Wed 18 Jul 2007
My blog, and welcome to it.
Posted by Mark under Blogging
I’ve been thinking for several days about what momentous statement I should make in this first posting. I’ve decided that I really can’t make one. Actually, the fact that this is the first blog by a president of MLA is probably its own statement.
That’s not to say that past presidents haven’t communicated with our members. Since 2001, MLA presidents have had web pages on MLANET: Carol Jenkins, Linda Watson, Pat Thibodeau, Joanne Marshall, M.J. Tooey, and Jean Shipman all had pages. These pages usually included their inaugural address, their priorities, and updates from their travels.
Before web pages, MLA presidents had a “President’s Page” in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association. This was usually a one or two page editorial or commentary on the Association or the profession. This practice stopped in 1993. However, we continue to have the “President’s Page” in the July issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association, where the new president is introduced to the membership by a colleague. I was lucky enough to have my friend and mentor Bob Braude write my bio.
So I have this new toy. What do I do with it? Like my predecessors, I will probably write about my travels and adventures. I’ll also be playing around with WordPress plugins for photos and other cool things. But I hope that this form of communication can be more than reportage. Can we actually develop some kind of dialog? This is as new to me as it is to you. I want to hear from the MLA membership. What do you want in a blog by the MLA president?
Remember: play nice, and no hitting.
6 Responses to “ My blog, and welcome to it. ”
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July 20th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Congratulations, Mark, on moving us forward into a new communication medium!
July 24th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Mark — Thanks for the blog. I never remembered to check the MLA President’s web page, but since new stuff on yours’ll come to my Bloglines, it’ll be easy to keep up with your commmunications. Great step forward — here’s hoping blogging among HS librarians becomes as common as e-mail!
July 24th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
You could set up specific citation folders on topics near and dear to your priorities, like I do with the pull down list on my surgery blog. Also, don’t forget to add gvisit and statcounter to track your blog usage.
July 26th, 2007 at 11:58 am
This is such a great idea, Mark! Although, personally, I think blogs are all the pressure of writing a really great Christmas newsletter 365 days a year. Good luck with that!
I’ve added you to my feeds in Firefox, so I can easily keep up to date with your new posts.
Here’s how others can do this (if you’ve never tried it, it’s so easy).
While in Firefox, click on the Add RSS logo on the right (under Subscriptions), select the Bookmarks Toolbar folder, then click on the Subscribe Now button. You may have to go into Bookmarks/Organize Bookmarks to click and drag the blog folder to the top of the Bookmarks Toolbar folder list.
If you want illustrations of this, see http://hsclibrary.uchsc.edu/handouts/class-handouts/firefox.pdf on my library’s handouts website.
July 26th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
It would be a nice vehicle for testing our assumptions about bloggers and MLA. For example, will you be planning to blog the 08 meeting? Does that change your thoughts about the meeting and how it should progress.
July 27th, 2007 at 8:52 am
I would love to see you use the blog for both discussion of the “big issues” facing medical librarianship and how we can address them, as well as creating more transparency in terms of discussing higher level MLA activities and priorities. Welcome to the blogosphere!