This post is just an account of day 30. It wasn’t intended to be a reflection on the whole June blogging challenge, but sometimes it does this anyway.

The idea for this final round up post is three-fold: being comprehensive while maintaining simplicity and laziness. I’m posting a snippet, a single sentence, from every single participating blog’s day 30 post. Sometimes the sentence is representative of the entire post, sometimes it definitely is not, but it just grabbed my attention.
If I’ve missed anyone’s day 30 post, please let me know and I’ll edit the post.

I wear my hair in a bun because it’s the only way I can beat it into submission.
Bun-toting Librarian

4. We have a very good number of readers, but very few commentators, esp. from within the NLA (are people afraid to comment? or are the posts not discussionable?)
New Technologies Interest Group’s Blog

Although I’m ready for new adventures in new libraries in new places, I will always have the fondest memories of working with the wonderful group of people at “Parl”
sallysetsforth

Today is the last day of the #blogeverydayofjune challenge, thank YOU for all sharing and of all the posts, I remember these – [Hoi then lists 25 memories from the blogging challenge. Very succinct and well done]
Librarian with different hats

like suelibrarian, i found that by forcing myself to write during this month of june, sometimes a decent blog entry would result, and other times i’d be struggling to write anything substantional at all.
sardonicsmile

I’ve been constantly thinking about blogs, blogging, libraries, librarians to the point that all my (non-librarian) friends know about #blogeverydayofjune and now ask me “how’s your blog?” with genuine interest!
Miss Sophie Mac

Ca Plane Pour Moi … is my song for today.
Jenelle.Net Blog

her grey / top / buoyant #haiku
season creep

23. Organised and ran a day long seminar on downloadables.
Connecting Librarian

the #blogeverydayinjune challenge – has been a real challenge for me, I have had to practice getting out of my comfort zone.
a Public Librarian

This challenge has given me a hunger for more and I want to:
… try to raise the profile of librarians especially for WA librarians after the funding issues we’ve had the past few months.
Rien d’important

9. Taught my daughter how to use Google Wonder Wheel
Opinions from an OPL

One Thing I Learned: How many passionate, intelligent, thoughtful and just-a-bit wacky people there are out there in Library Land.
LiberryDwarf

Then last night via Twitter came this inspiring TED talk by Ellen Dunham-Jones about retrofitting suburbia, especially repurposing car parks, shopping malls and “big box” suburban stores for a better future.
Bonito Club

However, it’s my birthday so I’m not going to stress about that anymore, at least until tomorrow.
SkinniBitch

The amount of hostility that arose from librarians about not having their own space, their own paperwork, their own ‘stuff’ was fascinating.
Creative Circ

We are all complete people and posting everyday can mean having to blur the professional and the personal lines and letting go of self imposed rules.
Suelibrarian

The month was a challenge, and i did not achieve the goal of ‘every day’, however i participated, cleaned up the blog and began writing/sharing again.
Feral Librarian Tales

All up, I have now been to 18 consecutive filmfests which still means I’m something of a young’un with the crowd I was with on Saturday night
snail

So I was a little surprised that despite the heart wrenching beginning that I actually found myself being drawn into the story. [discussing The graveyard book / Neil Gaiman ; illustrated by Dave McKean]
Walking Upside Down

The sky was a vivid blue and made a perfect background.
FromMelbin

I’ve been busier this month with blogging, but haven’t really had that reflective time, which I have missed.
Strawberries of Integrity

It may have been delayed panic from nearly missing the interview when Google Maps and my iPad conspired to send me to the wrong address for the ABC studio – about 10 minutes away.
Librarians Matter

Con’s challenge came at a perfect time, and I thought that trying to blog every day for a month was a pretty good way to test whether I actually have the energy and drive to continue blogging at all.
virtually a librarian

There is an authenticity and frankness in the posts that I for one appreciate and it is one of the main canons of blogging and participating in social networking: be authentic use your own voice.
Angels have the phone box II

Maybe we can do this again next June.
Ruminations

I’ve learned about the myriad of e-readers that people are using and their respective advantages and disadvantages; what people are reading and planning to read according to the piles of books beside their bed; people’s bookshelves; people’s cats, dogs, and chooks and people’s big and little people in their lives.
There she goes

Sometimes I think that questions and the asking of questions, are more useful than having answers. Sunday was day 20 of the 30 posts in 30 days blogging challenge. Congratulations on reaching the two thirds milestone, and here are some questions about the day’s blogging.

