When you were in grade or middle school, did you have to write those "I Admire So and So" essays? I strongly disliked those. To admire someone seemed to indicate that you thought they were perfect or that they could do nothing wrong or that you wanted to be them. I didn't think that about anyone.

I may say, "She is always kind, no matter what the provocation" or "He knows how to defend others without being condescending," but I never said, "I want to be her" or "She's so amazing." Celebrities of any nature were not my role models; their lives had nothing to do with me. Parents, teachers, and people in my immediate circle were simply there; of course I didn't want to be them or think they were perfect.

So all in all, I had a hard time knowing who to write about for those essays. My solution was to pick someone as neutral as possible, someone who the adults would hopefully think "oh, sure, nothing of interests in that" and move on. I think these essays were my first practice in writing to fill the assignment, but not actually saying anything I saw as relevant (more crudely known as BS).

And now here I am, about to write what could turn into an "I Admire" essay. That's because I think Journeywoman Evelyn Hannon is the kind of person I want to turn into as I grow up. She took a personal risk. She made mistakes. She learned things. She wanted to help others like her. She had an idea. She made the idea reality. She thought for herself and refused to follow trends simply because they were the newest and shiniest. If her work is an accurate indication, and after years of reading it I see that she's been consistent, she cares about people. She cares about them enough to suggest that they might not have the best idea after all. Reading the Journeywoman website and newsletter feels like sitting in a friend's cozy living room, drinking tea and sharing in mutual learning. When I listened to an interview with her, her voice gave off the same feeling. She's in her 70s and travels the world. Yeah, I think she's my answer for the "If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be" question.

So how does this make her a genius subject librarian? Let me first define my terms as I use them here.

• Genius: Someone who has exceptionally good ideas and finds a way to bring them into reality
• Subject: A particular, focused topic
• Librarian: Someone who is involved in all or part of gathering and organizing information and in helping people learn how to find, access, and evaluate that information

Alright then. Here is how Evelyn Hannon is a genius subject librarian. 

1. She had an idea for a resource and found a way to bring it into reality. Even more a credit to her genius, she manages to stay current, but still true to her own ideas. She is current without chasing trends. She takes what is useful and leaves the rest.

2. Her work focuses on a specific topic: travel advice for women.

3. She gathers information and organizes it into easily accessible resources. Her resources are easy to understand and navigate and she provides guides to more resources, thus helping people find and access information. She helps people learn how to evaluate the information by providing different points of view or occasionally interjecting her own thoughts.

If you've never looked at the Journeywoman website, it's worth browsing. There are headings and subheadings. Everything is clearly labeled and it is easy to navigate back to the home page or within a subheading. Ads are clearly distinguished from content. There is a clear contact link. She shows her media mentions and awards without being obnoxious. She keeps the website copyright current and easily visible.


I do have three complaints about the website.

1. The "Contact Us" links open in your desktop email program. If you don't use this program, you're stuck, unable to contact Journeywoman unless you know how to find the email address in the source code. (If you get the emailed newsletter, she does include the contact email there.)

2. There is no dedicated "About" page.

3. The individual articles are not dated. Travel tips from 2000 may be different from 2011. Restaurants go out of business; hotel management changes. 

Beyond the website, Journeywoman has an active Twitter account. Unlike most business accounts, she tweets information as interesting as her site – links to travel blogs, travel pictures, responses to other travelers. Granted, travel is a more universally interesting subject area than, say, medicine, but still. Just because you're a professional, that doesn't mean you have to be boring.

Journeywoman also has an active Facebook account. Here, Journeywomen from around the world talk to each other and share information.

Through the Journeywoman website, travelers can sign up for HerMail. This service again provides current information by connecting travelers with locals.

Evelyn Hannon takes safety seriously and understands the risks unique to woman. She addresses these as she provides information and as much as possible, builds safety features into her services.

So maybe Journeywoman Evelyn Hannon isn't a librarian in the traditional sense, but she does provide people with information that would be difficult for them to find as easily elsewhere. I think librarians can learn something from her. That's in Part 2.

The Wikiman website covers topics pertaining to the information professions. Browsing the site will yield posts with suggestions for new librarians/information professionals, Day in the Life videos, detailed explanations of technological tools, and more.

Ned Potter works as an academic librarian and writes with a personal, relaxed style that is still concise and understandable. Although reading his website is educational, the writing is so easy to read, it doesn't feel like work. I can get lost for longer than I should while browsing the archives.

The blog is updated often. In July 2011, there were seven posts. In June 2011, there were five, and in May 2011, three. Although the blog updates may not be daily, they are thorough. Because so many professionals follow the blog, the comments can be as interesting as the original posts.

The Wikiman covers so many different topics, often technologically related, and is such a pleasure to read, that from the first tweet that sent me to the site, I was hooked. My only question is, how does he find the time to do all this and do it well, too?

When you visit http://blogs.loc.gov, six blogs are listed. The Library of Congress Blog is first. This blog covers general LOC updates: new resources, programs, and the like. The posts usually can be read in a few minutes and there are few, if any comments, so following the blog doesn't take a large time commitment. 

The blog is updated sporadically. As I write, the most recent post is from today, June 8. The previous three posts are dated May 25, 19, and 16. 

I count 46 categories. Clicking on "Copyright" brings up the most recent post, dated December 17, 2010. The one before that is from August 2009. Clicking on "Libraries" brings me to posts dated in April 2011, January 2011, and December 2010. From these two examples, I decide that unless I am looking for something specific, I will follow the homepage and scroll through the posts so that I can read the most recent information. 

While this blog is not as entertaining to read as a personal blog may be, I do learn about interesting online resources. Browsing through the National Jukebox or learning about scanned, centuries-old maps makes me want to make up a project so that I can use all these resources. 

Educational and with a variety of topics, the LOC blog avoids overly scholarly language and only updates when there is something to say. Reading a post could take a few minutes, but following the links and exploring the resources could take hours. 

The Library of Congress website can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate. The URL for the blogs isn't intuitive. The best way I found to get to the blogs if I don't remember the URL is to go to the LOC homepage and search for "blogs." Because the website is so vast, reading the blog helps direct me to resources I might otherwise miss or not think to search for. I hope that through continued reading of the blog, I will learn how the LOC categorizes and organizes its website so that I will have more success when I need to search the site for specific information.