Libworld – Spain
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According to the origin of the tradition of World Book Day we start our experiment with a contribution from Catalonia. ‘La bibliotecària gamoia’ is blogging at gamoia.bloc.cat/ in Catalan. She invites us to hear the sounds of Catalan language by using a literary audio anthology specially prepared by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya for the 2006 ‘Diada de Sant Jordi’ (World Book Day). In her considerations she does not only concentrate on Catalonia but on the whole Spanish biblioblogosphere.
The Spanish biblioblogosphere: a personal view
I have been asked to present a short overview of the Spanish biblioblogosphere. So, trying to accomplish this task I reviewed some recent papers dealing with this subject by more qualified bloggers than me. I give these papers in the bibliography for those of you who can read Spanish and also for those of you who would like to follow more links than my few examples.
Let’s start by a short presentation. I am a professional librarian, around 50 years old, working in an academic institution. I am a blogging librarian too, since January 2005. Furthermore I am a Spanish librarian blogging on Catalan since it is my language and the language of my primary community. Please keep in mind that this is not the common profile for bloggers in the Spanish biblioblogosphere. But what is it the blogosphere if not a sum of individuals throwing their thoughts to the large and wide world? So, from this my particularity, here I present my personal appreciation on the Spanish biblioblogosphere. And I encourage you simply to browse. Be assured that you will discover talks of your own interest!
The first biblioblog that caught my attention and that still retains was Deakialli DokuMental. It is the creation of two Spanish librarians, Catuxa Seoane and Vanessa Barrero, who started it during their university studies so long ago as 2003. They review technological news for the information professional and by doing so they publish a bulletin which I highly appreciate for maintaining me up to date. Catuxa is the main authoress and she is widely recognized and frequently asked by media as a representative of the Spanish biblioblogosphere.
Catorze.blog is the loudspeaker of Javier Leiva, a librarian engaged in his own company adventure. He is recognized as the creator of the first Spanish blog dealing with library matters, the historical ‘Bibliotecario desordenado’ (Untidy librarian) in the early 2003. He uses the blog as part of his business strategy and he is an important and appreciated member of the informal Spanish biblioblogosphere community. His company specializes in information management, architecture and web design. He carries out frequently courses of introduction to the publication in blogs for librarians and he also produces blogs to order as Quotes & Jokes.
‘Documentación, biblioteconomía e información‘ is the third of my favorite Spanish blogs. It is written by Álvaro Cabezas, a young Andalousian information specialist who brings his fresh capacity of criticism to the review of old librarian practices. He is particularly interested in scientometrics as he is engaged in a research team, called EC3, dealing with evaluation of science and scientific communication in the University of Granada.
Last but not least, a Catalan blogging librarian like me. Daniel Gil is maintaining ‘Bauen_blog‘, which deals with libraries and architecture. In his blog he offers a good overview of new library buildings in Spain and abroad. Besides this he is actively engaged within his local community, in the South of Catalonia, on the Ebre river, which reflects on his blog.
No doubt there are many other excellent blogs in the Spanish biblioblogosphere. This is only a selection of those which I specially appreciate. Through their links and with the help of the bibliography below, you should be able to locate many more. Let me be cautious and note here some of the very serious blogs: SEDIC blog, ‘El Documentalista Enredado‘, ‘Bibliometría‘, ‘Véase además‘,’Biblioblog‘, ‘ALFIN’, ‘Dospuntocero‘, ‘Gardalivros‘ (Galician).
And some humoristic too:’Frikitecaris‘ (Catalan), ‘La Imagen Social del Bibliotecario‘.
Regarding library blogs there are still very few examples, although it seems that the professionals are already taken heart. ‘Blogueteca da BETSA‘ (Galician) is one of the oldest university library blogs, initiated in 2006, serving the Library of the Architecture School at the University of La Coruña. ‘Notícies de la BUS‘ (Catalan) started in 2006 too and serves news of the Schools of Business and Computing Studies at the University Autonoma de Barcelona. It is worth to keep an eye on the recently started blogs by the University of Barcelona (Catalan): ‘Bloc de Lletres‘ (Humanities) , ‘Bloc de Dret‘ (Law) and ‘Bloc de Bellvitge‘ (Health).
Just to finish some examples from the public libraries: ‘Biblioteca Municipal Ramon Bosch de Noya‘, ‘BiblioSort‘ (both in Catalan) and ‘Pestañas sobre la almohada‘ from the Library of Muskiz.
Bibliography
Leiva Aguilera, Javier. “Blogs: una herramienta de diffusion para profesionales de la información”. TK, n. 18, diciembre 2006.
http://www.asnabi.com/TK_archivos/TK_18/32leiva.pdf
Equipo de redacción de SEDIC Blog. “Blogs de biblioteconomía y documentación en España”. Revista española de documentación científica. 29:4, 2006, pp. 603-627.
http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00008643/
Ros, Marcos. “Biblioblogosfera”. El documentalista enredado.
http://www.documentalistaenredado.net/biblioblogosfera
See bloc_bid and bloc_biblioteca tags on http://del.icio.us/gamoia for additional links.
