Thursday 23 July 2009

Because.....

Okay, the person who asked me has now come back to me after reading my previous post and she doesn't want to know why I blog (thank God!), but wanted to ask the benefits of blogging for chartership. Now that is much easier to answer. I'll give you my story:


When I started my Chartership (ages ago!) I was struggling to write notes and my thoughts would be all over the place which gave me a setback of 6 months. Another thing that was bothering me was never understanding how to be relective, the right way. Sure I would think and look back at many things I had learnt, but I never managed to get used to reflective writing until I started writing this blog.

I started noticing blogs while working on enquiries at work and one day found a blog by one of my previous uniy friend in Danish on the development of her work at a children's library in Copenhagen.
In her blog she would write anything and everything she felt the need to share about her work and it was a very interesting read, a bit like reading someones diary, except that this one was work related so I could actually make some use of it too!

My blog became my tool to motivate me as the blog made me visible in the public. To begin with I never imagined anyone would ever stumble across it! But slowly I began to understand that there are actually people reading my silly constructions of words.

You need to keep a blog up to date which forced me to think of my chartership more often than I would have normally. You would think that this should have made me complete my Chartership much quicker, it probably should have, but the truth is that the blog opened up my world to so many new tools to try, which distracted me, but I was distraction in a good way :)

My blog:

- has made my thoughts publicly accessible, making me think twice about what I do at work
- has given me dicipline with regards to Chartership
- has given me a place to practice reflective thinking
- gives me the freedom to whatever I choose to write about, no rules and restrictions
- has introduced me to new web technology which I left behind when completing my studies
back in 2005 and has brought me up to date once again.
- has become my notebook; Instead of writing down my notes and thoughts for myself on a
sheet only I can see, I am doing it in front of others and getting feedback on my thoughts at the
same time
- is also a useful place to let off steam, as it is my personal blog, it is all about me

I am hoping this will be useful to other bloggers or soon to be bloggers as well. Blogging has really worked out well for me, even though I am not much of a writer and English is not even my first language. Getting your thoughts out in public is a different thing altogether, you don't have to have a conversation with yourself any more, it's much easier to blog and become part of a wider community that does not exist elsewhere.

Moreover, I am the only one in my department who blogs which means that if this is something my organisation today or in future will be doing I will at least have some advantage.

I know it is much more valuable and looks much better to have your article published in a LIS magazine but that isn't me, I'm not really a writer, I am just a web user librarian who wants to contribute to online content :)

Tuesday 21 July 2009

The blog

I am almost at the final states of my chartership now. I must admit the confusing part is not over yet, but I won't go into that right now.

The other day I was asked why I blog and why do I write a blog about my chartership?
It almost sounded as if it was a strange thing to do, as if it is too boring to read and write about!

It made me wonder.

Is my blog just a self created tool that I use to talk about my chartership for my own sake or do is there a greater meaning?

Give me a couple of days and I will get back to you on this one.......