Library-Related Blogs

An hour or so of clicking last night took me far and wide - and back home, again.

While I had already taken a look at the TeacherLibrarian Ning, through the chance comment I received and talked about here, I had not tried out any blog-search services as suggested in the course outline.

I did as suggested - went to "Bloglines" and typed in "school library," without the quotes, and was disappointed with the results, to an extent. Most of the references were about school, perhaps about libraries, but little of it looked interesting. However, on the sidebar I noticed the "School Library Journal." I had viewed articles from there before, but had no idea of the resources, nor the broad gamut of subjects it carried. I subscribed to feeds for three - "Education News," "Information Literacy," and "Library Tools and Trends."

So I then tried "school library," with quotes and found two things worth pursuing: Doug Johnson's "Getting the Most from Your School Library Media Program," written for Principal in January 2005; and "21 Century Learning @ Your Library," written by a member of the Colorado Association of School Librarians, Nancy White.

The first blog/article led me look at how principals might evaluate their school library program - which is very helpful input as I make my plans for next year: the second led me to some very interesting sites, some of which I have put into del.icio.us; some at Google Reader. This also meant learning how to organized my Reader categories, because it is getting too full to browse easily!

Recommended sites: the discussion wiki at the International Society for Technology in Education, (following Su Eckhardt's lead at the CASL blog), the Librarian Philosopher blog (he has comforting advice to new librarians on June 28th); and Resources for School Librarians.