Thanks for the expansion–and, as expanded, I don’t disagree. Now, if I knew why your post was flagged as Spam! (Fortunately, I check the Spam list before deleting anything.)

Probably the two links and fact that you haven’t commented here in quite a while…

Liblogs do include some overpersonal instances, or have at times. I remember one blog in particular, no longer around; details aren’t important. Fortunately, such blogs are relatively rare in this field.

It’s not really a matter of someone working out who you might be, though. If someone is a big fan of a pseudononymous blog, they can often work out at least roughly who and where the author is. It’s more about protecting your googleability, and controlling what your parents, friends, exes, and future (possible) employers find out about you (and when). The moment your real name is on a blog, it will come up (close to) first on Google when someone searches for your name. That’s got to be a very deliberate decision on your part.

There are some interests and hobbies you might not want your patrons and colleagues to know about, but you might want to put on the internet anyway. A dear friend of mine, a faculty member in Vancouver specializing in medieval literature, also happens to write bawdy fanfiction about television show characters, and is extremely popular in that subculture. She does not attach her real name to that blog, and while those of us who know her well know about it and can see her real self through that persona’s blog, her students and parents and colleagues can’t google her and read about her television musings. She was profiled in a national newspaper a couple of years ago, a full page spread about her hobby and issues around copyright/intellectual property. But still, no real name. She thought about what it might mean, and hedged her bets. Lots of people have been fired for the contents of their blogs, rightly or wrongly.

But as noted by the age thing, I mostly recommend pseudonyms for teenagers and undergrads. I’m sure you’ve heard about the issues around facebook, where young folks think that no one will ever find their drunken party pictures or their jealous break-up musings. The librarian blogosphere doesn’t really contain these things, but the blogosphere in general is stuffed of those kinds of mostly-personal blogs. Stopping to think about these issues is pretty key to information literacy in 2008; not the literacy skills needed to necessary find information (though it surely relates to understanding how information is found), but the ones needed when creating information.

Well said, by the way and also the only nit I could pick with her words.

Also, thank you ever so much for this:

“… Let me think about the circle of libloggers who really would revise their blogging style or coverage based on reader polls.

Hmm. If such a circle exists, I don’t believe there’s any overlap with the other two circles–or at least I hope there isn’t.”

That so made my day!