Thing #25: Bloggers' Toolkit

These are the gadgets/widgets that I added: Snow Effect (just for wintry fun), a blogroll, a link list and a video bar. (I have some additional widgets that I added in previous go-round, on 23 Things.)

Widgets I rejected for the time being -- but may add later -- are the poll (because I don't feel I have enough traffic yet and am not sure what I'd poll people on) and the slideshow (this is a good one, but I don't have enough photos yet of the library.)

Not sure how much time I spent on this, as I did it in little bits while at the reference desk. I spent a fair amount of time reading about the blog tools and watching the tutorials, but it didn't take long at all to set up my widgets. Mainly, I used the ones that come with Blogger, and that made it really quick and easy.

Thing #24: Refresh Your Blog

It's good to be back! In answer to the blog prompts... As you can see, I haven't blogged on this particular site since we left off with Thing 23. However, I have blogged elsewhere. I belong to a writing group, and we organized a group blog recently, where we take turns posting essays -- little "slice-of-life" pieces. Also, at our college, we were each given individual blog accounts via WordPress at the beginning of the academic year. My librarian colleague and I are posting together with a Library blog. We're using it to post New Books, research tips, recommended Web sites, and announcements. There's a widget for the blog on our Library home page.

I enjoy the ease of blogging; I like that it's a way to get your words out to the public in an attractive format, yet it's informal enough that you don't feel constrained by having to write perfectly (plus, you can always edit.) It's so much nicer to get library news and tidbits out via a blog than to bombard everyone's email boxes with a general mailing or use up resources by publishing paper newsletters.

I have been reading lots of blogs over the past year: news blogs, like Huffington Post during the election season, blogs put up by friends who are writers, and also some of the popular library blogs, which I've added to my blog-roll, like Information Wants to Be Free.

I occasionally comment on others' blogs, as time permits.