Blogs, Tumblr, and Libraries! Oh, MY!

Hello, fellow teacher-librarians! I'm back with some new insights on library resources we can all use to make our lives a little bit easier. I want to highlight some clever librarian bloggers, library Tumblr accounts, and how they can help to improve your library program as well as mine.

Let us begin with the almighty blog! Blogs are websites that are updated by individuals or small groups that are usually centered around a certain subject. Bloggers tend to write about what they know in a more informal style to connect with their audience. For example, blogs are written about people's personal lives, about their work, interests, or any combination thereof. Many librarians (see: School Media Specialists) are moving towards using technology to enhance their libraries.

Before you start telling me how time consuming it will be to check in on all these blogs, I am going to offer you a simple solution. There is a way to organize the different web pages you are interested in into one compiled and easy to read place. Feed readers! There are many different types of feed readers that can be used to organize web pages you are interested in. Instead of visiting every site every day, you can used a feed reader that will be updated daily from any and all sites you subscribe to. After looking through several, I decided to use one of the more popular feed readers called Feedly. I prefered Feedly to the others because of its simple and uncluttered design. I liked how the page gathered the articles from the different websites I subscribed to and built a neat and clean feed for me to return to day after day. Another important feature that I liked was the Feedly Mini. Any page I visited that had a subscription service available would have the Feedly Mini icon appear on the lower right hand corner. It allowed me to chose whether I wanted to add it to my Feedly or share it on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. It's not a necessary feature but certainly handy while surfing the web. Now that I have all the blogs I want to follow in one place, I don't have to bother with remembering website names or looking through my bookmarks.

Now on to the blogs! I have invested some time to look into the sites of popular library bloggers and this is what I found:

Mighty Little Librarian
Her name is Tiffany Whitehead and she is a middle/high school librarian at Episcopal School of Baton Rouge. I really enjoyed reading this blog. She has tons of ideas on how to use technology in the library as well as other creative programming. She also writes a lot about her ideas on how to decorate the library and even provides tutorials for her projects. She's a big proponent of ditching the Dewey Decimal System and genrefying the library. These ideas can be controversial, but she advocates for doing what is right for your students regardless of what is traditional. I recommend following her blog and commenting because she also regularly responds to questions in her comment section.

The Unquiet Librarian
She is a librarian and writing teacher that blogs about her experiences. I love the ideas that she provides about writing. She is very free about sharing her work and her student's work. She also posts step-by-step guides for her lessons. I definitely recommend following her.

The Daring Librarian
Gwyneth Jones is a librarian blogger that is very well known in library circles. She is a big believer in using technology to teach students and has some really amazing ideas. Her blog is full of fun and interesting activities that you can use with your students. I also follow her on Twitter because she shares awesome links to other helpful resources. Follow her. You won't regret it.

The Adventures of Library Girl
Jennifer LeGarde is the School Library Media Coordinator in Wilmington, NC. She is an author and a fervent library advocate. In her blog, she shares many recommendations on how to engage students. She also writes about program ideas as well as fun library decorations and displays. A lot of her posts about challenging librarians to really connect with students and encourage their love of reading. She is definitely worth adding to your feed.

Of course there are many more amazing blogs that I didn't have the time to include but this is a great list to get started.

Tumblr is a another great social media site that can offer great ideas and entertaining reading. I also wanted to include a Tumblr on my Must Follow list.

Lake Forest High School Library
I decided to follow the Lake Forest High School Library. They use their Tumblr very often. They post funny pictures, book suggestions, pictures of teachers and students working in their library, and book reviews among other things. They do a great job engaging with their patrons and offering content and fun.

I'd also like to include my own Tumblr link for anyone of you out there that would like to follow me! I hope I've provided you with a little bit more information than when you started and that it will be as useful to you as it was to me. Tootles!

Currently reading: Space Case by Stuart Gibbs