Because I’m Learning, You Can Too

Requiem for a Blog

I think that my first understanding of blogs was as a sort of online journal or diary about the author’s everyday life, and so, while I really wanted to create one, and I did create several, using Blogger before Google devoured it, I was having trouble trying to continuously write about my fairly unremarkable day-to-day business.  However, as blogs continued to grow, people started to use them in different ways.  There are still tons of diary-like blogs, but there are also photo blogs, art blogs, writing blogs, themed blogs, and a host of formats, templates, and skins to make them look as cool as they read.  I tried again and created Get Your Book Red Here, which I have successfully run for over a year now.

For the most part, I keep up and comment on English, literature, language, and humanities related stories, with a series of Please Excuse the Randomness posts when I want to share something really cool that has nothing to do with anything else.  I choose WordPress for this endeavor just to try it out.  While Blogger was and continues to be more customizable at the free level (It’s easy to change skins or even create your own with the XML file Blogger now uses to house that coding), WordPress has a clean, sleek user interface that I really appreciate and for really beginner bloggers, I think it might be my first recommendation.

Library Stuff

http://www.librarystuff.net/

Library stuff is by blogger and librarian Steven M Cohen, but you’d never know it based on the layout of the blog.  It’s hosted by Information Today, Inc. and so the top navigation bar includes links to Information Today’s many other blogs, sites, and advertising, which can sort of make the blog feel more like a page of sponsored links and less like a independent librarian’s blog.

The content is quite interesting.  He essentially tags and posts briefs of news stories that might be of interest to librarians along with some stuff that’s just for fun.  I always find that type of thing useful and I do it myself on this blog, though I do try to comment on each article.  I think that his blog would be even more useful if he presented his reflections about the stories