Blogging about Blogging

I like blogging. It's a hobby, a way for me to express myself, a tool for networking. I think it's amazing. Even before this semester I was following countless blogs dedicated to books and publishing on tumblr and elsewhere on the web. Over the last several months I've also added librarians to my dashboard and blogger feed. More often than not this is in the form of institutions - Library Journal's official tumblr is amazing, but for this assignment and for my own benefit I needed to find some personally run blogs.

For me blogs are my favorite way of getting information. Informed posts are a great way to pique my interest in a topic or make me aware of a problem, and if i find them on a blog I already trust I'm even more likely to explore the issue further.

Two blogs that I have found interesting and informative this semester are Swiss Army Librarian and Librarian in Black.

Swiss Army Librarian, run by Brian Herzog, is a nice mix between technology, thoughts on the profession and personal experience. My favorite feature on this blog is the Reference Question of the Week, where Brian addresses questions and issues that have recently come up while he's on the job. These question range from the content of e-publications to a heartwarming story about a patron searching for a specific book so she could read with her niece over the phone.  
What I really love about Swiss Army Librarian is that it feels personal. The content is related to a real person who is really working and dealing with issues in librarianship as they hit him. He updates fairly regularly and it's always a joy to read his posts.

The Librarian in Black has been less reliable in terms of recent updates but it's content is still interesting, and it's back catalog so vast that I still found it to be a reliable resource and hope that Sarah Houghton starts writing again soon. I found that Houghton touched on issues I'm interested in frequently. DRM and privacy in regards to ereaders and various other softwares are brought up.  She talks about her career, the conferences she attends and touches on some less than pretty issues, like sexism in the field. Librarian in Black has been running for ten years and over the course of this semester I've found going through years worth of posts and gaining an understand of how the field is changing. Honestly this is the type of resource I would love to run, one that is both personal and deeply informative.

I know there are plenty of other quality library blogs on the web and I'm sure I'll end up following many of them over the course of my professional career but as of now I feel like I've found a good base for my library news feed.