It's nearly time for your New Year Resolutions, so for those who are resolving to do more professional learning, here are five of my favourite free PD sources for GLAM professionals. They are not in any particular order.
- What's New / Humane Ingenuity
I'm kind of cheating by putting two things together, but one is a podcast and the other is an email newsletter. Dan Cohen is the Vice Provost for Information Collaboration, Dean of the Library, and Professor of History at Northeastern University. Previously he was the founding Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America. Cohen hosts a podcast called What's new, where he talks with academics from Northeastern about the trends, technologies and ideas affecting societies in general and the United States in particular. I really like What's new, but if podcasts aren't your thing, he also writes an email newsletter called Humane Ingenuity, "on technology that helps rather than hurts human understanding, and human understanding that helps us create better technology".
- In the library with the lead pipe
In the library with the lead pipe is a web-native open access library journal. It started life as a group blog by a bunch of then-new graduate American librarians, but has subsequently become an open-access journal accepting paper proposals, with an international editorial board. I served on the editorial board for a couple of years, and the experience deeply influenced the way I think about professional communication and practice. My fellow editors were some of the most generous, principled and smart people I've ever interacted with: they are deep thinkers, supportive editors, and activist professionals. Several members of that board have since moved on, but Lead Pipe continues to publish important and well-written work.
- Aus GLAM Blogs
Aus GLAM blogs is an aggregator where Australasian gallery, library, archive, museum, records and digital humanities - GLAM(RDH) - workers can register their blogs. When a new blog post is published, the Aus GLAM Blogs Twitter bot sends a tweet, and subscribers will see the post automatically appear in their Pocket list. I'm currently finishing off a complete rewrite of the code powering Aus GLAM Blogs - it's taken me most of 2019 working sporadically, but you should see some improvements and new features early in the new year, including enabling bloggers to update their blog details, integration with Mastodon, and some other things.
- Ashley Blewer's blog
Ashley Blewer is an American digital archivist, software developer and technologist, and a generally pretty rad person. Her blog is fairly 'low traffic', but when she does post it's well worth reading - for example this post on her rsync GUI project outlines the thought process Ashley went through whilst making a user-friendly interface for a powerful command line program, including ethical and practical considerations. She also has a really cool website where you can pick a theme for the site.
- Incendium Radical Library
newCardigan's February cardiParty this year was at Incendium Radical Library (IRL) and I haven't stopped thinking about it all year. The IRL Collective have a strong philosophy of care, and run an amazing library as part of the IRL Infoshop - an Anarchist bookshop-come-community centre in West Footscray. If you find yourself in Melbourne, I thoroughly recommend visiting IRL and chatting to the caretakers about their philosophy and collection - they're generally open on Fridays and weekends, but check the website or Facebook page for the latest hours.