Bloggin' It Up.

I'm a huge blog reader. I love learning and reading about others' perspectives and I find blogs to be a great way to be entertained or educated. When you follow a lot of blogs like I do, you are going to need a feed reader, or you're going to spend a lot of time checking for new blog posts that aren't up yet, or missing great reads because you stop checking. Back in the day, I used Google's RSS feed reader, which I loved. But Google did away with it, so it was off to shop for a new one. I now use Feedreader, which you can find here. It's simple. It's been around for a long time and it gets high ratings from other users. I'm not that picky as long as interfaces are generally intuitive, and Feedreader is a simple, barebones, feed reader that works.

Now, when I started out reading blogs, it was an extension of reading Live Journals. I'm not sure how many of you remember LJ and it's darker cousin, Dead Journal. I had accounts at both and wrote there fairly frequently. I also read other peoples' journals. But LJ and DJ faded into obscurity and blogging became the next big thing. Nowadays, I follow a wide range of blogs, from the entertaining (Awkward Family Photos) to the informative (all the librarian & tech blogs that I follow). Here's my top five.

5. Library of Congress Blog - http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/

This is like one of those old fashioned fact of the day calendars. Except well researched, with citations and everything. It's updated almost daily and it includes posts about research, rare items and books, upcoming advances in technology, historical articles, etc. It has a very broad range and I always walk away feeling like I learned something new.

4. The Bulldog Readers Blog - http://bellbulldogreaders.edublogs.org/

Julie Hembree's personal and professional reading blog is an excellent example of what librarian blogging can look like. She's won several awards for the blog and I've found her posts to be both informative and entertaining. She was a edublogs Best Librarian Blog finalist in 2015 and 2013. She frequently posts and encourages comments, as well as replies frequently to them. Love this blog!

3. Epot - http://www.epbot.com/

This isn't a library specific blog, but it is one of my favorite, so I'm including it here anyway. Most people know of Jen, the blog's owner, as the founder of another photo blog that is wildly popular, Cake Wrecks. However, Epbot is a different kind of blog from CW. Epbot is a blog that focuses on the girly, geeky and goofy. While many of her posts are just entertaining - she loves art, disney, steampunk and nerdiness; Jen also posts great book reviews. She mostly sticks to YA fantasy & sci fi, but her readers also post recommendations and I've found several great books after reading her book review posts.

2. Awful Library Books - http://awfullibrarybooks.net/

If you love to laugh, you have GOT to start reading this blog. When you think about how tedious weeding, is, Awful Library Books comes to your rescue. This blog highlights books that should be weeded from your collection. And when you get finished reading every single post since the blog's inceptions (trust me, you will get hooked and waste a Saturday night doing this), you can click on the tab for their also great regular blog, Practical Librarian.

1. Library Girl - http://www.librarygirl.net/

I love Library Girl. I love her blog. I love her twitter feed. LOVE. Jennifer LaGarde is funny, she's knowledgeable, she's got great ideas, she posts often and her posts are never boring. Almost everything I read in her blog is useful and though provoking, and that's definitely saying something. I absolutely love her energy. If you are looking for a great librarian to follow on social media, this is the one you should go with.

And, if you want to, here's a link to my tumblr. http://txbookbanshee.tumblr.com/