This is a two-part post: A question today, the answer in a day or two (or three…)
The question: What do each of these lists have in common, other than all being liblogs, and what could you reasonably generalize from each of them taken in isolation?
- Catalogablog, Commentary from Carl Grant, The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, Information Literacy Weblog, OA Librarian, Open Access News, CogSci Librarian, Coyle’s InFormation, Digitization 101, Filipino Librarian, The Handheld Librarian, The Information Literacy Land of Confusion, It’s all good, Killin’ time being lazy, The Laughing Librarian, A LIBRARIAN AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, Librarian on the edge, Library Marketing-Thinking Outside the Book, Library Stories: Libraries & Librarians in the News, LibraryThing, Museum 2.0, OPL Plus (not just for OPLs anymore), Out of the Jungle, Peter Scott’s Library Blog, Rambling Librarian :: Incidental Thoughts of a Singapore Liblogarian, ricklibrarian, School Librarian in Action, Stephen Gallant Review, UK Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Blog, User Education Resources for Librarians, AbsTracked, Baby Boomer Librarian, BookBitchBlog, Borderland Tales, Carolyne’s pages of interest, The Centered Librarian, A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy, Connie Crosby, The Cool Librarian, DigiCMB, Eagle Dawg Blog, Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services, frontier librarian, Game On: Games in Libraries, Gather No Dust, The Gypsy Librarian, Heretical Librarian, The In Season Christian Librarian, info NeoGnostic, Information Junk
- Stephen’s Lighthouse, 025.431: The Dewey blog, ©ollectanea, Academic Librarian, beSpacific, Confessions of a Science Librarian, The Days & Nights of the Lipstick Librarian!, eFoundations, explodedlibrary.info, The Good Library Blog, Government Info Pro, Hectic Pace, Law Librarian Blog, Library 2.0: An Academic’s Perspective, LibraryLaw Blog, mamamusings, Outgoing, RSS4Lib, The Ubiquitous Librarian, Bluestalking, bookshelves of doom, Cataloging Futures, Christina’s LIS Rant, The Distant Librarian, DrWeb’s Domain, The Kept-Up Academic Librarian, Loomware – Crafting New Libraries, Metalogue, Professional-Lurker: Comments by an academic in cyberspace, reeling and writhing, Science Library Pad, SciTech Library Question, Superpatron – Friends of the Library, for the net, Tinfoil + Raccoon, Tom Roper’s Weblog, Creating the One-shot Library Workshop, Feel-good Librarian, Lady Crumpet’s Armoire, Librarian of Fortune, Marcus’ World, Phil Bradley’s weblog, Slow Library, T. Scott, Weibel Lines
- Arnold Digital, David Lee King, Everybody’s Libraries, Free Range Librarian, librarian.net, ResourceShelf, The Shifted Librarian, ACRL Insider, ACRLog, alliance virtual library, Be openly accessible or be obscure, Beyond the Job, Blisspix.net, BlogJunction, blogwithoutalibrary.net, blyberg.net, Caveat Lector, checking out and checking in, Disruptive Library Technology Jester, The FRBR Blog, The Galecia Group, hangingtogether.org, iLibrarian, In the Library with the Lead Pipe, Info Career Trends, Infoblog, Information Wants To Be Free, j’s scratchpad, Librarian In Black, LibrarianActivist.org, librariesinteract.info, Library clips, Library Garden, Library Juice, Library Monk, Library Web Chic, libraryassessment.info, LibraryPlanet.com, LITA Blog, Nodalities blog, Online Insider, The Other Librarian, Panlibus, PLA Blog, PomeRantz, ResearchBuzz, The Search Principle blog, Slaw, Tame the Web, UK Web Focus
Guesses? Certainties? Would you be right or wrong about any of the generalizations?
Added October 4, 2009: And here’s the answer…
Hmm, for a moment, I thought if I looked at this long enough something would “pop out,” you know, like one of those magic eye things. But serious, if I had to say, the third list/set seems to be a blend of the high end celebrity libloggers who are also very technologically inclined. But there is also a certain activist streak: Info Wants to be free, Library Juice, Librarian.net, Free Range Lib, which, except for Lib Juice (based on what I read on his blog) also are technologically inclined and fairly high end.
If nothing else, I did learn there are a lot of librarian blogs out there. That is one huge list overall. I will wait to see what else you post.
Best, and keep on blogging.
Angel–nah, this is just a slice of the liblogs out there–I was aiming for three lists of 50 blogs each, but the second one doesn’t quite have 50 in it. And the study I’m working on includes 521–down from over 600 last year, partly because I deliberately made it a smaller sample.
Other than that, deponent sayeth not. At least for now.
In each group, I’ve actually met the same number of the bloggers in person: 4.
That’s probably not what you had in mind, though.
John: I like that one–it’s something all three have in common, as opposed to what unites each of the three lists.
List 1: Blogger/Blogspot
List 2: Movable Type/Typepad
List 3: WordPress
Oh, and the people in the first list are thrifty, the people in the second list are loyal beyond reason and/or behind the times, and the people in the third list are made of solid gold awesome.
Steve’s first answer is right–and the point, if any, is that you could build a reasonably good “representative sample” of liblogs from any one of those lists and accidentally assume that the program in question is used by most libloggers.
(Well, it would be tough with MovableType/Typepad…)
As to the second answer: Some of the people in the second list use MovableType because they’re required to do so for other, entirely sound, reasons. I speak from recent experience.
On the other hand, Angel raised an interesting conjecture, and in the post I do later today (or tomorrow), revealing this answer and giving some stats, I may investigate that a little further: E.g., among blogs with high Google Page Ranks (the easiest surrogate for high-profile blogs), are the percentages markedly different?
Hi Walt, before I read Steve’s answer (and your confirmation), I had two guesses. One was it had something to do with the frequency of postings of those blogs. Two was the degree of library-related content of the blogs in each list. But now I’m not so sure. I might have missed the point entirely! Will read your posts to find out.
Ivan: I love the conjectures, but (as in the followup post) it’s nothing that interesting. I’m working on the “frequency of posts” chapter now. As to degree of library-related content…that’s the kind of subjective evaluation that I don’t feel capable of doing. (Quite apart from the fact that, personally, I like “mixed” blogs, blogs that mix professional commentary with personal notes.)