This is multiple choice, so there are 10 questions followed by 10 of the bloggers participating in the challenge, who represent the answers. When associating the questions with the answers, see if you can guess or remember correctly before you click.

1. Who is planning on getting rid of most of her book collection?
2. Who loves the smell of woodsmoke and the sound of rain on the roof?
3. Who is making a Libraries Rock poster?
4. Who had to work on Sunday in a library where the men’s toilets had not been cleaned since Friday morning?
5. Who finds that chooks are smart and friendly, with individual personalities?
6. Who found an upcycled bicycle print from Salamanca market in Hobart?
7. Who is regretting missing out on purchasing a special limited edition of the Martian Chronicles?
8. Who used to subscribe to Dish magazine but stopped her subscription because she ran out of space on her cookbook shelf?
9. Who returned a lost dog to his grateful owner?
10. Who dares not play region 2 dvds on her Mac, because she is on the last region change allowed on her computer?

a. Bookgrrl
b. Hoi
c. kalgrl
d. Kate Davis
e. Kim
f. Penny
g. Ruminations
h. sardonic smile
i. snail
j. Strawberries of integrity

Welcome to the commentary on day nine of the 30 posts in 30 days blogging event. I imagine that nine is an awkward number for this. The bigger milestone is tomorrow. If this were a marathon, day nine is when some people (like me) might start feeling the pain barrier.

Anyway, this is what I noticed today, in no particular order-

imaginings – if libraries didn’t need to worry about privacy, if a library was given a million dollars to improve circulation, a life where we have the time and means to be an artist

memes – books (and a picture of a bookcase) and dinner and TV and more books

useful professional ideas – not being so introspective and engaging with a broader group of stakeholders, Trove’s new list feature, using spreadsheets for data

personal – pets, donating blood, purchases of books and bags, exhaustion, adjusting to being the mother of a teenager

about blogging – where we draw lines between personal and professional and what goes on the blog, conserving ideas for future posts, how we got into blogging and how blogging has changed us

discussion – Gov 2.0 in action, vodcast followed by a lively debate about the future of libraries in the post-gatekeeper era

observations – Japanese chemist shops, ironic wardrobes, nuance, exhaustion and films

life’s little victories – over white boards

I am not a participant in this. I’m not a prolific blogger, maybe averaging at 12 posts per year. There are frequent moments when I wish I did more, but then I say to myself, less is more.

I must admit to having some initial misgivings about this extended meme. I was worried that it could lead some padding, people blogging just because of the public commitment rather than 
because they really had a post to write. I was worried that the quality to quantity ratio would go through the floor.

But no, I was wrong. Sometimes more is more.

I can sense an enthusiasm and energy in both the posts and the comments which I haven’t noticed for some time in this part of the blogosphere. This energy can feed itself, and keep things going. Maybe a change in routine is better than a holiday.

It reminds me of some of the writing exercises I took in a creative writing class at the Loft in Minneapolis. One of them is to just keep writing, non-stop, for ten minutes. Yes it felt artificial and silly at first, yes some of the writing I did was heinous, but man, but once I dove into it, it really got the creative juices flowing!

 So now there’s a part of me which wishes I was participating in this. There’s a fine line between self-acceptance and self-motivation. For me personally, I worry that if I did this particular challenge, I know I would come to resent it. So I’m going to try my own watered-down wimpy version.

Starting on June 15, 5 posts and 15 comments in 15 days. This way I can share in some of the energy associated with this 30 posts in 30 days challenge, and ramp up my own blogging activity by about 1000%, but still do it in a way that works for me.

The Monday Muse is a back after a hiatus and this week we’re doing something slightly different. A few weeks ago, several of us had an email conversation about the parallel importation of books in Australia. What follows is a slightly edited and tidied up version of that conversation.

