{"id":294,"date":"2004-05-28T11:55:07","date_gmt":"2004-05-28T15:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/2004\/05\/28\/library-juice-pooh-poohs-blogs\/"},"modified":"2012-05-07T15:33:35","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T19:33:35","slug":"library-juice-pooh-poohs-blogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/2004\/05\/28\/library-juice-pooh-poohs-blogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Library Juice pooh poohs blogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I enjoy Rory Litwin’s Library Juice, a one-of-a-kind, bi-weekly
\nnewsletter that focuses on progressive issues in librarianship,
\nespecially intellectual freedom.  It’s wonderful reading and Rory
\nis much to be praised for his time and ingenuity.  The following
\nparagraph  made me pause, however:<\/p>\n

“… so many people, librarians included, have started
\ntheir own blogs for no discernible reason and through blogs have
\nrenewed their irrational excitement about the Web in general.  It
\nappears to me that in most cases where someone has started a blog that
\nis useful, it would be more useful if it were not a blog but a website
\nwith a different structure.  I say this because if there is one
\nthing that is essential about blogs, that they all have in common, it
\nis not the ease of updating them, not RSS feeds, not the ability to
\npost comments, and not the capability of having a community of users
\nadd content. It is the chronological structure.  Many people are
\nnow using the blog format where a chronological organization is not
\nappropriate to the content they are putting up, for no other reason
\nthan that blogs are hot and there are services supporting them.
\n This is irrational.  I feel that librarians should be a
\nlittle more mature and less inclined to fall for Internet crazes like
\nthis.  That is not to say that a blog is never a useful thing,
\nonly that blogs – as everything on the web – should be seen for what
\nthey are and not in terms of a pre-existing
\nenthusiasm.”<\/p>\n

Some of what Rory says is well taken, particularly that we should not
\nbe quick “to fall for Internet crazes.”  However, all the elements
\nhe names (RSS feeds, community, content) work in concert with
\nchronology; none necessarily trumps the other. And blogs are certainly
\neasier to maintain than websites.  A lot of librarians don’t have
\naccess to
\ntheir own servers or may have to fight battles with IT departments to
\nput up content, not that my own situation reflects that. And a blog,
\nnot just being something “hot,” is
\ndynamic and can promote the library’s services.  Most of
\nthe blogs that I read either promote a special topic (e.g. Library
\nStuff, the (sci-tech) Library Question, Kept-up Academic Librarian,
\nLibrary Stuff, Open Access News, Research Buzz) or a personal viewpoint
\non selective topics
\n(Confessions of a Science Librarian, Christina’s Library Rant, j’s
\nscratchpad, to name only a few.)  (And what’s the matter with RSS
\nfeeds, anyway?)  Besides, is the chronological
\nformat ideal for Library Juice?  It has been operating in
\nblog-like fashion, albeit edited and consolidated with considerable
\ncare.  Finally I would take from Rory’s comments that the
\nchronology and the content must work together.  Whatever we put in
\nour blogs shouldn’t be left to rot and should be reasonably, easily
\naccessible (I have a lot of work to do on the latter,
\nadmittedly.)  Librarians should blog, but also keep in mind
\npotential audience, and Walt Crawford’s dictum “First have something to
\nsay.”  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I enjoy Rory Litwin’s Library Juice, a one-of-a-kind, bi-weekly newsletter that focuses on progressive issues in librarianship, especially intellectual freedom.  It’s wonderful reading and Rory is much to be praised for his time and ingenuity.  The following paragraph  made me pause, however: “… so many people, librarians included, have started their own blogs for no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weblogs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":689,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/rihlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}