Scott McLemee at Inside Higher Ed has an interesting article entitled “Silence in the Stacks” in which he discusses the lack of true blogging academic librarians. He had some tough criteria. He wanted an academic librarian who wrote only about librarianship and who thoroughly discussed the important topics facing us today. McLemee’s example was the crisis in scholarly publishing. Though I agree that there is not really a blog above the rest that lingers only on the in depth and scholarly, that should not be the defining aspect of an academic librarian’s blog.
I am an academic librarian. I choose not to write under my real name so that nothing can ever be held against me in a court of law. Seriously. In actuality, I just like how Jane goes with the title of my blog because I am an English Lit nerd. McLemee was looking for a librarian that is tackling all the big things facing us and I respect that, but we are all more then librarians. Thus, you will find that many librarian blogs contain more than just things about our jobs, our professions, and the world of academia. Maybe we do need a blog just about librarianship and nothing else. Maybe we need someone who can be passionate day after day about scholarly publishing (not me) or the tech readiness of out libraries as we strive to serve a tech generation (I might tackles that).
For now, I am happy reading about the personal and the profession all mixed into one. Besides, I think you would all be sad if you could not hear me go on and on about Joss Whedon every couple of days. (notice how I worked it into a completely unrelated post)
–Jane, coffee, nectar of the gods