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!