As I’ve been finishing the draft of Chapter 11 (the final chapter, but Chapter 1 isn’t begun yet and the others all need revision), I’ve thought about one topic that could deserve a special discussion in Chapter 1, but won’t. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s call it “The AutoCompanyBlogger“–for a couple of reasons, neither of them terribly compelling.
In practice, I’m not discussing bloggers this time around, only blogs: Blogger’s names only appear in cases where the blogger and the blog name are identical, e.g. David Lee King. (And this year’s index will only have entries for David Lee King, not King, David Lee–because, again, I’m not discussing bloggers as such.)
TACB, for short, is a special case.
Most libloggers have one blog, or sometimes participate in a shared blog. A fair number have two (or control one and participate in one shared one). Several have three. A couple might even have four or five.
TACB has at least 22 blogs. Six of them are represented in the study. Two more could be, if I’d ever encountered them anywhere during the study. The other 14 are sufficiently removed from library interests that I’d probably never encounter them under normal circumstances.
Five of the blogs are active, sort of–that is, five have at least one post in 2010.
More typical patterns:
- Four posts over three months.
- 26 posts over two months.
- Eight posts over three months.
- Thirteen posts over three months.
- Nine posts over two months
- 27 posts over three months.
- Seven posts over four months.
- Three posts over one month.
- Four posts over three months
- One post over one month–two of those, actually.
- No posts whatsoever: A blog that doesn’t even have a “hello world” post!
The unfortunate thing about all this is that the blogger comes up with some fairly good blog titles, which then are essentially unavailable to bloggers who actually have something to say about the topics.
Of the blogs that made it into the study, one is active and visible enough to be a Group 1 (Core) blog, among the 500 liblogs currently most active. Three more make it into Group 3, the blogs that are essentially invisible and/or inactive, but have had at least one post in the past six months. The other two are in Group 4, apparently defunct. Of the two I didn’t pick up but could have, one would be in Group 4, one would be in Group 3.
And maybe that’s more than needs to be said about TACB. You can probably guess what platform all 22 of the blogs are on (if there are others on another platform, I’ve been spared knowledge of them).
Am I suggesting TACB should stop founding so damn many blogs? Not really; that’s TACB’s business, and I already know TACB’s response when criticized about any of his/her/its/their self-publicity or other activities. I found the whole thing amusing, but probably not bookworthy. But hey, it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m too lazy/tired to do anything productive…
