Category: GLAM Blog Club

On the first of every month we announce a new theme, and GLAM bloggers write a post inspired by the theme. Some take a literal approach, whilst others come up with surprising and creative interpretations. GLAM Blog Club is designed to provide you with a monthly inspiration so that you always has “something to blog about” – we hope it provides you with a little encouragement to blog more often about GLAM. Australasian GLAM bloggers are also encouraged to register your blogs with Aus GLAM Blogs.

GLAM Blog Club September – Top 5 ‘Favourite’

My, my… it’s September already. Top 5 ‘Weird’ for August turned out to be strangely fitting, eh?

Although there isn’t really a huge amount of top 5’s there is certainly enough weird and delightful blog treats to go around. But if you want a straight up wild and weird top 5 of Museum finds, then check out Nik’s post. It’s a little bit freaky.

If you want to go exploring the oddest corners of the internet, however… maybe try these:

Do you know what Software Gardening is? Or Inventive Robots?
Did you know about the Untitled Drawing Club and virtual tours around the world?
Maybe you can commiserate with a little PhD Loopy La-Las, or work how the who and why of a digitally dexterous workforce and the accompanying copyright?
Did you want a little bit of weird historical fact about Matilda of England and Vera Deakin?
What is the best way to make public spaces successful (and not weird at all)?
What will libraries look like in a world Post COVID (a prospect that is appearing to be a little weirder everyday), as well as a museum streaming service (oh la la!)?
Last, but not least, some W.E.I.R.D steps to a greener library…

Through September the theme is top 5 ‘Favourite’

It’s spring- let’s spread a little bit of joy where we can!

2 September 2021
GLAM Blog Club August – Top five ‘weird’

Last month’s theme was top 5 ‘big’. Anne, a member of ALIA Sustainable Libraries Group, blogged Top 5 things you didn’t know you could recycle – some big tips here for going plastic free and recycling. Top 5 Big Library Ideas in History Hugh takes a walk through history with a critical eye at the role of libraries. Tamara shared Top 5 ‘Big’: Things I Wish Past Me Had Known, useful career tips for archivists, records managers, and information managers. Thanks to everyone who blogged in July.

This month’s theme is top 5 ‘weird’. What’s your list of top 5 weirdest items in a GLAM collection? What’s your top 5 weirdest research enquiries you’ve received? Top 5 weirdest books you’ve catalogued? Top 5 weirdest GLAM institutions in the world? We can’t wait to read this month’s blogs.

Please tag your post GLAM Blog Club, and use #GLAMBlogClub on social media. If you haven’t already, please register your blog at glamblogs.newcardigan.org.

1 August 2021
GLAM Blog Club July – Top five ‘big’

As the weather continues to get cooler now is the perfect time to rug up, enjoy a hot beverage, and dust off that blog. June’s theme was exuberance and with #blogjune we’ve had an influx of more posts than usual. Flexnib shared their musings and drawings. The Library Duck shared their dispatches while in quarantine. Graeme took us on some cycling adventures and got a brand new car. Kathryn fired up her blog again with tales from academia, her big move, some lovely succulents, and an amazing new chair. Snail talked about the importance of finding time to engage, and made the admission (that I can relate to) that he doesn’t read academic papers. Danielle discussed being a tech librarian and introduced me to the term “context switching.” Matt shared some interviews and talked about thinking with your non-dominant hand. Alissa fulfills an exciting new dream while reflecting on the last few years of her career. Niamh delves into an investigation about how many of her thesis references about open access are paywalled. Bibliotheque Bound discussed their love of musicals, library leadership, diversity and labels, as well as many other topics. Inger talked about the project finishing mindset. Ellen took us on a journey through the Flinders Street Station Ballroom. Rebecca visited the new Home of the Arts (HOTA) Gallery. Lynda thought about how COVID is impacting the Australian GLAM sector, and what the sector learned and is learning from the pandemic. And finally, the ALIA Sustainable Libraries Group shared four reasons to feel exuberance about the future.

This month we’re trying something a little different with our GLAM Blog Club theme – ‘top five – big.’ We want you to mix things up by listing your top five. It could be your top five big buildings in GLAM. The top five big goals you have for your career. Or the top five big things that have changed in your workplace this year. How you interpret it is up to you, but have fun with it. You can blog about whatever you want regardless of if it’s on theme.

Don’t forget to tag your post GLAM Blog Club, and use #GLAMBlogClub when sharing your blog on social media. Please register your blog if you haven’t already, at glamblogs.newcardigan.org

1 July 2021
GLAM Blog Club June – Exuberance

May’s theme was snap! Snap! It’s almost a word that cannot be separated from an exclamation mark! Katalin explores recycling and e-waste ideas for GLAM in Ideas to make you shout “SNAP!”

The theme for June is exuberance. Another word that isn’t easily separated from an exclamation mark! Excitement! Energy! Youthful exuberance! How will you interpret this theme?! Are you exuberant about the collections you work with? What excites you about your job? Is there a lot of youthful exuberance in your workplace? We look forward to reading your blogs.

Don’t forget to tag your post GLAM Blog Club, and use #GLAMBlogClub when sharing your blog on social media. Please register your blog, if you haven’t already, at glamblogs.newcardigan.org. Happy blogging!

1 June 2021
GLAM Blog Club May – Snap

In April we lowered the Jolly Roger and launched our new GLAM Blog Club theme, Obsession. Our bloggers rose to the challenge.

Lynda Kelly kicked off the month with a quick #ThrowbackThursday post revisiting a study conducted at the Australian Museum with very young audiences. The ALIA Sustainable Libaries group, and yours truly both wrote about the Easter break, albeit in different ways. Alisa shared a thoughtful post about making a job change voluntarily as her life priorities have changed, Andrew wrote about the dangers of letting career planning become an obsession, whilst Danielle completed her two-part series on what to do if the job search isn’t voluntary.

