10 Librarian Blogs To Read in 2009

Blake

I started the "10 Blogs To Read in..." 3 years ago to find people in different areas of librarianship doing the most interesting and original writing on the web. Each year we've gathered a group of librarians working hard to increase the understanding our profession and it's place in the rapidly evolving online world. Again this year I tried to choose 10 writers who cover very different aspects of our profession, 10 sites that inform, educate and maybe amuse. I hope you'll find the list a nice place to find something new to read, or a place to gain better understanding of a part of librarianship that's outside of your normal area. We all have much to learn from each other, and these bloggers are working hard to share their knowledge and understanding with you. Read on below to see why each site made the list.

• Alternative Teen Services yalibrarian.com (Feed)
• Brave New World bookseller-association.blogspot.com (Feed)
• Closed Stacks closedstacks.wordpress.com (Feed).
• David Lankes quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/blog (Feed)
• David Lee King davidleeking.com (Feed)
• Designing Better Libraries dbl.lishost.org/blog (Feed)
• In The Library with The Lead Pipe inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org (Feed)
• Livejournal:The Society for Librarians* Who Say "Motherf*@!%r" (Feed) or Library Lovers' LiveJournal (Feed)
• Open Source ILS Vendors, choose your favorite.
  --The Liblime Folks: blogs.liblime.com/open-sesame (Feed) and/or blogs.liblime.com/developers (Feed)
  --The Evergreen Folks: evergreen-ils.org/blog (Feed)
• Planet Cataloging planetcataloging.org (Feed)

David Lee King davidleeking.com Feed
David King is the Digital Branch & Services Manager at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library as. He says his blog tends towards library website stuff - managing, marketing, experimenting, usability, and planning. Sometimes he strays into other related-yet-cool (translation: fun) topics, like video blogging, experience design and planning, and web 2.0 / library 2.0 topics.

In The Library with The Lead Pipe inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org Feed
Written by " six librarians working in academic, public, and school libraries across the United States." In The Library with The Lead Pipe "is intended to help improve our communities, our libraries, and our professional organizations. Our goal is to explore new ideas and start conversations; to document our concerns and argue for solutions. Each article is peer-reviewed by at least one external and one internal reviewer."

Livejournals:
And now for something completely different… 2 communities from Livejournal. Choose your favorite based on your tolerance for chaos.
The Society for Librarians* Who Say "Motherf*@!%r" Feed
If that sounds like it's a bit too much for you, try
Library Lovers' LiveJournal Feed.
A post from yesterday to The Society for Librarians* Who Say "Motherf*@!%r":, " Is it Saturday or the full moon that brings out all the jackasses today?" Both of the LiveJournal groups are wonderfully eclectic and active places to catch some interesting reading.

David Lankes quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/blog Feed
R. David Lankes is director of the Information Institute of Syracuse, and an associate professor in Syracuse University's School of Information Studies. He posts video and audio from his presentations, and writes about a range of issues from an academic view point.

Planet Cataloging planetcataloging.org Feed
If there's a more exciting topic in librarianship than cataloging, I haven't seen it. And there's no better place to keep your finger on the pulse of catagloing than Planet Cataloging (unless you can handle AUTOCAT). Planet Cataloging is an automatically-generated aggregation of blogs related to cataloging and metadata designed and maintained by Jennifer Lang and Kevin S. Clarke.

Alternative Teen Services yalibrarian.com Feed
The Alternative teen services blog is maintained by teen librarians who share ideas, resources, and advocacy about serving teens. By sharing their ideas in a fun and supportive environment, the say they'll gain perspectives that improve our library services to teenage youth.

Designing Better Libraries dbl.lishost.org/blog Feed
Designing Better Libraries is a blog about design thinking and how it applies to library settings. The goal of this blog is to provide information, news and ideas that librarians can use to design a great library user experience for their communities. Among the topics they'll be covering are instructional design, innovation, technology design, and the application of new media to design - and of course - design thinking.

Closed Stacks closedstacks.wordpress.com Feed. Closed stacks was the "readers favorite" this year. Although I got far fewer votes this year than in years past, Closed Stacks was most popular. A group blog written by a variety of librarians, they cover just about everything.

Brave New World bookseller-association.blogspot.com Feed
Topical items and views on the impact of digitisation on publishing and its content and the issues that make the news. Run by Martyn Daniels, Value Chain International's VP Marketing, Media and Publishing. The blog covers book digitization and Internet, bookselling and publishing.

Open Source ILS Vendors, choose your favorite.
The Liblime Folks: blogs.liblime.com/open-sesame (Feed) and/or blogs.liblime.com/developers (Feed) and/org blogs.liblime.com/koha-with-class (Feed).
The Evergreen Folks: evergreen-ils.org/blog (Feed)
I'm a BIG believer in Free and Open Source Software, and I made a prediction that 2009 will be a big year for the open source ILS vendors. Follow along on their blogs to see what they're doing to give you control of your ILS.