My name is Faith Rice-Mills and, though I have been teaching Spanish for the past six years, I will soon be starting a new job as a librarian at Dickinson High School in Dickinson, Texas. Though I will miss some parts about being a Spanish teacher, I am pretty excited about working with books all the time.
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| This is where I will be working! |
So, obviously, I'm blogging right now. Blogging, blogging, blogging. Now, before you skeptics turn away and think, "Oh, not another one," let's stop and consider the various uses of blogs and how, in this new technology era, we need them. I will take a moment to insert a short disclaimer here: I am going to explain the uses of blogs in my personal and professional life. However, I hope that you will be able to apply them.
I. Blogs in the library
As librarians, we are pretty much in charge of disseminating information to our schools and districts. If this is the case, I believe that we should utilize free blogs in order to share information about our respective libraries resources, events that are going on in the library, and to communicate ideas with other librarians. Two librarian's blogs that I really like are Buffy Hamilton's blog, The Unquiet Librarian and, for middle and high school librarians, Teen Librarian's Toolbox.
Also, book bloggers have certainly found a place in the world in the last five or so years. In order for librarians to stock their libraries with books that kids will actually read. Of course, there are thousands of book bloggers, so it may take some time to find one with credibility. I will start you our with suggestions of some that I like. Again, these are for young adult readers, but I will be happy to look into elementary school level bloggers if there are requests.
Willing to See Less
Xpresso Reads
Reading the Days Away
Once Upon A Twilight
Steph's Book Corner
II. Blogs for business
For those pursuing the American dream, and trying to turn their hobbies into a business, free blogs are a great way to advertise their business ventures. I am going to use myself and my husband as an example in this case. Though I will be working as a librarian next year, I moonlight as a writer. I self-published my first book, Identified: The Maya Price Story, on December 3, 2012. Being that I am a self-published writer, I need all the free advertising I can get. For that reason, I use a Wordpress blog that functions as my website. I use it to post news about my book, excerpts from my novels, short stories I've written as well as a place to include a myriad of other information. If I've sparked your interest, you can visit my blog here. My husband, on the other hand, is a teacher moonlighting as a fisherman. He has recently started blogging about fishing, which has resulted in a little bit of business for him. Again, since this is a new venture for him, he needs to utilize a free blog. He also uses a Wordpress blog and you can read all about his fishing activities here.
III. Blogs for fun!
Though we all have our nine to five jobs, many of us have a a variety of hobbies and interests. For this reason, we will read blogs that motivate us to work out, organize our closets, or we will read them just because they make us laugh. Here are a few that I like to read in order to feed my procrastination habits.
For fashion advice: What I Wore
For giggles: People I Want to Punch in the Throat
For fitness (and for nerds): Nerd Fitness
While neither writing nor reading blogposts is something that I do on a daily basis, I think knowing how to navigate and utilize blogger tools is almost essential in order to educate, promote products and share information.
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