Blogging Around

This blog is a highly ambitious guide to library technology for the following reasons:

1) Its author knows next to nothing about libraries.
2) Its author knows next to nothing about technology.
3) Its author has, to this point, been skeptical of the value of blogs.

All very auspicious, as far as beginnings go.

And already I've misspoken. I know that like any technology, the value of a blog depends entirely on its user. It probably goes without saying that for professionals, a blog can be as valuable a resource as a trade journal or a listserv. What I really mean to say is that I'm suspicious of the utopian enthusiasm (which often cumulates in grand statements about Democracy and/or Community) that tends to go hand in hand with each new development in the "Web 2.0" frontier. The same rhetoric has often followed major advances in communications technology, and the internet is no more likely to enlighten humanity than the telephone did.

I would say, then, that my reluctance to follow blogs stems from the glut of resources available. Pitchfork Media, my favorite on-line source for music news, ran an enthusiastic feature a few months back predicting the demise of criticism: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/39527-column-get-that-out-of-your-mouth-30

Although the author reluctantly concludes that critics are still needed to produce "compelling, original and well-argued writing", that's the entire reason I consult Pitchfork (and indirectly support their advertising) in the first place. I want to read well thought out opinions and I don't want to sift through thousands of opinions that I don't entirely trust. Five billion people don't suddenly become Lester Bangs just because they got a free blog and start writing reviews (not that the blog you're currently reading isn't skewing the ratio more towards noise than signal).

To bring this somewhat long-winded rant back to FIS 1311, I will make one of my goals for this class to push aside my prejudice against blogging and to get into the habit of consulting insightful blogs. Besides, if there's one thing I know about librarians, it's that we know how to pull the right resources from a near-overwhelming number of choices.