Today I attended a free class in "Getting started in blogging" held in the Celeste Bartos Education Center at South Court in the main NYPL building on 5th Avenue: a state-of-the-art classroom, complete with terminals, comfortable chairs and lesson notes on a hand-out. The class was lead by an archivist/special formats cataloguer, ie not a librarian specifically responsible for "education and outreach" but simply a member of staff with a particular set of interest and skills. There was a diverse group of students, with enormously varying degrees of ability, and the teacher patiently explained the very basics, whilst trying to encourage those who were wanting to move ahead. The most important thing I learned:
Anybody Can Read Your Blog
I hadn't seriously thought about this, but it did make me re-consider (and even edit) some of the thoughts I have already posted. And for the same reason, I have decided to simultaneously run two blogs: this one will concentrate on more professional stuff such as visits to collections, meetings with other art librarian's etc, and the other will be a more personal record of three months in the United States.
I'm hoping this blog will give a glimpse into the kinds of issues that some art librarians deal with or are interested in, which is why I have linked to the Just an Art Librarian blog, and why ARLIS/UK & Ireland have put it on their website. Since arriving in New York and being placed in the position of consumer, rather than provider, I have also begun to think about public libraries and how they serve their communities. (The library I work in, although not a public library, is open to the public, but also has other user comunities). So I have also added another library blog:
The Library of Digress http://libraryofdigress.wordpress.com/
which I admire not only because I have worked with the author, but also because it gives a British perspective.
I'm off to New Haven, Connecticut tomorrow morning, but will add a couple more posts this evening.
And if you are interested, my other blog is called Deborah in America and is at:
http://drsnyc.wordpress.com/
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3 comments:
hello Deborah! stiil haven't worked out how to leave you a comment - i hope this works!
maggie
xxxx
Hey Maggie! One of the things I'm enjoying about this 'virtual adventure' is that friends are sharing it with me (and its quite comforting that I'm not the only person who is still unfamiliar with cyber-social-networking!). Other friends have been learning how to be a follower and how to comment, etc. Apparently I have switched on the 'moderate' comments facility so comments aren't published until I approve them via my e-mail. For the minute I think I'll leave it that way, and try to be better at logging on more often! Thanks for the comment!
Hey Debbie - I found your blog! :) Thanks so much for linking to mine. I've been enjoying reading all about your travels on Facebook and will add this blog to my bookmarks too! Christine x
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