Back in August 2005, Joy Weese Moll started a movement to identify the MLS student bloggers, which also led to many questions and discussions. Nowadays we have a Ning to hang out in.
I think it is time for a new list and some more questions. Who are the blogging LIS educators? Why are there so few? [assumption and anecdote] What prevents or holds them back from doing so? [I can think of a few possibilities]
I am aware of Michael Stephens and Jens-Erik Mai. Who else is there?
Yesterday a friend wrote me with the following questions:
I’m getting ready to do my Field Exam list and it struck me that the
blogosphere keeps me pretty up to date on practitioner stuff in the
field - but other than Michael Stephens, i don’t think I have many LIS
faculty blogs in my list of feeds.Are you aware of any good L (particularly I)S blogs by faculty members
where they discuss emerging literature and research practices?There’s some good ones emerging for digital humanities (Matthew Kirshenbaum, Dan Cohen, etc.). Who’s our LIS faculty blog star?
I had to reply with my addition of Jens-Erik Mai as a possibility. I find that sad. I can think of many reasons why LIS educators might not blog, and those may even be very good ones on an individual basis, but I told him I would ask my people on the tubes anyway. [I definitely 2nd reading Dan Cohen. I suggested his blog for the LISNews list of 10 Non-Librarian Blogs to Read for 2008. Submit here]
As we send this out to the larger group I think a wave in the general area of what is meant by “LIS faculty” [my friend’s term] or “LIS educators” [mine] is warranted. No disrespect meant towards librarians with faculty status [or those in the track] but you are not what we mean (probably). I think faculty in the official sense, restricted to faculty of the LIS schools, is too narrow. Many LIS students are educated by adjuncts of various stripes, both locally and by distance ed. I think all of the educators of our students who meet the other sorts of criteria my friend proposed (or similar enough) could go on the list.
So if you are a librarian who also teaches and commits a decent amount of your blog to items of educational interest then I am interested in putting you on the list. If you teach a course or two as a side job and your blog is on the supreme awesomeness of your cat … well, I feel sorry for your students and I’m not interested in you probably. 
Somewhere in between all that and towards the positive side are folks like Meredith and Dorothea. I am interested in them and I read their blogs. I also find them educational. But not the sort of educational my friend means anyway, plus he knows of them already.
I guess we can call it the “Supreme Court” test. We’ll know one when we see one.
And as far as that goes, I am agnostic on whether Stephens and Mai make the list. 
So who, or where, are they?
Send me some suggestions for blogs by LIS educators that contain a fair amount of educational content, if you know of any.
21 responses so far ↓
1 Dorothea Salo // Jan 25, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Well, I’ve taught as an adjunct. Does that count?
2 Christina Pikas // Jan 25, 2008 at 6:52 pm
very difficult - but Sabrina Pacifici (http://www.bespacific.com/) is an adjunct at Maryland. I tried to talk one into it at ASIST (one in your part of the field) but she wasn’t having any of it! I’m just waiting for someone to tell me they’re hurt I’ve forgotten them … I think there are a few Canadian bloggers who have taught as adjuncts at Toronto. Liz Lawley is actually trained in our field but I think she teaches in CS…
3 Mark // Jan 25, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Dorothea you most certainly count! I could have struggled with getting the phrasing right on this for eternity but I knew I’d never be happy and that each way would still hurt someone’s feelings.
I know you have taught, which is why I mentioned you. And for much of what my friend is asking about your blog should already be on his (and similar folk’s) radar. Whether he or anyone else would “count” you as faculty I have no clue and I find a ridiculous discussion anyway.
His criteria as a PhD student may mean faculty in the strict sense of the word, as he is currently mainly surrounded by. My version of the question(s) sits more on the “discuss emerging literature and research practices” part.
After 20 years in the Army and 10 in the academy I can do all the protocol slicing one might want around the term “faculty” but I don’t want to play that one.
Perhaps I didn’t really say it in the post and probably answered poorly here. But …
For everyone else’s sake, in my opinion Dorothea and her blog already counted for this audience before we even got to the questions at hand.
Oooh, loving the personas, by the way.
4 Mark // Jan 25, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Hi Christina.
Thanks. I’d seen the beSpacific blog before at some point but not so much overlap with the things I can focus on.
I know about (and read) Liz Lawley and she meets one criteria definitely but I’m not so sure her blog content meets the even more loosely defined criteria. I would more recommend Liz’s blog to others for more specific reasons related to her teaching interests, or others even depending on context. Liz is more like me with a fair bit of the personal.
Well, hopefully no one’s feelings get hurt; we’re all busy creatures and can only focus on so much.
By the way, when will you be Dr. Pikas and an adjunct or even Prof.? Your content puts you on the list more solidly than anyone so far. Or perhaps not. Both Dorothea and you discuss emerging trends and articles, but your’s are closer to traditional IS sources. Got to check my unexamined biases at the door. Anyway …
… you both rock and educate me. I may well easily recognize status but it doesn’t much mean much to me. If this was initially my question I might well have phrased it so as to avoid the status question entirely.
By the way, I’m on safe ground here as I included both Dorothea and you in my presentation to our local ASIST student chapter last year on which blogs they could be reading?
http://marklindner.info/presentations/Blogs_ASIST.html
5 Leslie Johnston // Jan 25, 2008 at 8:03 pm
There’s Jerry McDonough, a professor at the UIUC Graduate School of Library and Information Science, who blogs as Darth Libris — http://darth-libris.livejournal.com/
6 Mark // Jan 25, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Doh! Uhhhh.
I blame my cohort, too, who also failed to include Jerry. Either we already get his content via other means (and his blog) but his content only sometimes ….
