A bit on blogs

At the August 21 FLIP meeting, the discussion was primarily about blogs: the good, the bad, the way too wordy.  The topic was prompted by the recent release of this 100 Best Blogs for Librarians list, which comes from another blog (of course).

In your opinion, what makes an interesting blog?  Do you find that blogs make great professional reference tools, or are they more of a social media outlet,  a little of both, or none of the above?  Further, do you have any suggestions for this new FLIP blog?

Please add comments, thoughts, links to your favorite blog(s).  Let’s get this conversation started.  Ready….go!

2009 FLIP meetings recap (so far)

Moving backward in time, here is a brief summary of the last few FLIP meetings.  It is the goal that from now on our meeting topics will carry over into this blog for further discussion, analysis, and/or general commentary.

July 21: A mid-summer meeting when attendance was low enough to promote discussion about how to increase attendance and participation in FLIP.  Possible future topics of discussion were brainstormed.  Hopefully, new ideas like this blog will help!

June 19: A discussion regarding travel to library conferences and the time/money/effort involved for both in-state and national events.

May 15: Andy Page, coordinator of the e-Learning graduate certificate program at UAA, was our “virtual” speaker.  Andy gave the group a thorough and enthusiastic overview of the program coursework – all the way from Indiana.  The relevance of integrating emerging technology tools into our education and careers was made perfectly clear with the seamless use of the online technology that made his participation possible.

April 17: Included discussions about developing project management skills and how they can be quite useful, if not actually required, for most professional library positions.

March 20: This  meeting took place the week after the Alaska Library Association’s annual meeting in Kodiak.  A few folks that got to go to Kodiak told the rest of us all about it.  In 2010, the AkLA annual meeting will be in Anchorage and we will all have the opportunity to participate AND volunteer to help make it a success.  Visit the 2010 AkLA Conference Planning Website for details.

February 20: About a dozen folks showed up for introductions and a brainstorm session on topics of interest to discuss for future meetings.