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Mar. 23rd, 2005 12:16 pmBlake of Lisnews posted a list of things that Michael Gorman got right, namely:
1. Bloggers Ain’t Editors
2. Blogging is not always scholarly
3. We are boosters and hopeful
4. We do move too fast
5. Some of us are fanatical digitalists
4. We are quick to judge and criticize
5. Our writing tends to be short and emotional
6. Sometimes we only need random facts and paragraphs
(This is just his headings; read the entry for details).
But what comes out loud and clear in Blake's entry is what I think is wonderful about bloggers -- and why I think so many librarians blog. Bloggers, you see, can be excellent analyzers of information. Blake took Gorman's overly-defensive ramblings, parsed out what was valuable, and recreated it as a readable annotated list of things to notice. Many bloggers do the same thing with difficult-to-follow news stories.
You see, bloggers, like librarians, can be excellent at Internet collection development. That is, they see what's available, decide what will be most valuable to their readers, and make it available (usually, unlike other repackagers of information such as online newspapers, with direct links to whatever the source of the controversy actually is), and then provide annotations and explanations.
The substantial difference is that in most cases the blogger has an explicit bias and the librarian tries not to.
1. Bloggers Ain’t Editors
2. Blogging is not always scholarly
3. We are boosters and hopeful
4. We do move too fast
5. Some of us are fanatical digitalists
4. We are quick to judge and criticize
5. Our writing tends to be short and emotional
6. Sometimes we only need random facts and paragraphs
(This is just his headings; read the entry for details).
But what comes out loud and clear in Blake's entry is what I think is wonderful about bloggers -- and why I think so many librarians blog. Bloggers, you see, can be excellent analyzers of information. Blake took Gorman's overly-defensive ramblings, parsed out what was valuable, and recreated it as a readable annotated list of things to notice. Many bloggers do the same thing with difficult-to-follow news stories.
You see, bloggers, like librarians, can be excellent at Internet collection development. That is, they see what's available, decide what will be most valuable to their readers, and make it available (usually, unlike other repackagers of information such as online newspapers, with direct links to whatever the source of the controversy actually is), and then provide annotations and explanations.
The substantial difference is that in most cases the blogger has an explicit bias and the librarian tries not to.
