Back in November, my fellow carping nerdboy, Joshua M. Neff, came up with a new Library Society of the World slogan and t-shirt: Shovers and Makers. I liked the shirt and thought we needed an award to go with it–an award that would provide a fun counterpart to Library Journal’s annual Movers and Shakers awards.

So with Josh’s approval and input, I built shoversandmakers.net. We had a bunch of “teaser” posts being fed into the LSW FriendFeed room for the past two weeks, and the site went live today.

In short, Shovers and Makers is open to anyone who wants to call herself a Shover and Maker. Go to the site, read the about page, hit the front page and read some of the other Shovers’ and Makers’ posts about themselves, and then go to the winners’ page where you can write up your own profile and have it posted to the blog. Tell everyone about something that you did that you are proud of, or share some big plans for the future. If you have a blog, you can spread the word by linking to your post or the front page, or by using one of our badges like the one above.

This is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be a little inspiring and a little absurd. I’m thrilled that there are already more than 20 people (besides Josh and me) who have participated in the first few hours the site has been open, and I hope we get many more.