Welcome to The ANZTLA Blog

Welcome to The ANZTLA Blog. This blog is intended as a place for ANZTLA members to post on a variety of topics that might not be substantial enough to warrant a paper for The ANZTLA EJournal, but is more than what can be conveyed in a Forum post.

Unlike the Forum, posts will need to be approved by an editorial team. The process will be somewhat more informal than for The ANZTLA EJournal, but posts need to be appropriate to the format of the blog, and need to relate to theological librarianship in some way.

Posts should ideally be between 400-1000 words, but we are willing to consider posts that are outside of this range if there is a compelling reason. For example, you may wish to report on an event in your library. Although your post may be only around 200 words, you might have some great photos of the event to go along with your post.

Blog posts can be on a wide variety of topics, and could take many forms, including:

·         Book reviews

·         Short essays on a specific topic

·         News from your library

·         Information about a project you are working on

·         Amusing anecdotes

·         Rants about classification systems

·         Updates from conferences and events

·         Some historical info about your library, or theological libraries in our region in general

This is not an exhaustive list, so please use your imagination and see what you can come up with!

We  will generally take a somewhat hands-off approach to the editing process, and I imagine that most posts that are approved will go through with little more than a few corrections of typos. If your post isn’t approved, it isn’t necessarily because it is not a good post. It might be something that might be better suited to the Forum, or your post might go beyond the scope of The ANZTLA Blog, in which case we may recommend that you develop it into a paper for The ANZTLA EJournal. It could be on a topic that is too far removed from theological librarianship for our blog, in which case we might encourage you to post it elsewhere.

For those who are yet to be published but are keen to begin, The ANZTLA Blog could be a good way to dip a toe in the water. It is also a great way for experienced librarians to share the knowledge, expertise and wisdom that they have developed over the years. This is also a place to share new ideas and spark conversation about the latest developments in theological librarianship and libraries in general.

Please send all submissions to the Secretary at clopez@dml.vic.edu.au. In addition to the text of the post, submissions need to include a title, as well as your full name, job title and the name of your workplace. If you do not wish to be identified, please let us know and we can discuss possible options. Any attachments, such as photos, should be clearly named so that we can see how they are related to your submission. If you cite any other publications, the preferred referencing style is the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. For the greater part, submissions will follow the same requirements as for The ANZTLA EJournal

I hope that everyone enjoys The ANZTLA Blog. I am very excited to see how it develops, and I look forward to seeing it grow into something that helps us share our thoughts, knowledge, expertise, and even our senses of humour, with the ANZTLA community.

Also, just for reference, this post is 608 words long.

Nick Gellatly,

President, ANZTLA Board of Directors Head Librarian, St Paschal Library