Thursday, January 28, 2010

LISNews Librarian Essay Contest

LISNews Librarian Essay Contest

The first ever LISNews Librarian Essay Contest invites librarians to write an original essay about issues that impact librarianship. The contest will run for the entire month of February, 2010, with the fabulous prizes awarded sometime in March. Winning essayists will receive one of several prizes including Amazon or Borders gift cards, and a year of hosting from LISHost.org.
All Essays Must Be Submitted Here!
You can view only essay entries at http://lisnews.org/essays/
OR
Subscribe to the Essay Contest Entries RSS Feed Here: http://lisnews.org/essays/rss

Below the break you'll see answers to your questions.
What did you mean "issues", what should I write about? ANYTHING that ties into libraries, librarianship or librarians and all those that we deal with. There are over 10 years of stories we've posted here, take a look in the archives to see what interests us. Personally, I'm looking forward to reading about everything and anything that people decide to write about, as long as it comes back to libraries somehow. I'm looking to be surprised, challenged, I want to learn a thing or two, and maybe have good laugh.
What about format? You're writing for librarians, on the web. HTML is welcome, links, short paragraphs, images, and so on… There are a million sites out there that will tell you about the best way to write for the web.
How many words? I'm hesitant to set a hard limit, so let's just say "essay length."
How will judging be done? Well, judging writing isn't exactly easy is it? It's very subjective, that's why there will be somewhere between 5 and 10 judges. We'll all pick our favorites and base the winners on that.
What are the prizes? $25 from Amazon, $50 from Borders, and a year of hosting from LISHost.
What about deadlines? Anything entered in the month of February. You'll need to put it in the submissions queue and tag it with "essay". Don't email anything to me, use the queue.
No, you don't need to be a librarian.
Yes, you can co-author an article.
Yes, this essay should not be available elsewhere.
No, if you're a judge you're not eligible to win.
Yes, if you've written for LISNews before you can still win, you just can't be a judge.
How many essays do you expect to receive? Not many.