Mathom Houser

Previously on CPD23…

Thing 1

http://mathomhouser.com/2011/06/24/cpd23-thing-1/

CPD23 Thing 2 is to ‘investigate some other blogs’:

http://cpd23.blogspot.com/2011/06/thing-2-investigate-some-other-blogs.html

I went to CPD23’s list of participating blogs here: http://www.delicious.com/cpd23/ . At the time of writing, there are 594 registered blogs. This is too many for me to read in one lifetime. I used the following tags to narrow my search to people in the same field (HE) and collection of fields (or ‘Britain’ as it is known):  ‘HE/university/college’ and ‘UK’. I considered adding another limit of ‘Wales’, but decided that I was already being frightfully reactionary in using geographic limits at all.

I scanned down the resulting list of 138 blogs and clicked on the ones that jumped out at me. If your blog title is just a variation on your name, or ‘cpd23’, or ‘why am I doing this?’, I’m probably not going to look at it. ;)

The Body in the Library

http://thebodyinthelibrary.wordpress.com/

Letty has correctly chosen the same blog platform as me, www.wordpress.com . She says she has used Blogger for other 23 thingery in the past, so hopefully I can get some tips on whether I made the right decision. Letty is already a proper librarian, at Cambridge no less, and is looking to use cpd to enhance her chartership.

Letty uses a photo of an eclipse as her avatar, which presumably is taken from Earth, and so shows our moon, which leads us seamlessly onto…

Girl in the Moon

http://maedchenimmond.blogspot.com/

My face looks like the moon, so Katie’s blog title spoke to me. Katie is part of cpd23 organising team, so I’d expect her blog to be a thing of beauty, which it is. She has illustrated her blog posts with carefully attributed images taken from Flickr: this is something I hadn’t thought of and will now do myself. It turns out that Katie knows my wife via Twitter, and has linked to her blog, which is also part of the CPD23 whatsit:  http://alisonharvey.blogspot.com/ . She also knits, which is another point in her favour.

Katie is the Girl in the Moon, which is a thing in the universe, which again leads smoothly to…

Libraries, the universe and everything

http://lyndseygoddard.blogspot.com/

You can’t go wrong with a Douglas Adams reference, especially if you want to catch my beady little eye. Lyndsey (I’m guessing from the URL here: she doesn’t provide  an ‘author’ widget) says she has just entered the world of Twitter, but already has a fairly established full blog. It’s not just libraries, there is love (her wedding), death (hamster) and tears (MA Information and Library Management). Caution: blog is pink.

Lyndsey lists one of her favourite books as The Body in the Library, which would link nicely to the first blog I looked at, but unfortunately must link to the next blog, which is…

Sian’s CPD23 2011

http://sianscpd23.blogspot.com/

Now, I did say I wasn’t going to be tempted by any blogs that are named after their author, or CPD23, and this one has both. However, I work with someone called Sian, who recently got onto the Twitter, so I thought this might be she. It isn’t. However, my colleague and fellow CPDer Gemma (http://www.fatfrocks.com/) is already following her, so there’s lovely.

This Sian works in the South East, I’m not sure of where, and has a stone painted as a cat for an avatar. She likes making ‘amigurumi’ in her spare time, which I’m not convinced is a real thing, so bear with me while I Google it.

Okay, amigurumi is the art of crocheting palm-sized cuddly toy things. Sian, you should get in touch with Katie (http://maedchenimmond.blogspot.com/) and Mrs. Mathom Houser (http://alisonharvey.blogspot.com/) to discuss this bizarre practice. I’d like to see some photos of your monstrous knitted brood: please post!

This thing’s writing itself. What are amigurumi? Monsters. What are monsters? Deadly. What else is deadly?…

World’s Deadliest Librarian

http://worldsdeadliestlibrarian.blogspot.com/

I would like to assume that World’s Deadliest Librarian has never been called on to prove her claim, but on the basis that she is anonymous, and appears from her avatar to be a giant cat, I wouldn’t be so sure. She seems to be up to date on the latest Twitter panflashes (#cliquegate) and has already posted handy tips on how to do clever stuff with her blog, so I’m definitely going to be following this murderous moggy, and not just because I’m scared of her.

Speaking of things I’m scared of, ‘that is not dead which can eternal lie’…

Blog of Chuukaku

http://www.chuukaku.com/blog/

My unconscious misread ‘Chuukaku’ as ‘Cthulhu’, which earns a red flag on my geekometer. The word is apparently a Japanese term approximating ‘nucleus’ (http://www.chuukaku.com/2007/11/chuu-what-dot-com.html), so nothing to do with Lovecraft at all. The author, Katie, has a very professional looking blog that links out to all sorts of stuff about her professional history, and very little in the way of knitted animals etc. In fact, I feel like a heel even including her on this pseudo-randomized list, give the tenor of her blog. It goes to show that asking people to blog about their work can lead to anything, from the straight-laced to the decidedly bonkers. But that’s why I love libraries. Maybe I need to add my own list of qualifications to my blog? Might help.

I’m coming to the end of this run-down now, a little bit older, and a little bit wiser. Just like a certain furry-footed wanderer I can think think of…

The Hobbit Hole

http://intothehobbithole.blogspot.com/

I hope nobody thought I was calling Annie furry-footed. Read my blog’s Terms of Use (http://mathomhouser.com/about/termsofuse/): no harm intended! Although of course, furry feet are a mark of distinction amongst hobbitry, so should be worn with pride. Annie is on the organising team for CPD23 so can presumably nuke my blog from the air if this isn’t the case. She is interested in books, music, and cooking, so is likely a fairly low-temperature frood and won’t mind. There’s lots of stuff on her blog for new professionals and not-quite-yet professionals, so worth a look.

And from The Hobbit Hole, it’s only a short walk to my own corner of the Shire, The Mathom House. So, gentle reader, as I add these curiosities to the shelves, I take a moment to reflect on what I’ve found during Thing 2. Looking forward to Thing 3.