Back in mid-January 2007 I started a “feature” entitled “Some things read this week, …”. I have, for a long time now, been unhappy with it. I have rarely addressed the important things in the depth which they deserved and to which I would like. The date data is generally recorded in at least one other place, if not more, for all items listed in those posts, but they did serve a sort of chronological collation function for me, though, which was in a sense more easily useful for my own purposes.
Another issue which has recently arisen for me is that I have been reading a few books on a topic vastly different than what was normal for me. But our circumstances can change our reading preferences as I would hope most anyone would admit. The issue is that I, after discussion with a trusted confidante, do not feel comfortable listing and discussing them here. Actually, I feel perfectly comfortable listing and discussing them with many people.
The problem is librarians as a group. As a group, librarians are uncomfortable with this topic, as they are with many topics. Now these are books that I walked over to my local library, Champaign Public, and checked out. I was planning on putting a big (Self-)Censored heading in my post for this upcoming week before discussing the issue much as I am now.
But, based on my unhappiness with the “feature” anyway, and adding in that I am now painfully self-censoring myself, I see little need to continue it.
Rest assured that I will continue to blog about some of the things I read. But not having to worry about trying to say something about everything and feeling bad when I don’t—which was frequent—I can now concentrate on saying something of potential use to others and myself. I imagine something along the lines of The Gypsy Librarian’s Article Notes and Book Notes features.
I honestly do not imagine anyone will miss the weekly list, except perhaps me, and I will certainly not miss the work involved in writing and constructing the blog posts.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Lisa // Jun 19, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I’m going to miss them but I understand it must be time-consuming. This was my way of “keeping an ear to the ground” on one part of librarianship that I don’t get to think about as part of my daily work. Even just reading the citations gave me a sense of some of the issues. I will appreciate the new approach for the same reason!
2 Angel // Jun 19, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I understand as well that it can be time-consuming. Keeping up is always a challenge in our line of work. For books, I have been much more selective. Since I got the GoodReads account, I just make short notes over there. But I do make some extra notes on the blog if a book really engages me. I still do the articles, my way of keeping that ear to the ground. In the end, you have to go with what works.
Best, and keep on blogging.
3 jenny // Jun 19, 2008 at 9:31 pm
For books there is Good Reads. I do definitely enjoy seeing what other people are reading.
4 Mark // Jun 20, 2008 at 7:33 am
Hmmm. That’s an interesting point, Lisa. Thanks. I have gotten some general comments over time on “Some things read …” but that is nice to know.
I had joined the GSLIS Reads Facebook group and contributed several of my actual commentaries/reviews on some of the better things in a couple categories but got absolutely no feedback. I won’t disparage the YA and adult pop lit discussions as clearly more people read and are interested in those items than what I have been reading.
But. A little interest from LIS students and faculty didn’t seem to be asking much. I checked back in yesterday after months and still no feedback. Of course, it doesn’t look to be too hopping of a place period … but still.
Anyway, thanks. If/when our tools for the collection of bibliographic metadata to the consistent output, sharing and updating thereof improve I will try to put some of my bibliographies/reading lists on the Web. Perhaps those could serve the same kind of use case.
Angel and jenny, GoodReads looks useful but I’ve already got LibraryThing and Zotero and …. I guess I need to experience it’s social aspects before I can really say. But I really wonder how many folks that use that site might be interested in what I’ve been reading. I mean, I might get voted off the island. See my comments above re lack of feedback from my own student peers on what I read in our FB group.
A big issue for me, though, is much of what I read is not going to be there, nor is it in Amazon as supposedly most everything is, based on their claim (hahaha). Thus, I’d be doing even more manual data entry.
Oh well. This is a minor issue to work out compared to others lately.
Thanks all for the comments, though.
5 Nathan // Jun 20, 2008 at 8:59 am
Mark,
I will miss it. I learned a lot from everything you abstacted for me. Thanks so much for that work. Sorry I have not commented on your blog lately. I read everything you post and always hope and pray you are doing well.
Thanks again,
Nathan
6 Mark // Jun 25, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Thanks, Nathan. Sorry for taking so long to get back to your comment; been trying to take care of some personal issues.
I appreciate your comments. Let’s not think of it like I’ve stopped. I haven’t really been reading much lately anyway, at least not on my normal topics. I have been reading a bit in one broad “applied” subject area but as I said I won’t be discussing that here anyway.
I will try and discuss some of the things I read once I start reading again and I honestly am not seeing myself getting back into that amount of reading anytime soon anyway. Thus, it might be easier to do a better job with the things I do peruse.
I have a book review that I am working on for publication [main priority at the moment], and then I need to seriously get to reading the last few things for my CAS paper. I will also need to re-read many things so perhaps further (or 1st-time) commentary on some of them will come about.
It’s really hard to say what will happen but I guess I primarily needed to remove the pressure of doing them each week and the feeling bad if I did a poor job on any entry and if I didn’t read much that week, etc. It’s already a big relief cutting myself that slack.
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