thewikiman

Everything you need to do in order to start a library blog, in the order you need to do it in on Prezi

In addition to all that, I’m using FutureTweetsto tweet the salient points from my slides as I deliver them in the session. I would absolutely love some feedback that I can incorporate into the latter stages of the workshop;  if you see something tweeted from me under the #npc2010 tag that you agree with, disagree with, are surprised by etc – reply and let me know! I’ll share your views with the workshop delegates during the bit about twitter…

As part of the booklet mentioned above I’ve selected 10 essential blog subsribes for New Professionals. I subscribe to and love many more than 10 blogs so please don’t be offended if yours isn’t on this list! It’s just a small cross-section of useful stuff for someone quite new to the world of LIS blogs and blogging.

The if you could only subscribe to one blog, blog: I think Bobbi Newman is a fantastic asset to the library community. She should be the first person you follow on Twitter (not only does she create useful content herself, but via Twitter she will tell you about just about every single useful interesting post ever written by anyone else and provide a link to it) and her blog – LibrarianbyDay – is the blog you should subscribe to if you only have time for one. She is the creator of the excellent Library Day in the Life Project, a big advocate of the transliteracy movement, and appears to be completely free of ego or artifice despite obviously being very successful. (She’s probably quite embarrassed by this paragraph – sorry Bobbi!)
http://librarianbyday.net

The this is what you need to know about information and technology, blogs: If you subscribe to Phil Bradley and Stephen Abram’s blogs, you will have enough information to last you the rest of your career. Both of these blogs are updated very regularly (often multiple times a day) so can be quite intimidating to subscribe to! But it’s worth it.

If there’s a technology or platform out there potentially relevant to the world of information, Phil has tried it out for you and posted a review. If there’s a report or infographic hot off the press that is potentially relevant to the world of information, Stephen has digested it, reproduced the highlights, and linked to the original for you.
http://www.philbradley.typepad.com/
http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/

The thinker’s blog. Andy Woodworth’s Agnostic Maybe blog is very popular and often gets people talking – he likes to explore deep ideas to do with advocacy, customer service, our role in this day and age etc.
http://agnosticmaybe.wordpress.com/

The it is peer reviewed and the posts are freaking huge, blog. Library with the Lead Pipe is a mega-blog contributed to by several people. The posts are infrequent, well-researched, peer-reviewed, and huge. I absolutely love the rigorous academic standards of a journal, mixed with the instant accessibility and comment-based interaction of a blog.
http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/

The frank and honest, lively and enthusiastic accounts of what they’ve been doing, blog. Librarians on the Loose is a really, really good blog. Librarians Emma and Sarah work for Brighton University library, are extremely proactive, have their fingers in many pies and get up to all sorts of stuff. This is a very honest blog, written by two lovely people.
http://librariansontheloose.wordpress.com/

The excellent UK mixtures of reporting and ideas, blogs. They’re like a triumvirate of women to watch! Jo Alcock, Bethan Ruddock and Woodsiegirl’s blogs are all very much essential subscribes. Jo has been blogging since about the dawn of time, and often casts her experienced eye over pertinent issues of the day. She’s particularly interested in social media, and marketing.

Both Bethan and Woodsiegirl have an unerring ability to draw the reader in to something relevant to them – I’m genuinely envious of the way they can take even something small and everyday and make it really interesting and involving, as well as dealing with the big stuff too. Both are quite interactive blogs, too – lots of comments, and responses to comments.
http://www.joeyanne.co.uk/
http://bethaninfoprof.wordpress.com/
http://woodsiegirl.wordpress.com/

And finally… the New Professionals blog. As part of the new network for LIS New Professionals (known as LISNPN) Chris Rhodes’ New Professionals blog, which is written by him and occasionally by  CILIP New Professionals Support Officers, has moved from its old stand-alone location to be part of LISNPN. If you subscribe to this you’ll get news and updates about LISNPN itself, too. Self explanatory why this is an essential blog for New Professionals, really – it’s written for them and by them!
http://www.lisnpn.spruz.com/blog.htm

More on LISNPN in a blog post very soon, once I’ve got my breath back from NPC2010. w0000t!

- thewikiman