looking into blogs

Obviously not today, because it's the start of the football season (woohoo) and I'm off to the pub shortly to watch us get pulverised by Arsenal (nothing like positive thinking, eh?!), but started browsing a couple of the links I found last night, and remembered (again) that I need to spare some time to thinking about blogs and why and which and where. Carol Cooper (ex-UWIC Bb) has lots of links and blogs and articles about blogs. There's also a discussion of blogsoftware, which is quite interesting, especially since I seem to see increasing numbers of people using wordpress, but no mention of blog-city. Derek has started a blogger and a blog-city account over the last week, to look at the differences. There are blogs about blogs from the Educational Bloggers' Network. The EBN blogs to note starts with an entry entitled 'Why you REALLY should fall on your knees and worship a librarian', (which will make Phil's day) and is quite a long comment on UThink, which is too long to repeat here - follow the link above to read the rest.

"Libraries believe passionately in intellectual and academic freedom, and our role as advocates for those freedoms. Blogs are an excellent tool whereby students, faculty and staff at the University can let their opinions be heard. Blogs offer a way to rapidly discuss opinions, issues, and ideas, and allow people from across the country, and campus, to connect with each other through these ideas..."

There's a shorter entry which I shall repeat, as it may provide food for thought in a consideration of education blogs - on the new librarian's blog??!.

Blogs centralized at the university library? Why? Why Not!!

An interesting article [from JSOnline] about weblogs in the university community. I just wonder how many libraries will follow the lead of great projects like UThink and take charge in the weblog world in their institution. Which begs the question: Is it necessary for libraries to do this? Anyone can start a weblog. Why have the library (which is normally overworked and understaffed) start these initiatives?

Here's a reason (and I'm sure you guys can think of more - feel free to comment below). Because weblogs are a collection of ideas, classroom activities, professorial communications, (and much more), which needs to be centralized at the university. Doesn't it? The library (especially the "digital library", however that is being defined these days) collects materials, online and off. Why aren't blogs from the students, faculty, and staff that encompass the university community factored into this equation.

Another aspect are the archiving principles involved. Interesting topic, one that will hopefully be brought up at a future conference...

There's a further article from JSOnline about using blogs on campus (but temporarily I seem to have lost where I came to it from that didn't ask me to login, dammit, must have been too early in the morning when I started this) where all students are offered a blog. Bit like Warwick blogs. There's even more blog 'research' at Arkansas. Eek. Lots of bedtime reading..........

Update i: the JSOnline article seems to let you straight there the first time, so if it interests you, print it... Here's the conclusion:

For many students, though, the academic applications of blogging are not the most appealing aspect. What leads many to blog is the chance to reveal emotions and thoughts, and perhaps some wisdom, during a time when life is all about transitions.

Update ii: I knew there was a reason I should have typed the title carefully of the link to 'Why you should REALLY fall on your knees and worship a librarian'... I just forgot the underlying reference, sorry! I went to it when you sent it me, honest - I recognised you in the picture