Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Blogging around the world (adapted from FIS1311 Wiki entry)

France

Figoblog was one of the earliest French librarian blogs, and is still going strong. It calls itself a "blog about the Internet, librarianship, and fig jam" and does indeed contain a smattering of posts regarding all things fig-related. However, it's also a treausre trove of practical tips and commentary regarding Library 2.0 internet tools, musings on the role of libraries and goodies such as cartoons. Note that the author uses a pseudonym, a common practice for French libloggers, who fear that having a liblog will be frowned upon by their colleagues and diminish their professional reputation.

Australia

One New Thing chronicles the attempt of a librarian new to the profession to learn (and post) one new thing about her job every day. Some of the tips are extremely useful, although her rate of posting has slowed somewhat since the blog's early days.

Iran

Virtual Ehsan Real Blog is one of the few Iranian/Persian blogs written in English. Its author is a LIS Master's student who often posts about his classes, conferences and other learning experiences. An excellent window into library science training in a country few of us will ever get to visit!

Austria

Orbus Librorum is the blog of the rare books and special collections department of the University of Graz. Library staff launched the blog in late June 2007 with the aim not only to make the University's digital collections more well-known but to spark discussion with colleagues and other rare book enthusiasts, improve their own professional skills and experiment with the use of digital techonology. Librarians posted a manuscript fragment that they were having difficulty identifying, and one of the blog's readers was able to provide useful information from his own work. The blog includes a recipe for potato salad from 1621 taken from the University's collection.

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