Blogging communities
So, blogs can provide entertainment, alternative news and practice writing. However, because of the inherent community (between casual readers, subscribers and authors) built-in, blogging can be important for education and research as well.
There exists a community of authors who blog to discuss daily encounters with patrons and keep in contact with colleagues: Librarians.
In the article “Talkin’ Blogs” from the Library Journal, librarian-bloggers are interviewed about why they blog. This ought to carry weight with anyone reading, because while I try to make a case about blogs being literary, these bloggers are actually literature and research experts. Brian Kenny and Michael Stephens ask library bloggers to discuss “the impact of their work:” they discovered that the library bloggers established a community by trading stories (they get plenty of odd questions at the reference desk) and reference content. Now, this is an ingenious use of a tool many think of as a simple diary, from Aaron Schmidt, a reference librarian:
Other librarians interviewed in the article mention the blog as a news feed for fellow librarian’s pets subjects and simply as a means to organize content. This group demonstrates that there is more to the blog than writing – there is communication, interactivity, and research resulting.
Of course, there are other specialized communities that exist for the sake of entertainment (if one is a LiveJournal user, one can easily joint communities for fashion, TV, movies, etc) and experiences (see the Expat Blog).
One may (in a clichéd term) refer to everyone who blogs as a member of the blogging community (the blogosphere) but what I’d like to note is that communities exist between people who have more in common than simply blogging.
There exists a community of authors who blog to discuss daily encounters with patrons and keep in contact with colleagues: Librarians.
In the article “Talkin’ Blogs” from the Library Journal, librarian-bloggers are interviewed about why they blog. This ought to carry weight with anyone reading, because while I try to make a case about blogs being literary, these bloggers are actually literature and research experts. Brian Kenny and Michael Stephens ask library bloggers to discuss “the impact of their work:” they discovered that the library bloggers established a community by trading stories (they get plenty of odd questions at the reference desk) and reference content. Now, this is an ingenious use of a tool many think of as a simple diary, from Aaron Schmidt, a reference librarian:
Schmidt: We got a grant from the State of Illinois to digitize local history material… Residents and past residents send us comments and basically annotate our data with more information about the houses that they live in… it really has added value. It’s been really good for community building.
Other librarians interviewed in the article mention the blog as a news feed for fellow librarian’s pets subjects and simply as a means to organize content. This group demonstrates that there is more to the blog than writing – there is communication, interactivity, and research resulting.
Of course, there are other specialized communities that exist for the sake of entertainment (if one is a LiveJournal user, one can easily joint communities for fashion, TV, movies, etc) and experiences (see the Expat Blog).
One may (in a clichéd term) refer to everyone who blogs as a member of the blogging community (the blogosphere) but what I’d like to note is that communities exist between people who have more in common than simply blogging.
posted by KK at 3:34 PM
2 Comments:
Very best site. Keep working. Will return in the near future.
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Your are Nice. And so is your site! Maybe you need some more pictures. Will return in the near future.
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