Nicole shared some news: if you hurry, you can make it to the Textiles in Bloom exhibition at Villa Alba in the Melbourne suburb of Kew this weekend. Kate wrote up some great notes from the Recordkeeping Roundtable session on theory, models and strategies for today’s workplace, whilst Barbara shared reflections on the same session.

Alissa used to be obsessed with Twitter, but now finds it’s too noisy and anxiety-inducing. Nikki’s deafness (or rather, the way it is often not accommodated) often leads her to feel the same way in social spaces – she shared some ways you can help to reduce “deaf anxiety”. Danielle returned to the office after 400 days of WFH, and also felt a bit overwhelmed and exhausted by the end of the day. The Mechanical Dolphin continued to crank out blog posts, on open education, islands of memory, pain, angels and uncertainty, innovators, and information architects.

David shared an assortment of interesting tech stuff, and I did the same thing (different stuff!). It appears I had a busy month because I also shared a little tool I made for yawping made with my latest obsession – the Rust programming language. Alissa, now that she’s got all this spare time since she’s not on Twitter, wrote a treatise about cataloguing the songlines (or is that song spirals?), and what it could look like.

Impressed by how much good stuff there is in all these posts and but sure how you’re going to keep it all in your head? Don’t worry, Inger has spent twenty years creating the perfect note taking system.

So now it’s May, and time for a new topic – Snap. Maybe you want to share your love of photography. Perhaps you had a close encounter with a crocodile. It could be that your patience ran out recently and you want to reflect on that. However you interpret the theme, be sure to tag your post GLAM Blog Club, and share it on social media with #GLAMBlogClub. If you’ve not already registered you blog, you can do so at Aus GLAM Blogs and your fresh posts will be automatically shared with the world on Twitter, Mastodon and at glamblogs.newcardigan.org. Happy blogging!

1 May 2021
GLAM Blog Club April – Obsession

Well, well, well…
The beginning of March was a weird little blip for one of the cardiCommittee (that member being me), so the theme of PIRATE got a run for 2 months!
Are there a lot of blog posts about the GlamBlogClub theme for adventure and derring-do?
This is debatable.
Are there a lot of blog posts to cover?
My word, yes there are.
So let’s get to it.

Here are some Pirate posts:

Archiving Pirate Genders – Transgressive Archivist
3 ways to remain true to your goals, like The Dread Pirate Roberts (AKA Westley) from The Princess Bride – Avril Cross

For those that so want to sail the seven seas of (other) information…

Research and writing (the treasure maps of academia)
Semi-Structured Interview tips – Niamh Quigley
What I wish I had Know at the Start of My Masters Project – Niamh Quigley
How to Write a More Compelling Sentence – The Thesis Whisperer
Getting Creative with The Discussion Section – The Thesis Whisperer
Emerging Trends in Academic Libraries. By Which I Mean: Puppies – David Whitteveen

If you want to catch up on conferences, then these links may offer some bounteous GLAM booty:

Rebecca Lush wrote an extensive coverage of the MuseumNext Digital Summit Day One, Two, Three, Four and Five.
Lib_idol and their treatise on IFLA elections and International involvement.
Get down with your bad miniconf self and Re-live the Excitement of Generous and Open GLAM 2021 with Hugh Rundle.

Hugh has also sailed off into the sunset with quite a few Marginalia posts on Viral Computing, Histories and Futures, When Your Boss is A Robot and The Beautiful and Surprising. If that wasn’t enough there is a post on How to Write a Static Site Generator in 30 Lines or Less.

In some kind of virtual/intellectual sword fight, Matt Finch/Mechanical Dolphin has bested Hugh for sheer volume of blogs (eight pieces… or is that pieces of eight? Too much?) with the following:
Interview with Mark Stewart Part 1, Strategy as Dance, The Lusory Attitude: Interview with Florence Engasser, “Whose Futures Matter?” Gender, Identity and Strategic Foresight, Closing the Loop, A Discomfort Watch, Fandom and Literacy – A Conversation with Ludi Price and Endlessly Repeating Days.

If you are into well dressed adventurers, spending time with Nicole Jenkins and the following: Mary Quant at the Bendigo Art Gallery, Frocks, Fashion and Flinders Lane, Women of the Woorayl Shire and Australian Modernist Dress of the 60’s and 70’s.

Other gem’s in the Blogging treasure chest:

Employment in our sector can be a challenge at the moment, so if you have recently found yourself looking for work, you may find spending time with Danielle Johanesen worthwhile. Seb Chan wrote a really interesting piece on collecting things and ACMI Lens – if user experience and data collection is your jam, you should totally check this out. Andrew Kelly has also raised some interesting tensions in growth and ethics, that are well worth a read. If you want to learn more of the challenge of being autistic and working in the Library Sector, then spend a little time with Alissa’s take on their experiences. Katherine Gehrke gave 3 good tips about how to continue to live sustainably in an ever changing world, because finding ways to help save the planet is as equally as important as reading a good book. However, if you are looking for a good book (because let’s not be binary about these things), you can check out Snail’s recent reads. Are medieval tiles your thing? Why not make them your thing- Historical Ratbag will show you how! Last, but certainly not least, Sam Searle’s dive into the issues of non-use of preferred names and things to consider when facing inclusion issues in library systems.

April’s theme is OBSESSION, so the punny lean into the previous theme seems somehow more fitting now.

Make sure to tag your posts with ‘GLAM Blog Club’ so people can find your blog, and the tag #GLAMBlogClub when sharing on socials. Join our rad community by registering your blog with Aus GLAM Blogs. We look forward to reading what you write, whether on theme or not – See you next month!

1 April 2021

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