But first, what is parallel importation? There is a lot of information on the Productivity Commission’s website, but here’s a good basic summary of the issues:

When a bookshop imports copies of a book published overseas that are also available from an Australian publisher, this is parallel importing. Parallel importing (in theory if not always in practice) gives customers cheaper books and a greater range of titles. On the other hand, parallel imports make it much harder for local publishers to survive and this reduces the support available to local authors in the early stages of their careers. Australia has a fascinating (and in my opinion eminently practical) compromise: parallel imports are allowed if a book is published overseas and no Australian publisher issues a local edition within 30 days. This may be about to change. [Garth Nix, Nick Earls against parallel imports, Talking Squid]

It seems that there is no consensus amongst Australian librarians about this issue. On the one hand, peak bodies such as ALIA, CAUL and National and State Libraries Australasia support lifting the restrictions. On the other hand, other bodies such as the Australian School Library Association and Public Libraries, New South Wales – Country Association wrote submissions against lifting the parallel importation restrictions

Onto the conversation about this…

Morgan: I’ve been aware of the debate about the parallel importation provisions concerning books in the Australian Copyright Act for only a little while. Several weeks ago, there was some interesting discussion in the WAIN list about this. ALIA has made a submission for lifting the restrictions on the parallel importation of books, which should reduce increase competition and reduce the price of books in Australia.

It seems that on this issue, ALIA has the same bottom line position as the big retailers, including Coles, Woolworths, K-Mart and Dymocks and is on the other side of the fence from Australian authors and publishers.

Maybe it makes no sense for these cultural protections to be in the Copyright Act, as ALIA mentions. Under most circumstances, I’d be happy to see any scaling back of the Copyright Act. But this isn’t really a debate about IP. ALIA tries to respond to the argument that these changes will hurt the Australian publishing industry by stating that the New Zealand publishing industry had not been hurt by similar changes in NZ. But that didn’t sound too convincing, especially after I read the submissions from the NZ publishers and authors, stating that the changes there had hurt the NZ industry.

I think it’s an interesting topic because both sides have validity. Why should Australians pay significantly more for books – how does this impact libraries and readers? On the other hand, if these changes hurt the Australian publishing industry, who will identify and support Australian voices?

Con: This would be an interesting topic! Can I admit now that I haven’t made up my mind on this yet??

Morgan: My mind isn’t totally made up on this either. I am leaning towards the “no” side, but I’m willing to be convinced.
Looking at ALIA’s full submission, this point does seem reasonable:

International publishers continue to be significant beneficiaries of the current restrictions, as the subsidiaries or branch offices of international publishers in Australia can take advantage of a distribution monopoly that prevents retailers from sourcing cheaper books from overseas.

Protectionist policy is a blunt tool for providing incentives for local publishers, and we strongly agree with the position outlined in the Issues Paper:

[I]f the government has the objective of assisting Australian book producers (whether authors, publishers or printers), direct subsidies or other policy instruments could achieve this objective at less cost to the community than is associated with parallel importation provisions.

So the debate isn’t so clear cut as small independent Aussie publishers versus those money grubbing multinationals.

On the other hand, if they did ease the restrictions on parallel importation, I am extremely skeptical that any government would ever introduce direct subsidies to independent Australian publishers which they contemplate in the last paragraph.

Kathryn: If it is the PI rights that restrict other media of the work from being distributed in a market, then I am totally against. It is impossible to legally obtain electronic copies of many books, and people who want to read them are forced to resort to Other Methods.

snail: I have so far written a 3-4 paragraph post for my blog on related matters. ie how I’m buying more and more books via amazon, etc because I can get them for half of what I can locally.

Richard Flanagan wrote a good article in the weekend SMH [link, also published here - the remarks on PI start on page 3 of the pdf], arguing against the changes in terms of what they mean for local authors. I see his point but feel the argument is somewhat lost already by the reality of the net especially when we now have things such as:

http://www.booko.com.au
which makes it way easy to do all the cross country comparisons I was doing manually prior. Have ISBN, will find

I recently read an interview with a Spanish writer, Zafon, which rather impressed me. The local shops only had the paperback of his previous novel, The Shadow of the Wind. I hooked into booko and found a limited edition (1000 copies, nicely bound (fine paper, deluxe cloth, sewn binding), and signed) via Amazon US which was 40% off (now 37% off) and will cost me about AUD$71 including delivery.

I can’t source that locally. There’s a bunch of stuff that I can get for half of what it costs locally and don’t get me started on the OED pricing.

The Australian bookbuying market is being gouged royally, and mostly by the English publishers. The proposed changes seem to be swinging the pendulum from the English publishers to the US publishers.

Michelle: Very good topic and as I am also sitting on the fence, I would love to see the arguments and hopefully the comments that will come with it, before I decide for myself.

Corey: Here’s an article which outlines another facet of the issue:

Damn Publishers
By Melissa Gregg
The Excellence in Research for Australia initiative will make publishing outcomes more important than ever. But present indicators of academic merit appear poised to punish Australian research for its very Australian-ness.

