Hello World (Again)

This is not my first blog post, nor my first blog, for that matter. At one time, when blogging was new, it was part of my daily life.

A couple of years ago I created a blog for the reference department in my public library. I remember the reference staff and I used it to communicate with each other. We had limited the blog so that only we could see and contribute to it and so we passed along our daily concerns, reminders, jokes, encouragements and updates on ongoing professional sagas.

At the height of the blog's use I remember we had a collection graphic files, a bathing suit, a snowflake, etc. When someone began their shift at the desk, they published one of the pictures on the blog as indicator of the local temperature around the reference desk so if you hadn't come into work yet you would know whether to the sleeveless top or the heavy sweater was the proper choice. It was fun and we all enjoyed being bloggers.

I don't remember when we stopped blogging as a department or why. It was a quick, easy, and fun way to communicate. We all had access and we had privacy, too.

I routinely read several professional blogs, such as Librarian in Black http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/, though mostly now I have them come to me either in my email or through an rss feed.

I love to knit and find knitters' blogs to be a great source of free patterns, advice and tips. I don't read any particular knitting blogs regularly, but prefer to dip into them by searching for what I'm after.

At the Internet Librarian Conference held in Monterey, CA last year Twitter was the hot application. Lots and lots of sessions were devoted to Twitter and people sat in the sessions and tweeted about what was being said.

I'm not sure about it for myself, though I do like the status updates on Facebook.