Blogs... [Was 99.9% of web sites obsolete?]

[Blake Carver]

>:: Perhaps this explains why blogging has become so popular--it's taking
>:: the content back to people, rather than professional media producers. I 
>wonder if those
>:: whose serve on standards committees bother thinking about this, or 
>whether they just
>:: consider agreement upon a standard--any standard--to be a sufficient 
>democratizing tool.

Hopefully this will answer Russell's question, and address others.

I'm sure you are correct on taking the content back to the people. While 
most blogs don't really create their own news, rather they point to 
something that is most likely created by professional media producers, 
blogs tend to point to a much wider variety of that content.

So rather than just seeing what CNN is reporting, you see all the major 
networks, plus, news from all around the world you would've never seen had 
you been stuck with just CNN, or any of the other networks. Check out 
metafilter.com, they do a wonderful job of this.

Better yet, you can find a blog that specializes in news that interests 
you, like "librarian and information science news", and you get interesting 
stories from all over as they relate to libraries. Some of the best blogs 
will also allow commenting and open discussion, which can be a wonderful 
addition to every story. These blogs form a sort of "informative community" 
where all the members work to inform everyone else.


Whether or not those who serve on standards committees bother thinking 
about this "democratizing" effect I don't know. I've never considered it, 
but that is certainly a great point.


Not to turn this into an ad for my work, but....
Gary Price and I will be presenting on blogs in libraries at Internet 
Librarian in Palm Springs this fall.
and I run a little librarian blog at www.lisnews.com , many other librarian 
blogs are out there as well, librarian.net being the oldest and best known, 
I would think.



------------------------------------------
Blake Carver
Web Librarian
The Ohio State University Libraries
     See Also:
     www.LISNews.com