Writing: The year ahead

I think I need to tidy my desk, because I’ve got a lot to work on in the coming months. How did I end up having to write two potential conference papers?

The first paper I’m hoping to write is on blogging and librarianship. My thesis is that blogging is a great way for librarians to connect with each other, and to create and support their professional communities. (Is it okay to post the abstract you submitted for a conference, when your submission hasn’t been accepted yet, or should the conference in question have the sole rights to publicising it, assuming they accept it?) I’m going to have to engage in a lot of email and blog conversations with a lot of librarians to get some supporting data – I’ve already got some, but I’d love to record the thoughts and experiences of librarian bloggers as well. I’ll be contacting all the librarians I know read this blog (all five of you*! 🙂 ) and will be contacting others as well.

Luckily my colleague JW has agreed to work with me on the second paper, which is going to focus on our library’s experience of using an internal wiki. It sounds deceptively easy – just record what we’ve done – but I’m sure it’s going to be complicated by all the other demands on our time, and the fact that our experience with wikis continues to unfold as we speak…

I’ve rashly promised The Boss that even if these papers don’t get accepted for the ALIA conference in September, I’ll work on them, maybe try a different conference or even aim for journal publication.

*That is, Kit, Fiona, Ivan, Morgan, and Laura. If you are a librarian who blogs and we haven’t ‘met’ yet, please feel free to leave a comment, or email me at flexnib @ gmail… com (please remove the spaces and superfluous dots).

Categories: librarianship, blogging, wiki, writing