ABCD WWW Working Group Meeting
Several of the bloggers affiliated with the Thursday Meetings at Berkman blog group spoke
at the ABCD WWW working group meeting on Wednesday, October 13. Here are links to their blogs:
- Wendy Koslow
- Bill Ives
- Rebecca MacKinnon
- David Weinberger
- Jessica “j” Baumgart (you are on her blog now)
Other links of note from the discussion:
- Where to go to create a new blog on Harvard’s blog server
- Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog (the group that meets at the Berkman Center at 7 pm on Thursday nights to talk about blogging)
- Harvard Weblog Support Yahoo! Group
- Frassle
- How to Pick Blog Software
About ten people attended this meeting and asked very good questions. We began by talking about some of the technical issues, like how to pick blog software, how to begin, blogging on your own server vs. someone else’s, and negotiating with server administrators.
The question about using blogs versus a discussion group came up, too. (I’ve gotten this question before and I thought I blogged about it, but if I did, I can’t find it now.) Some of the advantages to a blog are having search capabilities, instant archiving, perhaps some way to organize the material (like using categories) besides threads alone, blogs are better for certain kinds of content (like sharing Web-based resources). A lot of the decision to use one over the other depends on the audience and what the goal of the discussion is. If it’s a public blog, people outside of the group might interact with the group.
One man asked something about the “top 100 blogs everyone reads” and how true that is. David Weinberger addressed his comment initially, refering to Clay Shirky. I made the point that popularity depends on what blog readers are after and what bloggers are doing. With this blog, for example, I’m one of the few news librarians with a public blog about that profession, so a number of people read me because of their interested in my thoughts on the profession and the resources I share here. This blog is definitely not among the top 100, but a few readers find it worth visiting. There are many circles like that out there in the blogosphere. Certain people flock to certain blogs because they find them valuable.
We talked a little bit about students and classes using blogs, but there aren’t that many examples we know of here at Harvard. Rebecca shared the gw north korea blog, which is run by some students at George Washington University. I mentioned John Norvell, an anthropology professor who has attended several blog group meetings. I don’t know if he has a blog.
Wendy covered collaboration on student blogs nicely by talking about how a student writing on her own blog for class has her own space as opposed to sharing space with others on a group blog or a discussion list. She can read what other students in the class think or have to say and they can interact with each other online. Discussion group interactions aren’t always as public or archived. It’s easy to respond to someone offlist, but it isn’t always easy to respond to someone offblog.
We also talked a little bit about anonymous blogging and credibility. Over drinks, we talked about people getting fired for blogging, why librarians should care about blogging, and some other topics tangential to the discussion at the meeting.