Well, he qualifies as much as really anyone so far so thanks for the reminder Leslie.
Sorry, Jerry.
[My friend and I happen to walk the same halls as Jerry. We’ve had classes with him. Sit in meetings/discussions with him.]
7 Jodi Schneider // Jan 26, 2008 at 12:44 am
Adjuncts have reasonable representation in the blogosphere. Besides Dorothea and Meredith, there’s Stephanie Willen Brown, who teaches reference, online searching, and related classes for Simmons, and writes cogscilibrarian. (She also wrote a nice article “The Adjunct Life” for Library Journal.)
I would love to see more full-time educators blogging–and I’ve told some of them so! When LIS faculty are up for tenure and promotion, does electronic participation figure in at all?
8 Dorothea Salo // Jan 26, 2008 at 8:25 am
I wasn’t offended, Mark, no worries.
Andrew Dillon occasionally blogs. http://sentra.ischool.utexas.edu/~adillon/blog/ Doesn’t say much, but what he DOES say is worth hearing.
9 Peter Bromberg // Jan 26, 2008 at 8:33 am
I have the pleasure of blogging with Marie Radford, Associate Professor at Rutgers SCILS. You can follow her writings over at Library Garden.
(Amy Kearns, another LG blogger, is also just began as an adjunct at RU.)
10 Jodi Schneider // Jan 26, 2008 at 11:02 am
A long-time govdocs professor, John Shuler, has started blogging over at
http://freegovinfo.info/blog/160
11 Mark // Jan 26, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Some excellent choices, folks! I’ll give this a couple days and then do some kind of round-up.
It looks like adjuncts have the best representation in the blogosphere. Interesting. And for Christina’s sake [
] that means that it supports my working hypotheses. We’ll leave those for another time.
I’d like to have a look around first and either see if the adjuncts have already had the conversation I’d like to see or else start it.
Perhaps my friend who asked me in the first place could offer some thoughts. [We can keep you anonymous or not ….]
12 Mark // Jan 26, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Oh. Yes, Jodi; I’d love to see more full-time faculty blogging, too. Not thinking it is highly likely for a while yet, though.
13 Kirsten // Jan 28, 2008 at 12:24 pm
The only blogging faculty member at OU (that I know of) is Doc Martens.
14 Karin Dalziel // Jan 28, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I work in the Digital Humanities, and only one of our professors blogs. For shame. But his is quite good too - if fairly sparse.
Anyway, on to the topic of your post: I have mildly suggested to a few of my teachers that they might try blogging, which was met with responses like “where would I find the time” and “I just don’t do that.” Some of them are truly busy people- I am convinced one professor in particular is actually twins because she does SO MUCH. However, since I’m a distance student, I really crave the conversations that the on campus students get to have with the teachers. I take online classes with students that are in the same place as the teacher, and I can tell the difference- I think being able to read and comment on a teachers blog would be an enormous help.
15 Inherent Vice » Blog Archive » LIS Educator Blogs // Jan 28, 2008 at 8:53 pm
[…] Last week, while I was pondering what field I was standing in, I realized that many of the blogs I subscribe to were not necessarily helping me think about that question. So I turned to my friend Mark, who I rely on to filter all things biblioblogosphere. Yes, that’s right, I’m the “friend” in question in this post. […]
16 Richard Urban // Jan 28, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Hi everyone, “friend” here crawling out into the sunshine. Thanks for all your suggestions and comments. They’ve been helpful in thinking about what I’m looking for.
I’ve posted a reply here. and look forward to continuing the conversation.
17 Mark // Jan 30, 2008 at 9:05 am
Kirsten, thanks for the Doc Martens link. That one looks “most in scope” to me so far. Oops. No value judgements.
Karin, that looks like an interesting blog and I’d love to join the conversation about writing tools but from the perspective of trying to acquire metadata and embed metadata (COinS) in my blog posts.
My tools work but are clumsy as hell! As for thinking of my “writing implements” as tools I fear I don’t generally think about them at all. [le sigh]
Unfortunately, just another of those many things that I am immensely interested in but cannot afford to be at this moment.
18 Mark // Jan 30, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Thanks for popping and linking in, Richard! If anyone is interested in this please go read Richard’s post; he says far more eloquently what he is particularly looking for. I’d love to see a lot of that myself.
But for now I want to encourage all forms of LIS educators to blog and hopefully use a portion of their blogging for discussing some of the things Richard mentions.
19 Stephanie Willen Brown // May 30, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Thanks to Jodi for the nod to me & my humble blog.
I’d also mention Linda Braun, who teaches with me at Simmons GSLIS (she’s at both the Boston and MHC campuses, while I’ve taught for 5 years at “GSLIS West”). She blogs & podcasts frequently over at YALSA http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/
But I agree, it is slim pickings; even slimmer if you focus only on full-time LIS faculty bloggers.
20 Stephen Francoeur // Jun 3, 2008 at 2:08 pm
A few more LIS faculty bloggers: David Lankes (Syracuse University) and Jeffrey Pomerantz (University of North Car0lina, Chapel Hill).
21 Mark // Jun 4, 2008 at 6:39 am
Stephanie and Stephen, welcome and thanks for adding to the list and conversation.
And I had to give myself a hearty slap upside the head as I’ve been reading PomeRantz for a couple years now. Should’ve mentioned that one from the start.
Perhaps it is time I revisit this and make a list so folks don’t have to wade through the comments. My only hangup (besides time) is one person’s blogging LIS educator is another person’s some-other-topic blogger.
Ah, fuzzy categories, they do wonders for a classificationist’s heart.
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