Blogs, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

My initial experiences with a blog was bad and ugly. A former (notice I wrote former) coworker, who was a recent SLIS graduate decided to blog about his experiences as a new librarian. This was a good idea. He described actual events and individuals in a very negative and arguably, a unprofessional way while working at the Reference Desk. This was a bad, bad, bad idea.

Based on the above second hand experience, I was not thrilled last fall when I had to create a blog as a class project. I detailed a vacation to the National Shrimp Festival. My in-laws still look at it, to simply watch the video or recall the good times. At that time, blogger was having problems with uploading of videos so after much frustration and over 20 attempts, I used VideoEgg to imbed my videos. The posts had to be interactive and things went smoothly after I got the videos uploaded. This was good.

For the past couple of years, I have been reading articles about Library 2.0 and making patrons feel more connected to their libraries. This is a worthwhile premise however I still prefer in person conversation over IM, reading a fiction book over a stranger's online journal and the real world over Second Life. I worked in our computer lab for more than a year and see too many patrons devoting way too much energy to "looking for love in all the wrong places" or ignoring their kids while updating their MySpace account. As I talk with coworkers, I tell them that these applications simply are tools, which when used in appropriate manner can be extremely beneficial. It is truly a case of too much of anything can be harmful.



Also, why do we think we need to come up with clever names for our posts. I enjoy trying to be clever however I do not think I have ever seen a blog with titles: Post 1, Post 2, Post 3.