Also did I mention that I’m a bit of a potty mouth?

Then Library Day in the Life Round 4 happened, and I used Twitter for most of the week because I didn’t have a lot of time to blog properly. I gained some extra followers from the library community at large – I was pretty surprised. After awhile, though, I realized that this is not professionally prudent. Now, I also feel the need, as so many others have, to separate personal from professional in the realm of social media. Why? I want people who follow me because we’re in the same profession to have a stream of relevant information (not that mine is the best professional Twitter feed ever) but also spare them the mundane facts of everyday life. Like what I had for breakfast, where I’ll be for the afternoon, etc. Also, I want to be able to drop the occasional F-bomb or talk about the strange colour of my pee post-ingestion of B50 complex vitamins if I feel so inclined without worrying about being viewed as immature or unprofessional (although sometimes I am both ) on a day to day basis.

The Plan: Slowly but surely starting up my “official” library Twitter feed ( @garz4lib, bien sur!). Then I’m probably going to lock up my personal feed because you never know when Library of Congress is watching.

One of my original misgivings about blogging in general is that it seems sort of narcissistic to assume that I have anything more to say about a single topic than anyone else and who really cares? Does anyone really see my posts anyway? Like Henry Rollins says (about message boards, not about blogging) “putting more content on the Internet, like we need more of THAT.” Am I just putting more content on the Internet that our children need to slog through finding their little nuggets of information in this monstrous amorphous heaving mass of electro-data?

Not to say that I think all blogging is a waste, some people are doing it well – the academic bloggers and library gurus… “Joe the Blogger,” too. After reading a blog about the “canon of academic blogging” somewhere I became horribly insecure about self-publishing – what if it doesn’t sound intelligent enough? I guess it’s time to restate my purpose, which is to provide support to those who, like me, have found themselves in a position for which they’re not quite prepared; to reassure them that it’s okay… and to share resources, thoughts, etc. with people, librarians, parents, what-have you, on the way. Canon be damned!

And it looks like…people are looking, so maybe I’m doing some good?