A co-worker of mine is currently attending classes toward her MLS. This morning I asked her how one of her classes was going. (One I’d audited previously.) She mentioned that it was fun, especially the fact that they had to keep a “journal” of their thoughts about the topics of the week. “A blog?” I asked. Nope, a handwritten journal. Now, I’m not against journaling, electronic or otherwise, but this is the “next generation” of librarians and they’re not using the technology. She quickly responded that she’d rather have it written down as it’s more private. Well, blogs can be private. Put them behind a password (o.k., not possible via Bloglines unless you’ve got your own server to publish to,) and/or just don’t give out the URL. Besides, being an instructor myself, I’d definitely want the journals to be blogs. That way I could subscribe to my students’ RSS feeds and receive their journal assignments instantly without having all that paper to carry around. And, instructor responses to the posts could be sent back to the student via the blog’s commenting feature.
Published by Michael Sauers
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
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