Blogged Librarians

Is it just me or is there an increased presence of librarians on the blogosphere, these days? Not just as authors but as subjects.

For instance:

• Librarian Michael Gorman’s blog entries are followed by Danah Boyd’s response.
• Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education (the college-focused equivalent of the NYT), Brock Read blogs about Thomas Mann’s on an apparently simplistic dichotomy based on human librarians and online resources.
• Radio Open Source did shows on libraries and classification systems, among other librarian-friendly topics.
• Reference librarian and fellow Concordian Olivier Charbonneau has been blogging (in French) actively about online copyright.
• Even I have been mentioning librarians right here on my main blog.

I know the connection between libraries and blogging is pretty obvious and information scientists are as blogworthy as anyone can get. So it’s probably just that I notice librarian blogging more, these days. Thing is, on the Web, perception is worth a lot, however accurate it may be.

Students≠Products

Ranking systems for universities and colleges are a rich topic for discussion, especially in the United States. Read my previous blog posts on the subject here and here for my pretty non-radical take.

For an illuminating approach to the topic, from a very adept source

Tenured Radical: Who’s On First? College Ranking Systems

Ranking and assessment assume that a college or a university is good when it can promise, in four years, to turn out a student who is a certain kind of well-functioning product. But students are not products: they are people who are evolving into citizens, workers and neighbors. Thus, students and their parents should not be comparing schools to each other. The correct comparison is to match up what the school offers with what the student herself thinks she wants. (Emphasis mine)

Despite the U.S.-centric perspective, this is one of the most blogworthy statements one could make about the disconnect between rankings and learning.

Courses on Blogging and More (Montreal)

Montreal blogger extraordinaire Hugh McGuire (also the founder of LibriVox) is looking for people to give courses on diverse online activities, at the Atwater Library.

hughmcguire.net · wanna give courses on blogging (etc)?

Sounds very interesting and 15$/hour is reasonable for this kind of gig. Wish I had time to do this. Perfect community-outreach project for teaching geeks.