Decline in Web4Lib message volume

[frogheart.6290431 at bloglines.com]

Some of the decline may be due to the rise of blogs. Folks who might have
penned a longish post to a list might now instead write an entry in their
blog. Here I am using an e-mail account courtesy of my Bloglines account to
respond to your message. Thanks to spam and viruses, I've been trying to keep
connected via blogs (my own and others) and my Bloglines feed aggegator. I
used to subscribe to 4-5 e-mail lists using my work e-mail account; now I
use Bloglines to get e-mail accounts I can use to subscribe. Bloglines then
allows me to view e-mail list postings in the same way that I view RSS feeds.


As far as e-mail list postings go, I've barely done any myself since launching
my blog (http://www.teachinglibrarian.org/weblog/blogger.html) last year.


Of course, blogs have only started to take off noticeably in the past year;
that doesn't account for the drop off in Web4Lib postings since 1997. But
it may be part of the picture (albeit a later part of the picture).

Stephen
Francoeur
Information Services Librarian
Newman Library
Baruch College

New York, NY 10024