Good Advice For Current and Would-Be Library Bloggers

It all depends

Okay, I am forced to say a few things in regards to this one. Namely, that she misses the point on a lot of issues. Quotes from the article are italicized.

I stand on my conviction. Blogs are for sharing information, not pointless doggerel (or catteral).

Dammit, stop telling me what blogs are for. The minute someone starts telling me what a blog happens to be the same time my eyes roll back in my head so far I can see the rear of my occular cavity. Blogs are for whatever purpose the blogger wants. Sure there’s professional type blogs out there. There’s blogs by scientists relating their findings and updating their colleagues. But there’s blogs by someone’s Uncle Joe who just wants an online diary. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Plenty of our librarian sisters and brothers have professional blogs. And plenty of those people also have personal blogs which have little to do with their professional lives. For example, look no further than our very own Jessamyn. She has her professional blog and her personal blog.

Rubel rarely writes an entry of more than 150 words, but his blog is packed with content. He’s also generous with hyperlinks for each of his entries.

You know what I hate more than anything else on the web? I can put up with pointless websites. I can put up with Geocities sites with midis of Mariah Carey songs playing the background. I can put up with sites with badly animated GIFs all over the joint. What really gets me is a site with so many damn hyperlinks offsite that they may as well have done an underline tag and just underlined everything. The ability to sum up everything in 150 words does not good writing make. The ability to use an “a href=” tag does not make an interesting website.

Don’t make your blog look boring. There’s nothing more disturbing than a well-written blog that looks like a newsletter template from Microsoft Publisher.

There’s another side to this, blogs which have six columns across the screen with text packed into each column but only able to make lines three words long. I would rather read a page of black text on white background than I would some cutesy layout which makes it impossible to read without developing a migrane.

We also need a course in blog writing, which in my opinion means offering a personal perspective without excess chattiness.

I agree with a course in blog writing. That’d be kind of cool, but I have no problem with a personal perspective with chattiness. Chattiness is what makes something uninteresting… interesting! Take James Burke’s Connections series of documentaries. I’ve watched the whole series and I bow before Mr. Burke. If you start with the first series, it’s very good, but kind of dry. He just lays out things and goes on with the show. The show is great, but not so good as the second and third series. In the second and third series he opens up. He makes jokes. He talks to his audience. He drinks. Sometimes he drinks quite a lot and you can tell he enjoys it. All the while, during this “chattiness” he turns out one of the best documentary series around.

Take our profession. When was the last time information science came up at a non-library gathering you’ve been to? And if you actually launched into a quickie rundown on the newest trends in library and info science, you can count on going home alone that night- even if you’re married.

If we want others to read our blogs and actually be interested, offering some extemporaneous commentary might help. One more example where you find this in the print world is role playing game sourcebooks, the most popular of which is Dungeons and Dragons. In RPG jargon there’s a phenomenon known as “fluff text.” Fluff text is writing that, while related to the game, tells you little of the rules or anything else. It can be a short story, a quickie example, a character bio, anything. Without the fluff text, RPG sourcebooks would be boring to read, even for fans. It’s this “chattiness” that actually makes them fun and worthwhile to read.

Know your audience:

Exactly. And sometimes your audience isn’t a bunch of professionals crowding around a monitor. Sometimes your audience is your friends and family. My personal blog isn’t anything special. About all I use it for is a place to rant and rave and keep family and friends up on what I’m doing. Family and friends think I’m interesting, which is good since they’re my target audience.

… be truthful with yourself. Before hitting “send,” read the blog entry and make sure it excites you. After writing the entry, are you jazzed about floating the information in the blogosphere?

You know, not every single thing you write is going to be greatest thing ever put into print. Recently I updated my blog about the new Harry Potter book and all the BS security surrounding a children’s book. I didn’t do that because I’m a librarian. I did that because I read an article, got pissed, and figured I’d rant and rave to my target audience. (My friends and family, remember?) It’s not great writing. I didn’t pee my pants before I hit the Publish button. If I was at all aroused, it was because I was looking at my Orli Shoshan desktop wallpaper. (Aka Shaak Ti from the Star Wars flicks.) Sometimes, you just have write stuff down. It doesn’t matter the content and it doesn’t matter if it’s as good as William Gibson. Painters sketch, musicians plink around on their respective instruments, sculptors fiddle with clay, and writers of all ability levels scribble. The only difference is that now we can scribble online.

Re:It all depends

I want a blog which gives a sense of my personality, yet I don’t want to write something which will sink my job chances.

That’s easy. I rarely, if ever, mention my job on my blog. This really doesn’t stem so much from a fear of getting fired, but more from the fact that there are so many other library blogs out there that are far better than mine could ever be. The few times I do recall mentioning my job, it was in general terms of “hey this happened today and wasn’t that funny.”

I think the last time I mentioned my work was when a co-worker I’ve known for years asked me a question about something and it turned into something funny. That really doesn’t have anything to do with libraries or library science or info science or whatever. It’s just more a slice of life thing that happened to occur at work.

I’m a librarian and info junkie. How interesting is that to people who aren’t librarians an info junkies? I don’t even do the “Hey I’m a librarian, but I don’t look and act like one!” thing. How many librarians do you know with a penchant for exotic weapons, swords, video games, and hardcore 1980s pornography? Yet I feel no need to make a blog called “Nunchuku, Katanas, and Ginger Lynn: The Musings of a Hardcore Librarian.”

Course I will probably get a picture up in that “Librarians With Glasses” Flickr thing they started. I could have some real fun with that.