Salem Library Blog Awards

The first blogs we chose to applaud in the awards listed below are all "topical" blogs. That is, those that primarily involve subjects such as technology, cataloging, literacy, reviews, personal viewpoints, etc. Great stuff, to be sure.

In the autumn we're going to review "local" blogs, those that are primarily devoted to promoting a specific public, academic or school library. These institution-specific blogs have an entirely different function and character and so we're judging them separately.

If you know of an excellent "local" blog, please tell us about it. To send a nomination, click here.

Blogs about libraries have spread across the web. There are (literally) hundreds of people writing about books, libraries, librarians and related subjects. If you count the blogs that come from specific institutions, spreading local news, there are thousands of the things. Some are funny. Some are brilliant. Others… aren't.

This area of our website is devoted to blogosphere excellence. Salem (and the bloggers and librarians who are helping with this effort) are attempting to promote good blogs generally and draw attention to interesting and provocative news and opinion as it appears. To that end we will:

Reward and celebrate blogs about libraries and library issues;

Maintain a (reasonably) accurate listing of blogs so librarians

can discover the amazing variety here;

Develop a site that points out ongoing excellence as it appears.

THE WINNERS
The winners in each of the five categories of "topical" library blogging we established are:

General Library Blogs

First place: Libraries and Transliteracy

Second place: Centered Librarian

Third place: Librarian.net

Quirky Library Blogs

First place: Awful Library Books

Second place: Library History Buff

Third place: Going Green At Your Library

Another Third place: Judge a Book by its Cover

Academic Library Blogs

First place: No Shelf Required

Second place: ResourceShelf

Third place: The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

Public Library Blogs

First place: Agnostic, Maybe

Second place: Blogging for a Good Book

Third place: Library Garden

School Library Blogs

First Place: Bib 2.0

Second Place: Not So Distant Future

Third Place: 100 Scope Notes

Congratulations to you all.

THE LIBRARY BLOG JUDGES
Our first effort in recognizing excellence teamed four interested parties in reading the hundreds of active blogs nominated by readers throughout the web. Along with Peter Tobey of Salem Press, volunteers to judge blogs included:

The Editor Judge: Mirela Roncevic, Editor-in-Chief of IGI Global's forthcoming Advances in Library Information Science book series. Prior to her current position, Mirela was Senior Editor at Library Journal, where she directed the magazine's coverage of print and electronic reference sources, managed arts, literature, and philosophy reviews, and wrote extensively on the state of online publishing and librarianship.

The Public Library Judge: Barry Miller, is reference and acquisitions librarian at Austin Public Library, with collection development responsibility for nonficition print and audiobook materials. He has been a frequent contributor and reviewer for Library Journal for over 20 years.

The Academic Library Judge: Brian Coutts is head of the Department of Library Public Services at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. He's co-author of three reference books and a contributor to several others. No stranger to the judging business, Brian has selected the "Best Reference Sources of the Year" for Library Journal for more than two decades. He chairs the Resources for College Libraries Editorial Board and serves on the ACRL Publications Coordinating Committee.

The Academic School Library Judge: Caroline Geck, a school librarian at Peshine Avenue Preparatory School in Newark, New Jersey. Caroline is a frequent reviewer in a variety of categories for both Library Journal and School Library Journal.