Comments on: You mean there are non library blogs?!?!?

By: steven bell

steven bell — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 01:04:52 +0000

I suppose what I mean is that it would seem out of place for me to one day post something like this on ACRLog because it’s not my blog – but rather a team blog with a specific focus. I would think it odd if Barbara Fister suddenly wrote a piece about her favorite blogs – and it had nothing to do with academic librarianship. Who knows – maybe it’s something to give a try sometime.

This idea of the importance of reading outside just library content is something I pointed to way back in my C&RL News article back in 2000 about Keeping Up – which is the first official item I published on the topic and which spurred me to develop the KU Site. But I emphasized the importance of keeping up with resources peripheral to librarianship – that’s where some of our best inspiration, ideation and innovation can come from. Extending this to the blogosphere is certainly coming more naturally to librarians because it is so much easier to find blogs that are “non-library” in nature.

Thanks for asking what I’m reading.

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:04:14 +0000

Thanks for posting this Steven. I actually don’t see this as a personal post at all, since I think it’s of practical use to see what blogs influence us from other fields. If people find a professionally useful blog post from what you wrote, I think it is very professionally relevant. I look forward to checking out your five.

By: Jack Vinson

Jack Vinson — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:05:17 +0000

Thanks for the link love, Meredith.

By: steven bell

steven bell — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 03:09:23 +0000

Because the blogs for which I write don't lend themselves to my taking up space for a personal post like this, I'm not blogging it. However, since you were curious about 5 non-library blogs follow (and I follow plenty more than 5 - especially in the fields of education and educational technology) I thought I'd provide them as a comment to your post. Here they are: 1. Nussbaum on Design - Nussbaum is an editor at BusinessWeek, and he blogs about a variety of design and innovation related topics. He has a great post this week on the backlash against design by designers. I follow about 10 other design/innovation oriented blogs. 2. Cool Tools is a popular blog (over 26,000 subscribers on bloglines) that discusses any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. It's just amazing to discover how many interesting tools Kevin Kelly finds, and he basically just tells you if it is worth having. 3. Productivity 501 is a somewhat irregular blog but the author provides a number of good ideas to improve the quality of time management and personal productivity. Some people think I never sleep, but I get a lot done because I read blogs like this and learn how to be more organized and productive. 4. Sports Geezer is the perfect blog for aging jocks like me. In particular many years (like 45) of basketball have left me with little or no knee cartilege. So I find a lot of good tips and ideas for staying active and healthy while avoiding those things that cause further damage to aging body parts (fortunately the mind is no one of them). The author also has a knack for finding interesting sportsgear. 5. I might have offered up The Irascible Professor which is a fun read - a cynical look at higher education - but it's really a more traditional newsletter with an RSS feed, so I'll go with Tomorrow's Professor Blogwhich is mostly a listing of interesting articles from the field of education - but not always - posted with some some brief introductory information. I've discovered some really interesting research papers here - including but not limited to some interesting future visions of higher education and teaching and learning. I hope you (and your readers if they bother to look at the comments section to this post) found this of some interest.