Thing 24 - Review your blog

I first stumbled across the website 23 Things On a Stick last fall when I began pursuing my Minnesota Volunteer Library Certification. The time had passed to participate on their timetable, but I thought I'd give the 23 Things a try on my own. I only got as far as Thing 1-- setting up a blog. Here's a recap of my experience.

The powers that be at 23 More Things on a Stick recommended using Blogger to set up the blog. The first thing necessary is to have a g-mail account. I had already set one up a few years ago primarily to back up information. I use yahoo for my main e-mail account, but, at the time, they didn't offer unlimited storage space whereas g-mail did.

The biggest problem I initially had with the blog was trying to decide on an available name. Many names such as Shelf Elf, Aquarian Librarian and Dewey Readmore (from the book Dewey) had already been taken. Since I live in the little village of Lake Elmo outside the Twin Cities of St. Paul/Minneapolis that has a quaint library where I would love to work someday, I chose Lake Elmo Librarian for the name of my blog.

I decided to go with a classic blog format with a white background. It's very clean looking, and I thought the type was much easier to read than if it were white type reversed out of a black background. For the purposes of setting up the blog with a photo of my idyllic, hometown library, I “borrowed” a photo of the exterior of the building from the county website.

Since Blogger gives you the option on your blog to link to other blogs, I did search some other librarian blogs and decided to “follow” The Shifted Librarian and Annoyed Librarian on my blog. Later, I added The Bubble Room, a blog that has since been picked up by the Library Journal's website. There are many really interesting library websites out there that I intend to add as time goes by, and I have more time to explore.

It’s rather intimidating (at least to me) to put something in writing and publish it out there on the Internet. Since the whole idea behind 23 things on a stick is to dig into new technologies and learn by trial-and-error, it’s even more difficult for me to write about my middle-age failings when working with new technology. Plus, who could possible be interested! Since it’s part of the learning process though, I will document my technological shortcomings for all to see.

I have also signed up for accounts with Facebook, Twitter and Delicious in anticipation of documenting my future bouts with technology. I have already faced resistance from my 16-year-old who doesn’t want to be my “friend” on Facebook. (He's the one on the left in the photo-- my 26-year-old on the right did accept my Facebook "friend" invitation.) The technology may be difficult for me, but the bridge over the generation gap may be even more challenging.

Back to blogging... out of our nine library branches in the county, there are only two blogs with which I'm familiar. The childrens' librarians in our northern Forest Lake branch maintain a blog for the younger generation. The other blog is maintained independent of the library by a book club that operates out of our southern Cottage Grove branch. I think both of these are great uses of blogs.

There are two other uses of blogs that I think would work well for our county libraries. One's purpose would be marketing. It would highlight a weekly "featured service" that the library offers. This blog could be linked to the home page of the website. We had a reading program this past winter called "Hot Reads, Cold Nights" where patrons read a book and wrote reviews recommending their book to other patrons. The reviews were kept in a 3-ring binder at each branch. A blog of these reviews would have been a great way to provide a "reader's advisory" produced by our patrons' peers.