Assignment+3

I originally derided glogs, seeing them as flashy nonsense not conducive to education, particularly from a librarian perspective.

But education needs to advertise just like everything else. Patrons rarely take notice of things they aren't made to look at, and nothing makes you look at things like bright, flashy animations- or bright, animated Flash. I'd lost sight of the same ideas behind my discussion of remaining a learner that I discussed in Assignment 1: just because I don't like the way something looks, doesn't mean other people won't find it appealing. A key to marketing education, libraries, and librarians as teachers is recognizing that the things educators, libraries, and teacher librarians want are not always the same as what their students and patrons will want; we have to be ready to listen and learn from them, see what appeals to them.

Not so long ago (and still to this day at many libraries), graphic novels were attacked as meritless pulp with no place in a serious collection. This has changed as recognition has come of the quality of certain nonfiction or otherwise artistic works like Marjane Satrapi's __Persepolis__ or Harvey Pekar's __American Splendor__ have come to garner mainstream attention and cross media boundaries into film and academic discourse. But being worth discussing in an academic context is not the only reason to have graphic novels in an academic library. Graphic novels are //fun to read//, and people are drawn to them, bringing a rise in circulation and gate counts. By the same token, posters and glogs are bright and colorful, drawing attention of patrons.

That said, I still feel that Glogster has its limits as a tool. At an academic library with access to institutional resources, I feel it would make more sense to freely devise a similar online poster from scratch, rather than playing solely in Glogster's sandbox.