Before this assignment, I can honestly say that I wasn't aware of the huge presence of librarians in social media. I have recently become a part of Tumblr and found that there is actually a whole huge group called "Tumblarians," which is just like it sounds; a group of librarians that are very active on Tumblr. I ended up following a wide variety of them because I found that they have a lot of interesting things to say and issues that they brought up.
Since I really became interested in this new found group on Tumblr, I decided to pick one blog from there in particular to really study what the blogger thought was important to share to the wide world of Tumblr. One that caught my eye was The Life Guard Librarian (http://thelifeguardlibrarian.tumblr.com/). Her name is Kate Tkacik and she works as a business librarian for the Bank of Montreal Business Research Group. This immediately interested me because I really have no knowledge of business librarians and figured that I was surely to find out through her insight. Tkacik's posts are regularly current and she posts on a wide variety of topics such as college research and how it isn't up to par even with the extensive amount of research they should be doing as well as recent conferences she has been to and what went on during them. She also mentions things about her day-to-day work at the office like how she recently had to learn Westlaw, which I learned was a huge online legal research database.
One aspect that I really liked about this blog was that she seemed very passionate about gathering librarians to join the "Tumblarian" list so that librarians all over Tumblr could connect with one another to share thoughts, concerns, etc. Having just started schooling for becoming a librarian, I feel that I am still in the dark when it comes to important issues within the profession and I feel like joining this group on Tumblr will keep me updated with current issues as well as allowing me to make connections with fellow librarians from all over the world!
The second blog that I followed over the past few weeks was called Annoyed Librarian which seemed to be closely affiliated with the Library Journal. Although the About Me tab doesn't give a name, it mentions she is a woman and a blurb that I found to be most amusing read, "She has no other interest than to bring her wit and wisdom to the huddled librarian masses yearning to breathe free." As the name suggests, her posts have a more serious tone than that of the Life Guard Librarian. Within the last week she has been posting a lot about what has been going on with ALA. She talked about how she didn't know why the ALA was "shocked" when Representative Paul Ryan recommended eliminating the Institute of Museum and Library Services and then also about the upcoming ALA conference and how they need to address things that actually have to do with libraries. Never having gone to an ALA conference myself, I would have figured issues about libraries should be the biggest concern. It was interesting to find out they can get off track and issues such as blaming prison libraries for the low literacy rates of prisoners, even though they came into the prisons already at a low reading level.
When you first think of how the blog is dubbed "Annoyed Librarian" some could assume that the posts would just long rants about everything this particular hates about being a librarian or what the profession holds. Instead she offers up valid arguments and things that do get under her skin and then takes the time to explain why. It's one thing to just make a list of things you hate but another to take the next step further and talk about why the issues annoy you and perhaps even give insightful suggestions on how to change things.
One aspect that I really liked about this blog was that she seemed very passionate about gathering librarians to join the "Tumblarian" list so that librarians all over Tumblr could connect with one another to share thoughts, concerns, etc. Having just started schooling for becoming a librarian, I feel that I am still in the dark when it comes to important issues within the profession and I feel like joining this group on Tumblr will keep me updated with current issues as well as allowing me to make connections with fellow librarians from all over the world!
The second blog that I followed over the past few weeks was called Annoyed Librarian which seemed to be closely affiliated with the Library Journal. Although the About Me tab doesn't give a name, it mentions she is a woman and a blurb that I found to be most amusing read, "She has no other interest than to bring her wit and wisdom to the huddled librarian masses yearning to breathe free." As the name suggests, her posts have a more serious tone than that of the Life Guard Librarian. Within the last week she has been posting a lot about what has been going on with ALA. She talked about how she didn't know why the ALA was "shocked" when Representative Paul Ryan recommended eliminating the Institute of Museum and Library Services and then also about the upcoming ALA conference and how they need to address things that actually have to do with libraries. Never having gone to an ALA conference myself, I would have figured issues about libraries should be the biggest concern. It was interesting to find out they can get off track and issues such as blaming prison libraries for the low literacy rates of prisoners, even though they came into the prisons already at a low reading level.
When you first think of how the blog is dubbed "Annoyed Librarian" some could assume that the posts would just long rants about everything this particular hates about being a librarian or what the profession holds. Instead she offers up valid arguments and things that do get under her skin and then takes the time to explain why. It's one thing to just make a list of things you hate but another to take the next step further and talk about why the issues annoy you and perhaps even give insightful suggestions on how to change things.
Overall I found these two blogs to be very eye opening into the world of librarianship. I am glad to have stumbled onto the Tumblarian group and hope that these librarians will continually posting about relevant issues in the field so that I can be kept up to date and will begin to start thinking to my own future career and how I want to stay relevant and innovative.
The Annoyed Librarian has come up several times in these blog posts. I think part of that is that she is pretty high up on the Google list but also she's just awesome
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