Awards

[Laurie Bridges]

I see that librarian bloggers do have a part in edublogger awards, but I was wondering if ALA ever gives out blogging awards? Seems to me that blogs are not going anywhere (quite the opposite) and I was thinking ALA should start recognizing some of the outstanding bloggers.

Any ideas on how to make this happen?

[RefLibrarian]

I agree that having ALA or other professional library associations give out blog awards would be great - especially if they have lots of categories for awards.

[RefLibrarian]

Well, other possibilities could be for librarian blogs on marketing, gaming, young adult services, outreach, children's services, adult services, cataloging, technology training, administration (leadership and management), general library2.0, social networking, book reviews, library digital collections or ebooks, library news, open source and new software, etc. There are more niche library blogs every day.

[RefLibrarian]

I realize that this idea would take a lot of thinking and discussion. There are many different possibilities that could work. As you mentioned the different divisions could create their own awards. Of course, authorized library blogs would be in separate categories from personal blogs. The divisions could decide whether or not they want to separate out the group authored blogs from the single-authored blogs.

Another possibility would be to suggest the idea of awards to a respected journal (like Library Journal), to an organization like Webjunction, or to a major company like SirsiDynix. The benefit of these organizations is that they may have less bureaucracy and can implement programs faster.

As you mentioned, there are many niches and it would not be possible to have awards for each one. However, the most popular niches could be covered and there could be a method for suggesting the addition of new categories, as new topics become popular over time. Perhaps an easy way to address niche blogs would be to have one general category for blogs that focus on a single topic or a narrow range of topics. Another category could be “best new blogs”.

I think that having some sort of library blogging awards or even “recommended new blogs” would encourage librarians to create blogs and would help good new bloggers to find an audience. To me, blogs have many benefits over library journals. Blogs can communicate with many more people - they are free, convenient, and more up-to-date. Blogs also encourage interaction and collaboration between librarians, something that is missing from journal articles.

[RefLibrarian]

I think that would be a great idea! LITA is definitely the right place to suggest this idea.