Friday Reading: Gender and Outreach

A weeks end look back at some of the archives, public history, and library world readings that I’ve been pondering on this week.

Gender in Libraries:

  • “If You Give a Librarian A Cookie” a great post by Dani Brecher Cook on the gendered work, the challenges of letting gender expectations control actions, and the need to find balance between doing traditionally gendered work you enjoy and being seen as a professional.
  • “Knausgaard Writes Like a Women” An interesting piece on gendered writing and the idea that you can tell if someone is male or female based on their style of prose. Link found via Allana Mayer (@alanaaaaaaa) and her thoughtful twitter discussion of gender in LIS

Outreach in Academic Libraries and Archives

I’ve been thinking about different ways to promote university archives in engaging, informal, and low costs ways.

  • An older post on the Mr Library Dude Blog on general outreach initiatives at the UW-Green Bay Library  is about general outreach at the UW-Green Bay library.
    • The slideshow is worth looking at, particularly for the linked videos within it.  I particularly enjoyed the video of the edible books contest they held as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations.
  • I’ve also started looking at institutional twitter and Instagram accounts.  Do you have a favourite archives or special collections social media account?  Is there an institution that does a particularly good job of promoting their collections through social media?  Is it worth the effort?

Leave a Reply