Best of the Blogs

At the beginning of the summer term I noted that blogging was completely new to me. This blog is my first and I have to say that I've enjoyed blogging immensely. Using the blog as a tool to convey lessons I've learned from the reading material and from my class time at Rare Book School has been, not only a fun approach to my education, but an excellent way to review the day's materials and collect my thoughts into a format that I can use and share with others.

As we're at the end of the semester, I thought I'd take a few moments to share some of my favorite library oriented blogs. The list is in no particular order.

1. Confessions of a Curator: A blog about Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University. http://niurarebooks.blogspot.com/. This blog, written by Lynne Thomas who serves as the Head of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University, is an excellent example of the type of rare book blog I'd like to work on as my next project. I'd love to report on new arrivals and old favorites from the rare book and special collections at WVU.

2. Free Range Librarian: K.G. Schneider’s blog on librarianship, writing, and everything else, since 2003. http://freerangelibrarian.com/. I've enjoyed reading this blog. I first learned of the song about a reference librarian, Addie Will Know, by the indie pop group SNMNMNM. Yes that's right, it's not misspelled. Really cute song. I think you'll like it.

3. The Lipstrick Librarian. http://www.lipsticklibrarian.com/. Fashion is very important to me too! Wearing 3 inch heels while negotiating a tricky book cart with a runaway wheel through the stacks? No problem. I've been there - time and time again. It's worth it. And as the blog says - She's bold, She's sassy, She's helpful! Yes, folks, she's our lipstick librarian!

4. Rare Books Sojourn. http://rbssojourn.blogspot.com/. Turns out another student in my class at Rare Book School was blogging his experiences too. I asked if I could link to the blog so I could share it with you.

5. Confessions of a Book Plate Junkie: http://bookplatejunkie.blogspot.com/. This blog is one of my favorites. I've recently become interested in bookplates. They can tell us so many things about the people who owned the book. Several binding designers also designed bookplates and I've been able to discover plates by two prominent women binding designers from the late 19th century, Margaret Armstrong and Bertha Stuart, in the rare book room collection. I can't wait to find more!

These blogs are enjoyable but they also manage to inform. And that's something we librarian types love, to be well informed on a wide range of subjects. Keep on bloggin'!