Blogs blessed internet users with their presence in the late 1990's, but didn't really take the internet world by storm until the mid 2000's when users acknowledged just how useful blogs could be. Today there are blogs about just about anything from Cheetos who have lost their way (lonelycheetos.tumblr.com) to helpful housekeeping advice (drhousecleaning.blogspot.com). Some have a more specific focus in mind such as the library world. Here are five blogs that really captured my attention.
Library Blogs
David Lee King
http://www.davidleeking.com/2015/09/22/why-do-you-love-your-library-advocacy-video/
David Lee King is a true advocate for all things library and technology-based. He tells it like it is in his blogs. This one particular blog was cute and featured a video with several people explaining why
they loved their library.
The Daring Librarian
http://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/2015/04/you-dont-have-to-marry-it.html
These blogs posts were comical and insightful. Her posts range from opinions on certain topics to memes (graphics with quotes). She also offers advice. My favorite post was titled "You Don't Have to Marry It." Here she explained how we don't necessarily have to stress out over the new and different types of technology that can be incorporated in a library. She offers suggestions on different alternatives to these technologies that won't completely break the budget. It's funny, down-to-earth, and above all, REAL. You need to check this one out!
NeverEndingSearch
http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/
This is one of the blogs that the School Library Journal hosts. It is incredibly informative for library science students as well as experienced librarians.
The Adventures of Library Girl
http://www.librarygirl.net/
Library Girl is a huge advocate of "reading champions." In other words, students cannot become better readers without someone to guide them. The pressure cannot be placed on the students without our help. We must model and encourage reading if we expect students to succeed.
What's @ the Library
http://rhs.romaisd.com/blogs/lgonzalez
I chose this blog because our high school librarian started working on this last year in order to inform students of what is available at the library as well as what is happening at the library. This is an excellent resources for my students.
Blog Readers
With the wealth of information a person can get from the internet and blogs, in particular, it makes sense for there to be one place to go to and store all the useful information that we find. That's were blog readers come in. There are sites such as Bloglovin', Feedly, Bloglines, NewBlur, Digg Reader, and Newsvibe.Unfortunately, both Bloglines and Newsvibe were down during my research on these sites, so I did not get to see what they offered. Bloglovin' did not blow my mind at all. It seemed too simplistic. NewBlur did not appear to be user friendly; instead, it seemed complicated and like it offered too many steps.
My two favorites were Digg Reader and Feedly.
Digg Reader has a fairly easy to manipulate user interface. Users can search for different blogs straight from the homepage. Each of the articles is separated by title, a few lines from the text, and the date. Users can read the full article straight from this site, and "digg" it (give it a thumbs up similar to a Facebook like) or they can save the page (or both!). From the menu options on the left side of the page, users can access "Diggs" and "Saved" blog posts.
My first instinct was to use Feedly. It is similar to Digg Reader. People can search different blogs from the main page. They can use a keyword such as "libraries", or they can type in the name of a specific blog. Articles are displayed a little bit differently here which is what initially caught my attention I suppose. Each article provides readers with the opportunity to save the blog or share it either through Facebook or Twitter. The downside to Feedly is that users cannot read a full blog post in the site. Instead, there is a link to the full blog where readers can check out its entirety. This prompted me to switch to Digg Reader.
This is good intel! Nice work with your explanation of blog readers, and your blogs are also interesting to librarians and teachers. The cool thing about some of the ones you showed here (like neverendingsearch) have been around for a long time and have lots of interesting information that goes back for a long time~
ReplyDeleteI liked Bloglovin' the best. I liked the simplicity of the site. Good information on blog readers. Unfortunately I never knew such a thing existed until now.
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