Blogging, Ethics, and Journalism: Where We Fit In

[K.G. Schneider]

(feel free to forward to interested parties)

Dear librarian colleagues,

Friday and Saturday, 1/21-1/22, I am participating in a conference on
Blogging, Ethics, and Journalism, nicknamed Webcred. (Here's the page for
the webcast, which links to the about pages, etc.:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/webcred/index.php?p=12 )

For those of you who follow my blog, Free Range Librarian, you know I
basically got myself "invited" to this conference by pointing out to the
right people that ALA was a cosponsor but "we were underwriting a conference
to which we were sending no bloggers, journalists, or (outside of OITP
staff) librarians. ALA doesn't have a blog, either, making its sponsorship
of this conference doubly ironic." 

Overall, as I follow the preconference discussions (both public and
private), what I notice the most is a dearth of emphasis on what journalists
call readers and what we call users, patrons, etc., as well as some fairly
lofty assumptions about the capabilities of the typical end-user. I also
have some skepticism that all of our concerns about blogs and quality
information are answered by "transparency," and I'm not quite willing to let
go of objectivity, either. 

I've posted some of my preconference thoughts on my blog, and would love to
get your input any time before the conference ends--preferably on the blog.
Note that I have comment moderation enabled to keep the spammers unhappy so
that comments won't show up until I'm somewhere online where I can see them,
unless you have a Typekey username, in which case your posts will show up
immediately. You can post to:

http://freerangelibrarian.com  You'll see several posts of relevance.

I encourage you to post your thoughts to these lists, as well, but I'd like
to be able to point to one place where I can say "librarians said..."

I know this is short notice; I was only invited late last week, and only
asked to say something (gulp!) two days ago, in the heat of ALA conference
stuff.  Thanks for your thoughts on any of this. I will write a follow-up
article, either for my blog and/or the library press, if they're interested.

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com