Rachel Singer Gordon has an interesting idea, but I’m afraid I can only half-participate.
The half: I can name five blogs that I subscribe to that aren’t liblogs. Are they entirely non-library-related? That’s a tough call. Some are blogs that can and do serve as source material for essays in Cites & Insights. Some aren’t. You tell me.
- Good Math, Bad Math by Mark Chu-Carroll (was at IBM, will be at Google) is interesting if you’re a little bit of a math geek, but also for his occasional deconstruction of nonsensical arguments that use math badly. Part of scienceblogs, which has some really interesting alternatives. (I started out college intending to be a math major. Life changes.)
- Many2Many, a group weblog on social software. One participant–Liz Lawley–is an old friend and wise soul. One participant (Clay Shirky) drives me nuts at times, but certainly has interesting things to say even if I frequently disagree and think he tends toward easy and defective generalizations. The others, certainly including danah boyd, are also interesting.
- “Seth Finkelstein’s Infothought blog (DMCA, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics).” For some reason, this is in my library cluster, maybe because of Finkelstein’s censorware work. Always provocative, frequently research-based. Great coverage of the Wikipedia “credentials” brouhaha…
- Freedom to Tinker by Ed Felten (with occasional contributions from his grad students and coworkers). DMCA and more, from the man who could have been a test case for the absurdity of some DMCA provisions. Always worth reading.
- Improbable Research from the IgNobel people (the Annals of Improbable Research and the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists). Just because.
What I can’t/won’t do: use “fiveblogs” as a tag. I don’t do tags.