Gamoia’s blog: http://gamoia.bloc.cat/
Today, 23rd of April, is the Day of the Book and the Rose. To celebrate it on a Catalan style you should buy a book for you and a rose for your partner, or both or lots of books and roses
I would like to offer you the opportunity to hear the sounds of Catalan language by using a literary audio anthology specially prepared by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya for the 2006 Diada de Sant Jordi. With my best wishes!
http://www.uoc.edu/lletra/santjordi2006/
Great article! And an even greater sentence in it: “But what is it the blogosphere if not a sum of individuals throwing their thoughts to the large and wide world?”
And I find it really interesting that you have blogs in Catalan and ‘normal’ Spanish. Are there some in Basque language, too?
posted on April 23rd, 2007 at 13:45 Uhr
Los biblioblogs españoles en la blogosfera alemana…
…gamoia.bloc.cat/” id=”link_0″>La bibliotecaria Gamoia recogió ese guante y hace un repaso de los principales blogs en nuestro país……
posted on April 23rd, 2007 at 20:27 Uhr
Thanks for your appreciations!
I am not completely sure about blogs in Basque because I am unable to read them.
I have only located these three examples from public libraries:
Erandioko Biblioteka sarean is bilingual, with front to front translations.
Zamudio liburutegia is also bilingual but translations are not so systematicly done.
Kultur Leioa Liburutegia has some basque posts.
posted on April 23rd, 2007 at 21:21 Uhr
Moltes gràcies Gamoia! Com sempre, tan amable :-)
posted on April 23rd, 2007 at 21:45 Uhr
Moltes gràcies Gamoia, per incloure’m!! Uff… m’han pujat tots els colors, quin honor!! I també quina responsabilitat!
posted on April 24th, 2007 at 8:03 Uhr
És amb gran satisfacció que llegim aquest excel·lent treball de mapatge que ens visibilitza i projecta trossos d’aquesta genealogía no sempre explícita de treball comú . Fecilitats Gamoia!
posted on April 24th, 2007 at 8:37 Uhr
Apreciem molt la menció del Bloc de Lletres i dels altres blocs de les biblioteques de la Universitat de Barcelona. Gràcies!
posted on April 24th, 2007 at 12:01 Uhr
@fenny: You’ll find an overview on basque librarian feeds at
http://www.muskiz.com/biblioteca/Sindikazioa/index.php
and a graphical overview with a Google-Map (”Blogeografia: Liburutegien kokapena”) at
http://www.muskiz.com/biblioteca/Sindikazioa/harimapa.html
posted on April 24th, 2007 at 15:58 Uhr
thanks a lot for your comments! :)
posted on April 24th, 2007 at 22:23 Uhr
@fenny: Why do you find interesting to have blogs in Catalan, Basque or Galician? These are languages like any other, useful for communication. They are as normal as ‘normal’ Spanish, to use your expression. (Mein Gott! Was habe ich gesagt hier!)
posted on April 24th, 2007 at 23:57 Uhr
Of course it’s a normal language like any other. But I never thought about having a … for example… hm… Sami blogs in Finland. I thought it would be much more practicable to use a wideknown language. I like the idea of diversity, so please do not missunderstand me!
Wonderful to hear about blogs with different languages for the various language groups in one country. Viva la diversidad! (I hope that’s correctly spelled. ;)
And thanks to you and Markus for the list of blogs!
posted on April 25th, 2007 at 10:56 Uhr
fenny’s remark is really relevant for all of us in Europe. I mean, in this new networked context, we are all closer but building ties is difficulted by the use of a variety of languages. In order to overcome them, pressure to use the dominant language, English, is becoming increasingly threatening, and not only in professional environments.
At the same time new opportunites are emerging. Never before speakers from minority languages have had available so easy tools to publish. Never before has been world visibility within reach for us. From my point of view there are two main challenges: to generously invest in linguistic technology so that automatic translations could be reliable and to keep all the registers of the language alive, so that prestige is not only and not mainly given to activities in a lingua franca like English.
posted on April 25th, 2007 at 23:20 Uhr
You are absolutely right, Gamoia, and we should think of strategies to bridge the gap between those two tasks. Something I thought about is continuing the LibWorld experiment in a special way. We would need something like language or country correspondents, who regularly summarize the happenings of their local biblioblogosphere. The language of choice would be english, as it is in fact the lingua franca of science.
It could be organized through a social bookmarking tool like Connotea or similar. All participants tag their summaries with the same tag. The result would be something like a virtual journal of international librarianship.
As we information professionals – as early adoptors of nearly everything – are acting something like an experimental playground, we should really try that. I pretend the LibWorld series to be just the beginning of a deeper and steadier cooperation on the international level. And I’m really happy that already the first posting launches a discussion towards something like that.
for all other sciences
posted on April 26th, 2007 at 8:29 Uhr
Your are setting an ambitious goal. There are enough technological tools. The challenge is to engage people because it represents regular work. Subjects of broad interest are a matter to consider too. Let’s see what happens!
posted on April 28th, 2007 at 21:01 Uhr