PLN - Alaska Libraries and Librarians

Living and working in Alaska offers unique opportunities and uncommon challenges.  Alaskan librarians in general are a tight knit group of talented caring professionals. The sources under this heading help me to keep up with regional issues and find out what is happening up the street at the state library.

Just this week the AkLA (Alaska Library Association) started a google doc for librarians and library staffers to share their various social media nicknames and sites.

I subscribe to the statewide and local chapter listservs "AKLA List" and "juneaulis​t".

I read the Alaskan Librarian Blog written by Daniel Cornwall. This blog covers some library topics and other topics of local interest. When Daniel published a series of posts about our state's specific databases, he agreed to my request to write a guest column for his blog.

Alaska Library and Librarian Twitter feeds that I follow:



Carissa Cotta ‏@carissacotta
A.K. Marshall @jitterymoose
valarie kingsland‏ @valarie907
Daniel Cornwall‏  @DanielCornwall
Morgester‏ @Morgester
jonas lamb‏  @shack_poet
Coral Sheldon-Hess  @web_librarian
Christie Ericson‏  @aknorsk
Freya Anderson‏ @libkitty
AkLA‏ @AKLibraryAssoc
Egan Library‏ @EganLibrary
Alaska State Library‏ @AKStateLibrary

PLN - Reader's Advisory

Working the public service desk 20 hours a week, reader's advisory is important part of my job. To keep current with my reading recommendations I've developed  a fairly robust set of resources, including:

 

In the stacks - weekly newspaper article written by JPL staffer Kathy Ward
The ABC Book Reviews: A Beth and Cari Production- monthly podcast
Goodreads- see my current reading list on the sidebar
Literari Leigh - weekly book review blog post by the Readers Advisory Librarian at Kenton County Public Library (where I worked from 2008-2010).

AudioFile Magazine @AudioFileMag
Books OnTheKnob @BooksOnTheKnob
NoveListRA @NoveListRA


In addition, I look for opportunities to expand my personal reader's advisory knowledge base when selecting classes and working on class assignments. For example in my LIBR 202 class I wrote a paper comparing two major RA databases Novelist and Reader's Advisory Online. In my LIBR 281 class I wrote the Learning 2.0 Module for Goodreads.

PLN - Infopeople: thought provoking podcasts

I included the infopeople podcast and blog in my PLN because they often discuss the future of libraries and out of the box approaches to library services and issues. For example, I'm a slow reader and I was especially intrigued by their discussion of customizable loan periods and circulation statistics.

@infotweets