Help Wanted: Bloggers @ LISNews

It’s been well over a year since I last sent out a call for help here @ LISNews. Authors come and authors go, but for almost 10 years LISNews has been a place to keep up on the latest happenings in the library world.

If you’ve ever thought about writing for a collaborative librarian blog, now’s your big chance. There’s no pay, but it’s a good way to get your name out there, and gain the respect and admiration of librarians from across the globe. If that’s not enough, you’ll also gain the enormous sense of well being that comes with helping your fellow librarians stay informed.

The “job” requires only a minimal time commitment, and just some basic knowledge of HTML & Blogging. You can write whenever you have time, and with some restrictions, you can post and write about whatever you want. Some current authors only write a couple times a month, others find the time every day, and most of the rest of our crew fall somewhere in between.

If you’re interested, read below for all the details. Feel free to pass this one along to others who might be interested.

At LISNews you’ll have the ability to talk with literally thousands of people every day. I ask that you don’t abuse this privilege. You can become well known and respected in our field by writing intelligent and thoughtful commentary.

It’s also very important to understand if you post anything even remotely controversial you will also be picked on, abused, and yelled at. This shouldn’t bother you, it happens to all of us, sometimes on a daily basis. You must have thick skin in this game, it comes with the territory. The internet is full of mean and nasty people.

I also expect you to be generally fair with what you post. This is not a place to further your angry agendas, or seek revenge on those who bother you. This doesn’t mean you can’t make your opinions known, but you should do your best to be nice, and back up your opinions with facts. I’m not saying you should avoid controversial topics, nor should you avoid having a point of view, but I do ask that you generally try be fair and friendly. Your posts should bring more insight and information than anger and agenda. What you post should be teachable rather than abusive.

These are obviously subjective ideas, and can be very difficult to get right with controversial topics. You may think what you posted is absolutely true and right, but those who disagree with that point of view will call you unfair, biased, ignorant, or worse.

In short, you need to have the ability to write posts that are well written, informative, interesting, friendly or funny. Everything you write can’t be an angry attack on those who disagree with you. The old cliché is “more light than heat.”

Most of the rules involve keeping my life simple, since I run this site in my spare time, the goal here is to avoid creating extra work and headaches for me, and keep it fun for all of us. Just don’t get me (or you) in any trouble and we’ll all get along just fine. There are just a few simple rules.

1. Don’t put up anything that can get us in any serious (especially legal) trouble.
2. Don’t put up anything that is just an advertisement.
3. Try to follow the style we have been using, there’s not much to it
4. Post at least twice a month

I think you can get a good idea of what stories are acceptable by just looking at the site. Try to keep your posts related to the library world, though not everything will be, feel free to be creative and original. For the most part it’s quite simple, and just takes a few minutes. On average it takes about 2 minutes for me to post a story. Your HTML skills need only be very limited at best, just enough to post an “A HREF” link really.

So, if you’ve read this far you’re probably wondering what you need do to get started!

You need an LISNews account (aka username), and we need to know about you. So either email me or send me an IM with your username and we can talk about LISNews.

I’m happy to answer any questions, but if you choose to reply to me, and we decide you’re right for the super secret and exciting author powers PLEASE do actually post a story. I can’t tell you how many people have said “I do” and were never heard from again. I’d rather never hear from you again NOW rather than after you got me all excited.