About the Outlaw Bride… Impressive publication!

As an escapee from the ARL world, my suggestion is you not take your modifier (academic) too seriously. Y’all really do put your pants on like the rest of us (me, I stand on a chair and jump into them, but your mileage may vary). You’re under peer pressure to think otherwise, but we’re all in the same profession.

Note also that academic writing is generally loathsome in part because it is filled with the work of good people who somewhere got the message that generating rivers of ghastly unreadable text (with the conclusion painfully plunked at the end) makes them look “academic.”

Jessamyn does a great job of figuring out which part of her life fits where. I’ve never been good at that. To me it all runs together. The closest I’ve come is to have a separate RSS feed for topics related to writing, though the feed has so few subscribers that this feels like a mere gesture.

FWIW, I don’t believe academic librarians are better (or worse or smarter or dumber or shorter or taller) than other librarians (or non-librarians). It’s just that at ACRLog I’ve been asked to share my (first-year academic librarian) perspective with other academic librarians. That’s why I was writing to and about academic librarians, especially academic librarians who blog.

Personally, because LISNews and LibraryStuff and other great blogs make it easy for me to catch up on library news and opinion quickly, I tend to really enjoy it when colleagues write longer, more complex posts. Also, as I wrote in the comments on the post itself, I also appreciate the fact that Jessamyn West maintains a personal blog and a professional blog. I read both, but I read each librarian.net post as it hits my inbox, and catch up on jessamyn.com when I have a bit more time to spare.

I did a pretty lousy job of making all that clear, especially in the paragraph Karen quotes in her post. Sorry everyone, and thanks for objecting publicly and not just cursing me privately.

As for the snobbery of those who think that only wusses read and write short posts, well, there’s something to be said for the ability to be concise–an ability I readily admit I lack. I have several blogger buds who can write a fully developed post in just a paragraph or two. It’s funny, it’s sufficiently detailed, it tells a story, and it has a point, all in such a short space. My comments on their posts are usually longer than the posts themselves. Every e-mail I write starts off with, “I only have a little time, so I’ll make this short”, followed by 1,200 words of rambling text. I’ve tried to write short blog posts. The shortest I can go is maybe four lengthy paragraphs, if I’m really trying. Does that mean that I’m writing for the academic elite? Yippee. I must be smarter than I thought. Those who read my blog should be very proud of themselves, too.