All librarians should have a Book Blog

Saturday, June 04, 2005

All librarians should have a Book Blog

I've been maintaining a "BookBlog" (i.e. a blog on books) for almost a year now, over at Raw Notes. The reason for keeping a reading journal was simple: I can't remember all that I've read. And sometimes, I find myself wanting to recommend a title but unable to cite it.

Prior to the blog, I've been keeping a record of titles that I've read (it lasted for about 10 months 'cos I lost the journal...). Unless Blogger.com shuts down, I'd have my reviews quite permanently. Plus searchable online.

After I started keeping records, I realised its value went beyond just recalling the titles. It was useful to analyse what I've read, just to see if I've expanded my reading interests. I'm pretty sure 10 years from now, I'd appreciate a record of this phase in my life via the books read.

Wished I'd kept a record since the day I started reading in Primary School. Well, better now than never.

I don't always blog each book that I've read. When I post, I try to go beyond listing the titles only, but I don't want to write a book review per se. The reason for naming the blog "Raw Notes" was because I only want to post notes (e.g. might not be complete sentences), like the scribblings in the margins of my school textbooks. But inevitably, I always end up writing longer... it's the pressure of writing for the web, I tell you.

If I were a teacher, I'd certainly do an experiment to see if a student's motivation for improving their writing increased if they blogged. I've certainly been urging for librarians to blog on what they've read. It's an incentive to write better, if nothing else.

The bookcover images link to Amazon.com, to which I've signed up as an Associate Member. I signed up not to earn referral fees (that would be nice of course) but because I wanted to link readers to the bells and whistles that Amazon.com provides (the content pages, previews, reviews etc).

For my recent posts for the last few months, I've included direct links to the NLB catalogue (here's how you do it).

Here's a list of the stuff posted for May 05: