Decisions

I need to lift the iron curtain between this blog and my workplace. I beg your indulgence for one post.

As those who read Bora's interview with me know, I discontinued my previous blog Caveat Lector because I was informed that it was causing significant distress to individuals in my workplace. In my best judgment, I could not continue to blog there in any capacity without it appearing that I had simply brushed off the problems I caused. I took those problems very seriously indeed, as the closure of CavLec bears witness.

When I came to ScienceBlogs, I intentionally structured Book of Trogool such that potential conflict would arise as seldom as possible—preferably never. That was simple enough as long as my data-curation responsibilities were limited to membership on exploratory committees, and my scholarly-communication responsibilities were limited to keeping an IR running.

The latter is no longer the case; my position is being revised to include broader responsibility for scholarly-communication issues. While I'm pleased about the change and hopeful that I will serve well in this new capacity, it does bring back the spectre of additional blog-related trouble.

I'm still deciding what to do (and to be clear, this decision is mine alone, just as the decision to shutter CavLec was). My experience last year led me to agree with Jenica Rogers's assertion that libraries, broadly speaking, are not comfortable with online professional identities, and I accept her conclusion that there's little choice but to adapt one's online identity management accordingly.

I invite your thoughts in the comments here, but be aware that comments critical of my workplace are liable to be ruthlessly edited or deleted. (Criticism of me personally, or my approach to blogging, is fair game as long as it doesn't veer into the usual delete-bait.) My gmail (dorothea.salo) is also at your service. As always, I am very grateful for the thoughtful and intelligent nature of my readership.