Essentially it is arguing that:
- The research is Australian focused and yet the Australian publishers won’t publish it as they focus on text books
- The international publishers won’t publish it because it has an Australian focus.

It occured to me that perhaps this is a sign of a monopolistic market in that the Australian publishers can afford to be picky about this because they’ve all got the same sorts of policies.

Fiona: Good point Corey!

It’s been a long time since I thought about this issue and I can’t remember the main points, but it struck me as being similar to the dual importation of CDs argument which ended up being a non-starter because people didn’t like buying inferior, cheap CDs in the end so they weren’t widely sold.

I’d be interested in the quality viewpoint of this – is it better to have books produced more cheaply in a country that can, for example, ramp up green printing facilities, or maintain Australian employment? I know that when I buy books I like to check and see where they were printed and I won’t buy expensive paperbacks if they were printed overseas or the binding is flimsy.

This week’s Monday Muse is about the Darien Statements.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Libraries Interact’s Kathryn Greenhill is one of the authors of the Darien Statements. Libraries Interact has no official spokespeople, so it’s not for me or anyone else to say that we collectively endorse it or not, but it’s definitely met our criteria as a topical issue that’s worth discussing.

Rather than just asking for yays or nays about the Darien Statements, I’m interested in some different approaches.

The Darien Statements and the reaction to it in the blogosphere raises broader questions about the role of statements in the profession. After all, there are the Five Laws of Library Science by Ranganathan, as well as statements by bodies such as IFLA, ALIA and the ALA – to give just one sample from just three organisations. Do these statements make any difference for libraries or librarians? Does anyone have any anecdotes of examples? Or is it better to assess these statements by the degree to which they inspire us or provoke conversation?

Considering the critiques and rewrites of the Darien Statements, is it appropriate for something like this to be wikified?

Do any parts of the Darien Statements help explain why you do what you do as a librarian? Are there any parts of the Darien Statements which you find problematic or not really applicable to your own circumstances?

The Monday Muse is a new experiment we’re trying at Libraries Interact. Although comments are very welcome on all of our posts, on the Monday Muse, the comments are the purpose of the post. The plan is that every other Monday, we’ll host a discussion on some topic of interest to Australian libraries.

Today’s topic is the global financial crisis and libraries. Please add your thoughts on this by commenting below.

The current global financial crisis is easily the biggest economic upheaval since librarians have been blogging. Library bloggers in North America have started talking about this subject – usually referring to it as the recession – but in the tradition of Libraries Interact, we want know what’s happening in Australia.

• How is the global financial crisis (GFC) impacting on your library? Does 2009 threaten budget cuts or even redundancies?
• Are there any library sectors which seem more vulnerable than others to the economic downturn? Are there sectors which are more busy or stressed? Are there any libraries which thrive in recession conditions?
• How do these changes seem to be affecting the library job market?
• Does the current downturn make it easier or more difficult to implement new technologies in libraries? Or does it have no effect whatsoever?

I’m not a huge TV watcher, but there’s something about finding a good blog which reminds me of finding a good TV show. It’s something to look forward to – the next episode or the next blog post. And it’s always a shame when a TV show you liked is cancelled, or when a blog you enjoyed stops posting.

Cancelled TV shows have their reruns and dvd sets, which have their own benefits, but they lack the excitement of viewing a new episode where you really have no idea of what’s going to happen with the characters or how the plot will develop. Most discontinued blogs also have a half-life where they exist as a static web page, and sometimes I get a lot out of reading posts which are several years old. Yet I think that blogs, more than other forms of writing, are creatures of their time. When a post is taken out of its time, it can lose something. Blogs also change and develop over the months and years and that’s one of the things which makes them interesting.

My point is that it’s better to read a blog while it is being written, rather than retrospectively, after it’s stopped.

Last night I was looking through the list of Australian blogs on Libraries Interact. It’s been a little while since I’ve taken a good look at all of the new-to-me blogs that are there. The saddest thing about doing that is that I found a number of well-designed and well-written and innovative blogs which I’ll never really know because it looks like they’ve already been discontinued or abandoned.

I would never criticize anyone for discontinuing or abandoning a blog, as I’ve done both of these things myself. There are good reasons why people do this. I think it’s better if people create blogs and try blogging, only to stop it later on, than if they never try blogging at all.

But abandoned and discontinued blogs aren’t the main subject of this post. What I want to do acquaint myself, and hopefully other readers of this blog, with some of the newish (or at least new to me) Australian blogs.

