Why Another Library Blog?
There are a lot of really great blogs that make up the biblioblogosphere- I know because I read them, I enjoy them, and I learn a lot from them.
Still, I often find myself thinking: how does this apply to my library? I work in a small hospital library. I really do want to be Dean Giustini if I grow up, but my little library isn’t academic, it is purely clinical. Reading The Krafty Librarian for a few months helped me realize that the resources available to me were on a significantly different scale than those that Ms. Kraft utilizes.
I’m also right at the beginning of my education in librarianship while simultaneously handling the day-to-day operations of a library. My hope is that I am in a uniquely useful set of circumstances to read other library blogs, and to and routinely ask: How does this apply to my kind of library?
Where I’m lucky, maybe I’ll even have some work or ideas as a result. As Meredith Farkas has illustrated, perhaps some work or ideas can come from asking this question that can be applied to other libraries or in other circumstances.
(I also plan to attempt to provoke Meredith into coming up with truly useful applications of ’social software’ for a medical library.)
Heck, if Michael Stephens doesn’t get too sick of me, maybe I can even help influence the direction of librarian conversations online. (The simple notes that I sent him about Medical RSS echoed quietly through the blogosphere for over a week. Much more than I expected.)
A guy can dream, right?
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July 4th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Good point about not all of us having access to the rich databases that many library bloggers have access to. That is why news of free online tools is always apprecaited so that we can learn of and access as much free stuff as possible.
Your new blog is most welcome. Yay!
July 5th, 2006 at 8:11 am
Hi David,
A lot of us are in the same situation: as we in Holland say: too small for tablecloth and too large for napkin
.
We can only do the best we can with the tools that are available for us.
So glad to hear from you and congratulations with your blog: we will follow it with interest.
Greetings
July 5th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Hi David,
Love the blog, thanks for joining us in the biblioblogosphere. While it may seem like the academic medical library world may have an advantage when it comes to resources, I have to confess that we are also feeling the pressures from budget cuts and skyrocketing subscription costs. I try to take advantage of as many free resources as possible. Coming from a clinical librarian background, I value many of the free tools and resources.
I hope we can learn from one another!
July 6th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Welcome, David, from another medical librarian blogger (although I blog on health topics, not librarianship). I’m enjoying the RSS bits – planning a training session on it myself soon.
August 8th, 2006 at 11:30 am
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