explodedlibrary.info

New blogging, new rules

One of the other things which contributed to the end of my blogging last time was a stifling self-censorship. It was a continual monkey on my back and made me second guess everything I wrote. I've been thinking about how I'm going to deal with it this time around. Because if anything, I feel that the imperative for self-censorship is even stronger now

Due to where I am working, I am bound by certain rules which are directly relevant to my blogging and other social media activity. It is safer if I do not even name these rules here, just out of caution that any comment on them may be viewed as critical. This post is not a critique by me of these rules. I accept that these rules apply and I just considering how I can best comply with them.

Please note that even if you have a notion of what rules I am referring to, do not to mention them in any comments on this blog. If there is any way of interpreting your comment as being critical of these rules, I am obligated to delete the comment, or I may be viewed as endorsing the criticism.

You may be wondering, is there any point blogging in this environment? Is everything going to be so sanitised that the only topics I can safely discuss is music and my favourite bands, so long as this music is not too controversial?

To be honest, it would easier and safer for me not to blog in this environment. I have decided it is precisely because of these difficulties, that it has become even more important for me to persist.

Sometimes I'll need to be more vague than I would like to. At other times, I may discuss issues at a fairly high level, despite my preference getting into the nitty gritty details. There will be topics when I will need to try to be neutral to a fault, and not express my own passionately held views. When I blogged before, I set various rules for myself. In the name of self-preservation, all of these rules are going out the window.

Is it all going to be worth it? I hope so. I think that there are still a lot of library and information issues which I can discuss in this environment.

Also, I have developed a safety valve for the words which I feel could problematic. Instead of self-censoring and just not writing them, which tends to just shut down my whole creative process, I am now writing them privately. I hope that one day, the environment may change  and I will be able to publish them. Alternatively, when I change jobs or retire, it's possible that I may be able to publish them then.

I am also open to sharing the full posts on a one-to-one basis via encrypted channels. If you would like to see the non-published version of this post, please email me at [email protected] - except with explodedlibrary in the first part of the address.

I don't want to over-dramatize and over-sell the unpublished content. There are various levels of constraints which bind me. The unpublished blog content is just my response to the most external layer of these constraints, but I still bound by deeper constraints, no matter what format I use. To use a canine analogy: It's not as if I'm unleashed in the unpublished versions of posts, but I'm on a nice extended and retractable leash, not on a short leash.

For what may be obvious reasons, I hope that this is the first and only I will address this issue. I just thought that it was important to draw a big line to separate my current blogging from my past blogging.

 

 

Return of the blog roll

I've just updated my blog design and have changed a few elements, such as adding a new blog roll.
It seems like years since I've ever heard this word said or written, but I want to experiment with bringing it back - albeit slightly differently from how I did things before.

These days, a librarian type blog which is active and has posted within the last year or so is kind of special. I want to do my little bit to help these blogs become known and read. These days we need to help each other out.

I don't want a massive blog roll which overwhelms the layout of this blog, and I don't want it to become a chore to maintain it or feel that it needs to be complete. So instead I want to have a short blog roll of a dozen so, and every so often I'll change it, to highlight different active blogs.

restart

I'm back working in libraries again. It wasn't something which I expected, but an unexpected conjunction of events happened, and here I am!

Absence has made the heart grow fonder. I'm very happy about this change.

In the years before I suspended my blog in 2013, the blog seemed like a chore. It was difficult maintaining a blog about libraries and related issues when I didn't work in a library. Now four and a half years have passed, and so many things are different. I want to write about all sorts of things, including what things are different and what things haven't changed.

There was a time when I was convinced that social media such as Twitter and Facebook were sucking the life out of blogging, especially in terms of readers - and the time and attention span which readers had for blogs. Not to mention my own time and attention span and energy as a writer. Although I think that all this did happen to a certain extent, that's not the only thing that has happened. I would like to think that longer form social media has reached its low water mark, and that things can get better from here.

I even feel more optimistic about the future of working in libraries than I did before. I am currently working in the small library of a government department - the sector known as special libraries. While I was away from libraries, there were some very bad years. I'm not so naïve as to think that this time of contraction is completely over. And I wonder, are special libraries now called special libraries because there are hardly any of us left? Despite all of that, in my own recent personal experience at work, I see more and more people valuing what librarians and libraries can do.

I would like to expand on all of these things in future posts. Not to mention other little things like updating how this blog looks and other design elements.

I restart this blog with no promises to keep to a particular schedule. That said, to maintain something like this completely in my free time will involve recreating some positive habits. Initially I hope to publish weekly, but to write more frequently than that - to give time to draft, edit and tweak various posts.

My very first incarnation as a blogger was to be quite ranty. These days, any person (or bot) is capable of ranting on Twitter or Facebook or Reddit. It's nothing special. So now I'd prefer to be a little more considered.

One aspect of this blog is going to be deliberately old school. I will continue using the same publishing platform I used for most of this blog's existence. On the other hand, I also plan to cross publish this on Medium. I like the possibilities it offers for reaching new readers and interacting with existing ones.