I’ve been blogging for 5 years now, and I’ve only just started to really think about why. No, that’s not entirely right. In 2001, you didn’t need a good reason to blog. In 2006, I think you do, and with the premiere of MPOW’s blogs, I’ve been thinking about my reasons and the reasons for libraries to blog. Allow me to elaborate. (Or bail out now and go read someone else’s blog.)
I originally started blogging because…well, because I had friends with blogs who were egging me on to start a blog myself. I’d been wanting a website of my own, having no less vanity than most people you’d meet (and a finger or two more at certain times of the year). I wanted to post poetry and prose I was writing at the time (or, more often the case, planning to write at some point), which meant a website with changing content. Blogs were the easiest way to do that, so I got my own domain (www.goblin-cartoons.com, and the reason why I chose that name is a whole nother not very interesting story), signed up with free, not-yet-owned-by-the-Google-Monster Blogger, and gave the whole thing a go.
Flash forward to today and look at all the tools we have to create and manage dynamic content on the internet: blogs, wikis, mashups, etc. We’re positively swimming in dynamic content! If you know your onions, you use the right tool for the job.
So, why keep up a blog? What’s a blog good for that other tools aren’t?
I don’t write much poetry these days, but over the years I’ve found that I like writing short rants and raves, ponderings, narrative sketches, feuilletons. A blog is berries for that–but you could do that with a wiki, too, right? Where blogs really shine is in the pairing of posts and comments. Like peanut butter and jelly, blog posts and comments are a delicious and delightful combination, and one is not nearly as good without the other. When you have blog posts and comments, you don’t just get to publish your blatherings, you get feedback from friends and strangers. You get conversations. Ephemeral, yet archived and preserved for posterity, conversations. I’m something of a nut for conversations. And you get these posts and conversations delivered in a hot-off-the-presses fashion. When a blog is updated, it’s immediately obvious. “This just in: Josh has more to say about Library 2.0! Wait, we’ve got another update: someone’s commented on yesterday’s rant, calling Josh a lamebrained gasbag!” Being impatient, I’m a fan of immediacy, too.
What does this mean for libraries? Blogs are immediate conversations between the library and the public, ephemeral but preserved. Wow! You can have conversations with your public face-to-face, over the telephone, through snailmail and email and instant messaging. With blogs, you can have conversations that are preserved and on display, immediate and eternal, like a fly in amber.
And what does this mean for me? I get to have immediate, ephemeral, preserved conversations with friends, with family, with fellow librarians who I’ve never met face-to-face. It’s something I love to do, and blogs are the tops for that.
So here I am, saying my piece. Anyone want to join in on the conversation? Yeah, that’s what I thought.