Carnivals

Lately I've been having fun going to carnivals. Blog carnivals.

As defined in Wikipedia, a blog carnival is

A blog article that contains links to other articles covering a specific topic. Most blog carnivals are hosted by a rotating list of frequent contributors to the carnival, and serve to both generate new posts by contributors and highlight new bloggers posting matter in that subject area.

Library folk have their own carnival, the Carnival of the Infosciences. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't find out about it until recently; the latest one is the March 5, 2006 Carnival of the Infosciences.

It's fun and enlightening to look at, and participate in, carnivals outside the obvious. For example, a recent Pop post on Investing in the Children's Section, was highlighted in the Second Carnival of Children's Literature.

What other areas involve libraries? What else could we be reading, outside our own circle of library blogs, to give us insight into what our patrons want and need? Where else can we sharing about what we do, so that we never again have to read an article like this one?

I've visited the Carnival of Education to find out what teachers are talking about, and discovered the Median Sib's A Day In the Life of a Reading Teacher.

I also like the Carnival of Homeschooling, which brought me to Making the Most of Your Library Day. Tips included using the online catalog ahead of time, finding out about the delivery van schedule, and, my favorite -- making friends with the librarian! It's an excellent list to use to ask yourself, do my patrons know about this? How best can I give them this information?

Find out about other carnivals at Blog Carnival.

Even with Bloglines, I cannot read all the blogs out there that are related to what we do in libraries; but thanks to carnivals, I can keep up to date.

So, what carnivals do you like?

Technorati Tags: Blog Carnivals, Carnivals