This is why I put Sarah Houghton-Jan on my list of heroines; when I met her, I approached her as someone she’d never heard of, complimented her on her blog, and she didn’t make me feel like a groupie loser. Other bloggers I met at Internet Librarian 2005 were similar. I’d hope we (human beings, as much as bloggers) could all be so gracious.

This whole thing can feel a bit “clubby,” and I can understand if some people are put off by that. But, as you say, it is a large and diverse club. Perhaps even large and diverse enough to include the non-bloggers.

Remember (we should all remember) Aaron Schmidt’s presentation slide, No one cares that you have a blog. I expect that no one would care (or “mind,” to put it more kindly) that you don’t have a blog.

- Bozo

“However, I’m too scared to meet any of these great people in person (unless I met them completely outside of the context of the biblioblogosphere) because I didn’t join the club (a very large and diverse club, too) on the ground floor.”

As the Firesign Theater said, “I think we’re all bozos on this bus.” No reason to be afraid of anyone who blogs any more than you’d be afraid of anyone who doesn’t (and I learned long ago that there was no reason to be afraid of anyone in libraryland–although maybe I’d have gone further if I learned proper awe and deference!)

I’d go the other way: If anyone in blogland strikes you as Too Important to meet, that may be a good reason to ignore them…

And as for being late to the party, well, this blog is just barely over two years old. Started mostly as a lark (and comment on an unfortunate Gorman generalization)…

I read and subscribe to most of the blogs mentioned in this theme. I even comment on them, just as I’m doing here. I’m a bit guilty of not reading everyone’s work. However, I’m too scared to meet any of these great people in person (unless I met them completely outside of the context of the biblioblogosphere) because I didn’t join the club (a very large and diverse club, too) on the ground floor. I will face my first true test of this soon. I’m just afraid of the embarrassment of not having a blog of my own (“WHAT??!?!?! You don’t have a blog?”) — and, for today, not having one by choice.

Personally, I couldn’t limit my list to five. It would have to include every liblog in existence.

Updated: The more I think about it and think about the variety of responses to this [th]]m]|eme, the more my answer to the “clique formation” comment is, well, Bull. The responses have been varied, not a hall of mirrors; people have taken the idea in different directions; if there’s one common theme, it’s “people who encourage me to think.” The fact that some of us choose, sometimes, to say “Thanks” for being named isn’t clique formation, it’s gratitude. (Mary Beth: You’re welcome. All of you: Keep writing things that make me think and rethink…)

As to Henriette…sure. I was one of RLG’s liaisons to the umbrella group that included MARBI (but met quarterly for a while) from 1980 through 1987, as well as being a MARBI member 1985-1987. I chatted with Henriette Avram a few times during those years, and later at ALA. (We did at one point discuss MARC for Library Use–which we both agreed *should* have been written by someone at LC, but that was never going to happen…)

Believe it or not, I had a brief conversation with Admiral Grace Hopper once, at the only National Computer Conference I ever attended… but that was years earlier and really counted as a chance encounter.

*hero-worship*

Yes, Walt, on Twitter somebody snarked that this was a schoolyard exercise in clique formation, but — whatever. I said my piece honestly, with zero intent to suck up or exclude, and I believe the others I’ve read did so as well, and that’s good enough for me.

I haven’t commented at each blog that directly or indirectly mentioned me, but you all have my appreciation: Call this a general “Thanks!”

jennimi and some others are making this a better [th]|[m]eme than I’d hoped by going off in different directions. Great.

I see enough to remind me how important the “other channels” are–not only face-to-face meetings (any of you going to be at Washington Library Association?) but also emails etc. Yes, I have responded to emails from people who might have been surprised–and sent email to say things to people that didn’t need to be said as comments. I’ll try to keep doing that; as far as I’m concerned, this is a field of equals, and I’d like to keep it that way.

(That is: I see no reason to believe that I’m “better” in any sense than a brand-new librarian, MLS student, or other library person who I’ve never heard of–but I also see no reason to believe that anybody in the field is “better” than I am. If I’m willing to converse with Clifford Lynch or George Needham or Henriette Avram as an equal, why wouldn’t I be willing to converse with anybody who’s not being vicious or spamming me as an equal?)

And now off to do some other things…I would say that all this mutual good will could be too much, but that’s the old curmudgeon speaking up, and I’d like to think I’m younger than that now. (Just as you can’t escape Monty Python and Star Trek, you can’t entirely escape Bob Dylan either. Nor would I want to…)