found it to be very beneficial and relevant to my job. I’ve struggled with finding creative ways to teach certain topics when I’m not teaching specific technology skills. I’ve found PowerPoint presentations to use, but I find the students aren’t exactly as engaged as I’d hoped. In this post, Mr. Library Dude explains how he introduces information and research to students in a way that grabs his students’ attention. This post was very helpful and Joe explains the activity for the day, complete with pictures and an activity to go along with the lesson. I plan to tweak his worksheets to fit my needs, but I think this post could be very helpful when talking about research and information with my older students.

I also looked at many of Joe’s technology posts because I thought they could be helpful, as well. Most of these posts talked about social media sites and how they can be used in a library. Since I work in an elementary school I didn’t really find these posts to be useful. It was interesting to read about how he’s used social media sites in his library though. My favorite post in this category is called “HowNot to Tweet for your Library.” Twitter is a popular site for libraries and Joe talks about some guidelines for making sure libraries aren’t turning patrons away with certain tweets. He posts five rules for libraries using twitter with examples of what not to do. While I don’t use twitter myself, I thought this could be a useful post for many who do.

A last post I wanted to highlight because I’m currently facing this issue right now is titled “Why We Weed: Book Deselection in Academic Libraries.” I’ve completed redone my nonfiction section of my library because it was a mess when I started my job. I finally got around to moving everything around during conferences last week when I had four hours to do nothing! After moving everything to where it should be, I began the daunting process of weeding. Joe mentions this is typically an undesirable task that is often put off – he is definitely right. While his post is aimed at academic libraries I still found it to be useful. Many people find it odd for libraries to get rid of books, but Joe explains why it is needed. One sentence that stood out to me is when he says, “…not every book is precious for your library.” This really hit home for me because I’ve come across many books that I want to remove from my collection but think that maybe SOMEONE might check it out. I need to get out of this mindset and make sure I have books that are relevant to my students.