Blogs

A Brief Description:
Weblogs, or "Blogs" are web pages that contain entries or posts. They are often short, often updated and they are in chronological order according to when the post was originally entered (though the creator can manipulate this to organize the page and make it appear in the manner they desire). Blogs are frequently rather informal, so that they show a certain amount of personality--and they are often from one point of view, so that they can also be biased. They are easy to use--both as a place to post, and in terms of responses to those articles, which readers can make by posting their own comments. Blogs are actually very interactive. Blogs make many potentially confusing and complicated transactions obsolete. They do not require their creators to know HTML (they work similar to WYSIWYGs, like Nvu--so that the HTML is inserted or incorporated into the document for the creator based on buttons that are pushed, like "insert link" etc). They also do not require their creators to know how to do file transfers, and (this would make Krug happy) the web designs are integrated into the blog site so that the creator has a number of templates to choose from. They are "protected from their own 'bad taste' in web design" (SIRLS 571 Unit 5 Part 3 lecture, "Blogs"). Here is a link to the Social Epistemology Blog I recently created with two classmates for a group project.

Use in a Library:
Libraries use blogs to engage in social networking, to post important or interesting news, to make people aware of events, technologies, and search options at the library, for marketing purposes, to accomplish epistemological goals through knowledge and information sharing and to reach out to the larger community (this may include elements of marketing, awareness or epistemological activities as well).

Expected Social Impact of the Technology:
Weblogs are, by and large, a technological social medium. They have a great potential for information sharing and can help greatly with the epistemological goals of making information and knowledge accessible in a way that is reliable, powerful, fecund and speedy. Although with all things created on the Internet, it can be difficult to determine whether the information presented in a blog is absolutely reliable (as they often present just one, and a very specific, point of view), they can be a place to start in research. They, then, can be a great tool in students' or researchers' information seeking behavior. For someone who delves deeply they can be a starting point in the research that helps the explorer to gain a larger picture of a subject. For those who tend to do their research in a more shallow way, they can contain all of the essential facts that are needed to fulfill an assignment--though as stated before, it is best that research is begun with blogs until it is known what kind of authority the blog exhibits. Still, blogs can be a useful tool in helping researchers to think about a subject and organize it into a way that is understandable to themselves. They can gain access to other sources through blogs--many of which list sources. They can also be a medium of discussion through the comments that others can post about the subject, and in some instances can serve as a wonderful tool for computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) within organizations such as businesses, libraries, schools, etc. In a world of debate over the status of what the current state of copyright should be, the blog can be a beacon of disintermediation, taking out the middleman in copyright--the publisher. I believe that many blogsites, such as blogger (which I am now using), uses Creative Commons share alike licenses to publish the blogs that people create using their site. As has been intimated in the discussion above, blogs can also foster free inquiry about, and access to, information about myriad subjects and can be a great powerhouse of knowledge sharing and interaction.