Here are four which caught my eye. In alphabetical order:

Accidental Aussie
I was particularly glad to find another Australian librarian who’s interested in legal KM and other things relevant to law librarians and special librarians. I also like how this blog pays attention to the similarities and differences between Australia and the USA. I’m kicking myself for not finding this blog earlier.

Angels have the phone box
I like this blog because it’s thoughtful and very different from other librar* blogs I’ve seen lately. Posts often consist of a haiku poem accompanying a picture. It speaks to the right-side of the brain, which is sometimes neglected in the blogosphere. The author of this blog is a New Zealander living in Australia.

Bibliothekia
The tagline of this blog is “21C Libraries / Technology / Web 2.+ / Social Networking / Learning 2.+” So it’s not surprising that there are a number of tech-focused posts here. What I like about Bibliothekia’s approach is that he often links to directly various reports and websites, sources which I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.

Stained Glass Waterfall
Stained Glass Waterfall has some insightful commentary on 2.0 issues, he also has entries about conferences and other library events he’s attended. There are some detailed posts about work-related technology projects, although my favourite would be the lo-fi post with the picture of the walkman with auto reverse.

No round up of April 2007 would be complete without mentioning Deb’s (REAL PUBLIC LIBRARIAN) post, Sex in Libraries, wondering whether erotic, sexually explicit and even pornographic material have any place in libraries.

Of course, pr0n is not the only thing restricted by libraries. Techxplorer has found that some educational institutions have started blocking access to Wikipedia. Because it’s not authoritative and therefore it’s “not acceptable and so blocking it was protecting the students.”

My Finest Hour has a thought-provoking discussion about women only spaces in relation to libraries. Are there any instances when this might be necessary? What about in the context of a library which is a “source of information for women looking to get out of situations of domestic violence, or for women who are survivors of sexual abuse or assault, who might feel uncomfortable asking for help from a male librarian”?

Meanwhile over at the ADHD Librarian, John has reposting some material he wrote several years back for a library newsletter. The first in this series is called Boys, Books and Your Library. It looks at what public libraries can do to encourage boys to develop reading skills.

Michelle McLean, the Connecting Librarian, has had a very busy month. She has attended and blogged the Computers in Libraries conference, not to mention visiting a host of American libraries and catching up with American library bloggers.

Have you ever ever been confused about the rules for citing blogs? moonflowerdragon has written a post about citing blogs in APA style.

I’ll close by highlighting one new library type blog which has started (or come to our attention) in the past month. Chapter Two is a new blog by Alyson. Great start Alyson, looking forward to more – especially the nitty gritty of your new job!

March 2007 was quite a busy month in Australian library blogland. Various RL library events have blogged about, such as the L2 Unconference in Melbourne. Jessamyn West’s visit to Australia had quite an impact in the Aussie blogosphere, and was blogged by CW, techxplorer, Kayo and Sputty. Australian LIS bloggers have played a role in this year’s ALIA elections. Two candidates – Derek Whitehead and Kevin Dudeney – have blogs and blogs have been living up to their rough and ready reputation as being the place to go for the best uncensored scuttlebut. This has prompted Kathryn Greenhill to blog about the way that librarians handle controversial issues, and what gets in the way of open and effective discussion.

On a somewhat related note, Sideshow Matt has some insightful thoughts about tracking the consequences of not pursuing innovations, and how it would impact the balance in libraries between “conservativsm and innovation; permanence and transcience; control and trust.” Fiona Bradley has been thinking about the mobile web and what “more should libraries and librarians be doing to anticipate this next stage of the Internet?” Judy O’Connell has written about Judgement and Web 2.0. Read what she’s linked to, think about what you are doing to encourage your library users to question and judge the quality of the information they consume. Although Twitter and Ning have been around for some time, both applications seemed to reach a new level of prominence during this month. Is this just their 15 minutes? Or does at least one have some longevity?

Looking at Australian library institutional blogs, some libraries have been dealing with the impact of the Fairfax Business Media’s decision to pull the Australian Financial Review and BRW out of Factiva. Mosman Library has used its blog to announce its Mosman Voices, an online oral history collection.

Finally, in the section of about Australian librarians, rather than by Australian librarians, there’s been a lot of chatter about the forthcoming ABC TV comedy-drama, the Librarians. See media release from the ABC, read the interesting comments thread in the Librarian in Black.

