WEEK 2 INTRODUCTION TO BLOGS

More than any of the others I really like the Library of Congress blog. Each time I check it out there is always something new that's worthy of investigation and that draws me in. It's style appears to be informal but also informative I come away having learnt something new each time (and probably wanting to spend longer than I should checking it out).





I do have one problem however, about two weeks ago I found a link on LC's blog to James Gurney the author of the popular Dinotopia books. I had wanted to include the link but have since been unable to find it again on the LC blog. I have tried searching the blog under his name but did not find any matches. Has anyone else had this problem ?





The gist of the story was that in return for speaking at LC James Gurney as a visiting author was offered the opportunity of viewing items in the collection that were of interest to him and he chose 19th century explorers journals. His excitment for the material was infectious and people responded to this by making suggestions of what they themselves would wish to view such as items on Egyptology, exotic animals etc. The impression I got is that people saw the library in a very different light.





I thought perhaps there was an opportunity here for our library to do something similar. To perhaps offer a peek at some of the items in our collection to people who either speak at the library or maybe people with a media profile who could then blog about a particular aspect of the collection that interested them. They would each have their own following maybe with differing demographics and this could offer a way of opening the collection to a wider audience.





James Gurney own website is located at http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2007/09/library-of-congress.html