In response to various posts wondering about the strange lack of UK library / librarian blogs, I thought I’d have a look for myself to see where they’re all hiding.
I did a search on Google Blogs, just using the words “uk” and “librarian”, and looked for posts published ‘anytime’, which gave me 24 pages of blog listings. This included spam blogs, duplicate postings, and various sites including ‘uk’ in the text of a link they’d posted.
I learned a few things in the process.
- Lots of blogs post occasionally about librarians, without necessarily being written by librarians.
- If a blogger doesn’t fill out their location information, it can be quite hard to work out where they’re based without having to read a few posts and look for cultural references.
- “UK” also means “University of Kentucky” (See?).
- There are quite a few interesting English language library bloggers, but they’re not on this list ‘cos they ain’t in the UK.
- There really doesn’t seem to be many UK library bloggers!
It’s not an exhaustive list, but here, in no particular order, are the blogs I DID find, with a (very quick and dirty) synopsis of what they seem to be about. I only spent 3 or 4 minutes each in general on skimming through these blogs, so if I’ve got anything about them wrong, sorry, but this is on my free time, which is short!
Institutional or Group Blogs
Blog from the Library and Information teaching staff at the University of Brighton. Mainly focussed on University course information / material, but a fair amount of general library information. Updated one or two times a month in general.
Blog from the LIS Department of the University of Worcester. Entirely focussed on internal news, but with very friendly and informal postings.
CILIP has various blogs by either staff, or links to relevant blogs, available from the Communities section.
Varying levels of activity on these blogs – the PTEG blog has one post from November 2007, while Lyndsay’s CILIP Blog has been going has been going for almost a year, with at least one or two large postings every month.
Who knew? The British Library blogs! Blog of Ian Infield, Manager of the BLs Business and IP Centre. IP / technology focused, with lots of nice, honest posts, with some useful BL info thrown into the mix.
Fade Library is the Library Service of Liverpool PCT. A wealth of regular health related posts, and a good sense of humour –
“Why is the library called the Fade Library?
As the North West Grey Literature Service we naturally ‘Fade to Grey’! Musical puns apart it stands for Frequently Accessing Documents that are Esoteric (if the musical pun wasn’t bad enough we suffer from librarians who like playing with words!)”
Appears to be the blog of the Reid Kerr College library, or someone related to the Library, but unable to confirm as it doesn’t have any ‘about’ section that I can find. Lots of posts about library topics, books, IT…
English Library blog at the University of Chichester. Covering UC library service information, with updates on new stock and services.
“The SLA weblog contains news about the SLA and topical information of general interest to our members.” Lots of regular postings, but the format of the postings is a hyperlinked headline, which could become frustrating with regular visits.
I’m not sure whether this counts as a blog, but as it incorporates many of those elements, I’ll put it in here with the institutional blogs. When launched, there was a blog section, but that appears to have disappeared now. The flake covers news of relevance to all sectors of Scottish libraries, and is a joint effort between Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland (CILIPS).
These didn’t come up on my blog search, and are taken from the links in this previous post from Enquiring Minds.
The Information Services Library blog of the University of Northampton. Lots of posts of technical tools useful for students (and others), linking news nicely to course topics and educating students on developments in some of their favourite online tools.
A regularly updated site, giving info on events, new stock and other library news to users of the Galway Public Library service
Individual Blogs
UK librarian, living, working and blogging in London, currently in a public library but shorty moving to London University. Focussing on libraries and Web 2.0, regular posts and lots of links!
Does exactly what it says on the tin – a blog with postings relating to teen or youth librarianship. Part of a larger site which is “the first website of its kind in the UK. It is specifically geared towards those that work with Teenagers and ‘the Youth’ in Libraries in the UK (and also abroad).”
An academic librarian, working his way through a librarianship qualification, and musing on “Libraries, singing, comics, life”. Regular, often in depth posts on all the aforementioned subjects, but mainly on music and musicals!
Edited by Karen Blakeman, with regular posts on Web 2.0 topics. Mainly a bulletin board type of blog, with brief postings linking back to fuller source material.
When I Grow Up I Want To Be A Librarian!
The blog of Katharine Widdows, Science Information Assistant at University of Warwick Library, working her way through Chartership, and using her blog to track this progress. She blogs about UW Library issues, and Chartership related events and activities.
An Academic Information Assistant at the University of Wolverhampton, studying for a Masters in Information and Library Studies via Distance Learning, and focussing on technology developments, and enhancing academic library services.Regualr posting and commentary on library issues.
New blog from a PhD research student at the University of Strathclyde, (so far) looking at public libraries and Web 2.0 technologies.
And another one from from Enquiring Minds.
Interesting behind the scenes look at Swansea Public Libraries, from the viewpoint of a staff member – the Central Library refurbishment looks fab! Hard to tell if it does have official approval, so I’ve put it here as a personal blog.
There – I hope that helps some people in some way!
Dumpling in a Hanky 
Excellent! thank you very much for this! I’m going to have a poke about these links when I get home.
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There’s more to come – I found another dozen or so in my lunch hour!
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Cheers for the link from the Fade crew up in sunny Liverpool. If you keep an eye on our blog roll they’ll be more health library blogs listed as we gather info for a conference paper.
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Wow what a great post!Thanks very much for the mention of Joeyanne Libraryanne. 🙂 I’ll be sure to check out any on your list I haven’t yet heard of, it’s great to see who else is out there blogging for us UK library folks.
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I have a blog as well – The Librain – which contains my musings on the future of school libraries.http://librain.edublogs.org/
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HiFrom Sue Jennings at Lancashire we have a wonderful blog here too, specialising in Mental Health Current Awareness, thanks to Kieran Lamb at Fade we are helping keep our staff informed of all the latest articles, reports and more ..http://lancashirecare.wordpress.com
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Hi from Sue Jennings, Lancashire home of the wonderful Mental Health blog for Lancashire Care Library and Information Service, keeping you uptodate with current awareness, resources and much more …http://lancashirecare.wordpress.com
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Thanks for your kind comments. There are just a few of us blogging at the British Library at the moment, but I am hoping it will increase.One of my favourites is Clip Art Must Die, about marketing libraries.http://petertcoyne.typepad.com/RegardsNeilhttp://ninfield.wordpress.com
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I’m nearly a year late but wanted to add a blog I found written by a librarian in the Outer Hebrides:http://www.silversprite.comA great blog. I’m about to embark on postgrad study to finally become a librarian so I’ll have a blog of my own soon too…and fingers crossed I’ll be back in Scotland by then as well!
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Hi saoghalbeag, this list eventually expanded into a much more comprehensive one, the individual ones are available here: http://uklibraryblogs.pbwiki.com/Individual+BlogsSilversprite is on it, but thanks for the info anyway – these blogs can be hard to find without pointers!
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