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Blogs: Journals of the 21st Century

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Blogs: Journals of the 21st Century

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by Suzanne Sherry

The Information Environment is more than just books on shelves, or computers on desks, or databases of journals. The information environment also includes self chosen communities of people united by interest, but divided by time or geography. Blogs are part of that virtual information environment. Like the journals, letters and diaries of days gone by, blogs are primary sources for the information age.

1 Blog Reading: The Word on the Street
2 Blog Authoring: Getting the Word Out
3 Blogs: Sharing the Light of Knowledge
4 Blogs: The Dark Side
5 Who cares about blogs?
6 Where do I get my blog?
7 How can I pay for this blog?
8 References
9 Links

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Blog Reading: The Word on the Street

Blogs have a purpose for both the reader and the author. Blog reading can facilitate professional development. Think of bloggers as columnists, who give gossip-on-the-street type information, or a friendly notification of a new tool. Jessamyn West highlights programs and problems for libraries and information on her blog librarian.net. Her topics often include issues like The Digital Divide and Intellectual Freedom. Jenny Levine highlights emerging technologies on her blog The Shifted Librarian.

The serial nature of blogs makes them perfect for maintenance issues or long term projects. Typo of the Day for Librarians gives hints for catching errors in online catalogs. Who knew that tree was spelled incorrectly in so many catalogs so many times? David Bigwood in Catalogablog discusses cataloging changes. These blogs speak to specialized library workers who may not have regular access to live peers. These blogs give information and create loosely structured—but still very real—community.

Blog reading can also alert you to what your patrons are doing, and what your patrons want to do. Superpatron blogs regularly about tweaks to the OPAC and new technology (he is a fan of bookburro and librarything). Here you can read about increasing functionality of your information organization, and hear directly what your patrons want. In this way, blogs can be a way to assess your patron’s information needs.

Blogs are not just text! Blogs often include photos or art; they can also be in video form (sometimes called a Vlog) or in audio form (called a Podcast.)This funny Vlog is a review of Pond Scum is from the Arlington Heights Public Library (http://www.ahml.info/vlog/default.asp?ID=101) .

"Pond Scum Review" by Arlington Heights Public Library http://www.youtube.com/v/JuJ2kDHKH3w

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Blog Authoring: Getting the Word Out

What can a blog do for your information organization? Why should you join the craze? Blogs impart information. Their dynamic nature—they are designed to always be changing—makes them very effective as a tool to highlight changes to the library (Arnold, 2007.) This instant publishing feature fulfills the promise of the web, with every person an author, with publishing instant and up to the minute. Blogs can highlight changes in policies or market new initiatives of the library.

Reader’s advisory is another natural use of the blog. The Williamsburg Regional Library uses Blogging for a Good Book as a virtual Reader’s Advisory portal (Zellers, 2007.) Each staff member prepares five reviews of materials, which can be ultra-current or existing materials. The reviews are posted daily. Each is tagged, and the categories allow the blog to act as an archive. Looking for Chick Lit? Choose the category from the list on the blog. Reviews can be accessed and used long after their post date, by any reader, at any time of day—not just local patrons in the building. This blog began as a local initiative, but the blog receives comments from the larger internet world (Zellers, 2007). The community has expanded from a local one to a much larger one.

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Blogs: Sharing the Light of Knowledge

In addition to building communities, blogs invite conversation. Comments allow readers to discuss or highlight issues. It can be helpful to think of a blog as a newsletter or a magazine—its complimentary information to the texts, OPAC, and other information sources, but not a replacement for them (Arnold, 2007). Blogs are current. Blogs give outsiders and minority voices a forum, ones that are often ignored by mainstream media. Through the magic of RSS (Really Simple Syndication), blog entries can be delivered straight to readers. Though feed readers/news aggregators like Bloglines and Newsgator used to be the way to read RSS updates, the 2007 version of Microsoft Outlook has RSS subscriptions capabilities. RSS feeds bring research from databases, newspapers, and blogs straight to the readers desktop. This should help bring blog reading to the mainstream.

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Blogs: The Dark Side

Unlike traditional print, blogs are instant self publishing, un-edited or reviewed by peers. They can be carefully composed treatises on technology or the political ravings of a near-madman. The facts are unconfirmed—a reader must double check the information for accuracy. The credentials of a blogger are not published, or the author could be inventing them (Arnold 2007). Evaluation of the source is crucial when reading blogs.

Blogs are personal journals, so often hard information and the personal are blended together. This can be humanizing—or TOO humanizing. Someone interested in the facts on cataloging may not want to read the details of a messy divorce on the blog. Blogs also are impermanent. Some blogs run their life cycle and stop, others just fade out. Blogs can bring up privacy concerns. Speaking plainly and negatively about work on personal blogs has lead to lawsuits and job loss. Like many online sources, blogs need their readers to find them. This can be an imperfect science. Google now has a dedicated blog search page. Blogger offers the same. But most good blogs are found virally---by perusing a favorite’s blogroll, by comments or by recommendation, or by del.icio.us or other social bookmarking.

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Who cares about blogs?

Blogs reach the already connected; like most virtual reference, blogs cannot reach through the digital divide. RSS feeds deliver content—but readers must first discover and subscribe. Bloggers can advertise on static websites (Check out the library’s new blog!) or use commenting, journals, and traditional print sources to bring readers.

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Where do I get my blog?

Multiple service providers exists for blogs. These include Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, Xanga, and Livejournal.

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How can I pay for this blog?

Most blogs are free—the only cost is the time and effort to maintain them. Only Typepad offers some professional plans, and they start at $49.99 a year. Blogs can be built and used with minimal training and by existing staff. Blogs can also be created and then parked on an existing server, or left on the provider’s server. Blogs are truly the voice of the people, electronic publishing for the information age.

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References

Arnold, J. (2007). What's the Ballyhoo about Blogs? Serials Review, 33(3). Retrieved October 7, 2007 from ScienceDirect.

Natarajan, M. (2007). Blogs: A Powerful Tool for Accessing Information. DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology, 27(3). Retrieved October 7, 2007 from WilsonWeb.

Zellers, J. (2007). In Blog Heaven: A Painless New Approach to Readers' Advisory. Virginia Libraries 53(3). Retrieved October 7, 2007 from WilsonWeb.

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