Saturday, August 27, 2005

To blog or not to blog...

I have to admit that only last month I didn't see the point of blogs. Why should I care about someone else's life, and why should they care about mine? It's amazing how quickly things can change. I was put in charge of the project blog at my new job, so I decided that I should figure out what this whole blogging thing is about. Also, the RSS feed on the project blog wasn't working, so I started to investigate blog feeds. (It's still not working, by the way. Any ideas on how to fix WordPress feeds?)

At the same time, in my new job I was feeling isolated from other professionals in my field. I work in a small to medium sized academic library that is just beginning to show interest in digital projects, and my department now has 2 professionals, 1 support staff, and 1 student who are also new to the field. How could I keep in contact with the rest of the field and keep on top of new developments? When I started to look into blogging, I found all sorts of librarian and digital librarian bogs. What a great way to see what others are thinking! Some of the blogs that I have found so far include: The Inquiring Librarian by Jenn Riley, a metadata librarian at Indiana University's Digital Library Program; Outgoing: Library metadata techniques and trends by Thom Hickey; and The Ten Thousand Year Blog, "Archivist-historian David Mattison’s musings and Web tracks on digital culture preservation issues." I also found a great article by Walt Crawford, Investigating the Biblioblogosphere, which lists and analyzes popular librarian blogs. I'm sure that there are many more relevant blogs out there. I just need to find them. . . .

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Hello world!

The first post to my blog. I'm a new metadata and digital initiatives librarian, and thought it would be interesting to track my professional development. There are so many things I need to learn about in this field, and so many places to turn for information. How should I keep it all straight? This week's exploration found me in the world of blogging, hence my new blog.