Today is International Blog Day.

This day, celebrating the blogosphere, began last year. On the day:

In one long moment In August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs, preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

The Thali were talking about this day and how we wanted to celebrate it with you, and thought we’d share what we’ve gained, learned or enjoyed from blogging and participating in the blogosphere generally.

Librarian Kathryn says:

I started blogging because I’d been asked by work to explain blogging to other librarians. Initially I presumed that blogs were not very interesting, self-indulgent journals of personal blathering.

I’ve progressed to realising that they are chiefly an easy way to make a web site (see Peta’s Blogs Masquerading as.. post). I’ve also discovered that a blog is more like a node in many large conversations, than a solitary exercise. It is as much about reading other blogs (thank you RSS!!) as about writing your own.

I’ve also had the inevitable gaffs, like saying Paul Miller from Talis sounded English when he’s Scottish. (He very politely corrected me). Or pressing “publish” before my post was properly edited. Sure, I could edit it afterwards, but it had already gone out on RSS. (Damn you RSS!!)

The lint experience has taught me that while the Australian library blogging world is so small, it’s naive to presume all librarians understand about blogging. Some things should still should be spelled out clearly, without presuming everyone else “just knows”. It’s also taught me what to look for in a WordPress template and to get the template tickety-boo before launching a site.

Peta tells us:

I started blogging after Michael (Impressions Scholarcast) visited with the library staff at work to talk about blogs and how he was using them both personally and with his students. In preparation for the visit I did a bit of scrounging around about library blogs and started using Bloglines to explore the use of RSS. 18 months later I now have several blogs on the go, and Michael I believe is still using Bloglines. Via our blogs and rss readers we have regular “conversations”.

I blog at work for the library news (a collaborative blog) and for a project, I blog to experiment and keep track of ideas and technologies I want to follow up with later and I blog to share knowledge. One of the things I enjoy the most is just playing with templates to add widgets, javascripts and experiment with new web services and how they can be integrated. It has become a bit of a creative outlet, replacing all those handicrafts I used to do.

Morgan writes:

I also started blogging because I was asked to write about blogs for a library association newsletter. Being somebody who learns by doing, I decided to start one on a temporary basis. I immediately found it very compelling and empowering. Four years later, I find that blogs are almost commonplace and an extension of real life. Almost. When I started, just by existing, any given blog was close to unique. For example, when I began, there was only one other academic law librarian blogging in the entire world. Now it’s different, and we have this amazing community of bloggers. It’s more difficult to be unique in that existential kind of way. But now we can focus on other kinds of uniqueness – so that our blogs reflect our own individuality.

Tango says:

When I first started reading blogs, I thought – why haven’t I read about all this great stuff going on in mags, or at seminars, or meetings, etc. I wasn’t seeing or hearing it elsewhere, because no-one was picking it up to be done elsewhere. So I decided to start a blog, to help get that information out of the UK and US where it was all happening, and into Australia where it was just beginning. I hoped, but didn’t expect that people would read what I wrote and I definitely didn’t expect that some of those whose blogs I read from overseas would stop by and I definitely didn’t expect the community that has arisen from becoming an Australian blogger. But its all happened and I am very pleased to be a part of the “cutting edge” of what’s happening in libraries down under.

Five of my favourite inspirations?

Tame the Web – Michael Stephens
Librarian in black – Sarah Houghton
Librarian.net – Jessamyn West
blyberg.net – John Blyberg
Information wants to be free – Meredith Farkas

Bronwyn adds:

I returned to work yesterday after attending a day of ideas about using blogs, wikis, VOIP and so on for communicating with clients (thanks QULOC), full of enthusiasm and nascent possibilities. “So how was your day off?” colleagues asked. “Where did you go again?” Within seconds of the explanation, the eyes would glaze “Hmm blogs – think I’ve heard of them somewhere…”

And that’s why the blogging community excites me – something like surfing a wave, I guess – with so much we can offer.

And I think it’s exhilarating to be part of a group/profession that is growing and changing so fast, partly because of the interaction that blogs allow.

And CW says:

Blogging has given me a reason to write. I’m not claiming any particular skill, but it’s really helped with my usual obstacles: Fear-of-Writing.

And all this constant engagement with so many wonderful library folks all over the country and all around the world – it’s given me so many ideas, so much inspiration. Thank you everyone, and here’s to many more hours of pleasant banter and invigorating exchange!

Happy International Blog Day!