Crazy week

I'm sorry to report that I got almost no work done this week. Not from laziness, or from lack of trying, just because of life. My computer decided to crash last Saturday, which meant the whole weekend was shot, and then I had to work all day Monday, and Tuesday and Wednesday I was out of town at a special appointment. So now it's Thursday, my computer still isn't fixed (though it's in the shop, so maybe by next week...) and I'm so tired I just want to pass out.

Alas, life goes on. I did manage to read the Pomerantz article last week, which I found interesting. I really liked his idea that "Blogs act as organizers of data." I'm not big on blogging personally - I like to talk to people as closely as possible, either face to face or on the phone. The people who truly care about what's going on in my life aren't addicted to their computers, and I would probably call them with the news before they got the information.

But that's in my personal life. In a professional setting, I can see where blogging would be useful - having to research the answer to the same question over and over again would get really old, really fast. With a blog, be it shared among librarians or just a blog for yourself, would save you that research time and time again. And as you discovered more information, you could simply add it to your blog to make an even better answer for the next person. Using keywords would help even more, giving you a searchable way to sort of catalog your thoughts and information.

I think a blog would be something really nice to have in SL, if you're using SL as a reference environment. It gives people another reference option for when there isn't a librarian staffing the SL space. Some questions can be anticipated (time of year, special occasions, stuff in the news, etc) and the good librarian can have links in SL ready. But taking it one step further, really utilizing all the technology available to librarians today and creating a blog about these events, not just having a pathfinder, would really enhance the user's experience, especially if other people can add to the blog. Of course, this brings up a whole slew of problems, especially for such a high-profile agency as the public library - how to monitor the blog to ensure no one makes inappropriate comments, keeping people on topic, etc - so public libraries may not be able to open their blogs to the public for editing just yet. But even posting the librarian's search strategies, posting the full question and asking other librarians to post their suggestions on tough questions could really help the user.