Here is the next installment in my series of explanations of AJL's online resources. Today I want to talk about the Jewish Book Carnival, which is a "blog carnival."
What is a Blog Carnival? A blog carnival is sort online community event. The community is a group of bloggers who all cover a similar topic on their blogs. The event is a day when all of the bloggers contribute links and make one big blog post out of them. It's called a carnival because it's a celebration of the topic being covered (in our case, Jewish books)! The point of doing this is that it builds community among bloggers with a shared interest, it educates everyone who reads the blog posts, and it builds traffic to all the blogs by allowing them to share their audiences with each other. What is the Jewish Book Carnival? In 2010 I (Heidi Estrin) attended the Book Bloggers Convention in NYC. An idea I brought home with me was that of creating a blog carnival for the various blogs that deal with Jewish literature and library issues. AJL's consultant Marie Cloutier helped get the ball rolling. She recruited participants like the Jewish Book Council, the Jewish Women's Archive, J Weekly and various Jewish newspaper blogs, other blogs by individuals who just enjoy reviewing Jewish books, and more. AJL is the hosting organization for the Jewish Book Carnival, and you can find the "headquarters" on our blog athttp://jewishlibraries.org/blog/?page_id=371. At that location, you will also find a list of participating bloggers. How does the Jewish Book Carnival work? Each month, one of the participants is the carnival "host." The other participants send the host a link to one of their own blog posts, something about Jewish literature, literacy, libraries, etc. On the 15th of each month, the host creates a post on their own blog which lists all the links everybody has sent in. The participants can also post something on their own blogs to draw attention to the blog carnival. Readers like you can follow the various links to find a smorgasbord of articles on a topic we all love: Jewish books! You can also help with the community-building aspect and make the bloggers feel good by leaving them comments on their blogs. Where can you see an example of the Jewish Book Carnival? Follow this link to see the carnival that was posted on January 15, 2011. That month, the carnival was hosted at AJL's own blog, People of the Books at http://jewishlibraries.org/blog/?p=741. Where can you find the next Jewish Book Carnival? No matter where the carnival is being hosted, we will always put a link on AJL's blog, People of the Books (http://jewishlibraries.org/blog), so that you can find the monthly Jewish Book Carnival. To see a list of upcoming hosts, look at the headquarters I mentioned earlier at http://jewishlibraries.org/blog/?page_id=371. As of this writing, we have hosts through April 2011 but we need hosts for May and beyond. If you have a Jewish oriented blog and you would like to host, please email me and let me know at he...@cbiboca.org! GoodReads: The Jewish Book Carnival also has a GoodReads group at http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/34560.Jewish_Book_Carnival. GoodReads is an online community for book lovers. Using GoodReads gives our carnival participants a way to easily communicate and have discussions about books they are enjoying. Even if you are not a blogger, you are welcome to join the GoodReads group. --- Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: hasaf...@osu.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
