Some time back we asked for library directors to start blogging. Derek Whitehead has started his own blog to “communicate with ALIA members and canvas issues” in the lead up to the ALIA 2007 election of vice president. Derek has been the Director, Information Resources and University Copyright Officer at Swinburne University of Technology since 2000.
In addition to communicating with ALIAns 
and canvassing issues, he is also offering a word of the day – a rather curious use of the word “umbrellas”.
Link to Derek’s ALIA Blog
The other candidate for the election, Kevin Dudeney is also blogging at Aus Library Technician since December 2006.
It would be interesting to hear from the candidates their thoughts on the effectiveness of their blogs as part of the election process, and to see if they continue blogging once it is over.
Feed
March 16, 2007 at 21:56
Cheers Peta! I’ll follow his blog with interest (already have Kevin’s in Google Reader).
March 23, 2007 at 12:31
Hello Peta,
If this is posted twice please forgive as I wasn’t sure if the original one went through. I have either participated in or observed ALIA elections for 7 years and it is the first time blogs have been used. Whether this blog has been of benefit in the election. That is hard to tell. I know my blog has received many more hits because of the details being posted on some ALIA e-lists.
The reason I started a blog in December 2006 before the ALIA election commenced was due to the lack of blogs written by and about library technicians/ paraprofessionals. The subtitle of my blog is, ‘The library life of an Australian library technician’. It is not about the ALIA election it is just what impacts on my library life. I have made a couple of critical posts about ALIA but those issues have impacted on my ALIA member/ library life and they are just 2 of the public ones.
Is my blog going to continue after the ALIA election? Yes. It will not contain a ‘word of the day’ or canvas any library issues. It will be about what has occurred in the library life of an Australia LT.