Blogs: What are they and why blog?

Weblogs, or blogs, have some key characteristics:

• Blogs have posts which may contain text, links, pictures or embedded media. This (what you are reading) is a blog post.
• The posts are published one at a time, over a period of time.
• The blog entries are arranged in reverse chronological oder (most recent first)
• Blogs are often written by one person, but there are also collaborative blogs

If you are unfamiliar with blogs, you may want to watch this video: http://www.commoncraft.com/video/blogs

There are various kinds of blog, for example:

• Personal diaries
• Information or knowledge blogs (e.g. http://www.intranetfocus.com/blog, http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/)
• Corporate blogs (e.g. http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/)
• Opinion or issue-based blogs (e.g. http://www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk/blog/)
• Educational blogs (e.g. the ones for this class)

Here are some articles, and one book, that explain why and how blogging is useful for business and in libraries:

• Cohen, H. (2013, January 20). Blogging ROI: 15 Ways Blogs Make Money [Web log post]. Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://heidicohen.com/blogging-roi-15-ways-blogs-make-money/ (Short article from a consultant)
• Crosby, C. (2010) Effective blogging for libraries. London, England: Facet.
  
• Li, C. and Stromberg, C. (2007) The ROI of blogging. Retrieved 20 September 2013 from http://www.ieecho.com/pdfs/ROI-of-Blogging.pdf (A Forrester report on the Return on Investment of corporate blogging)
  
• Liao, Q. et al. (2011) Enterprise blogging in a global context: comparing Chinese and American practices. CSCW ’11 Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer Supported Coperative Work, pp35-44. Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1958824.1958831
  
• Potter, N. (2010) Everything you've ever wanted to know about library blogs and blogging! Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://thewikiman.org/blog/?p=783 (Includes “thewikiman’s” seminar materials)
  
• Yardi, S. Golder, S. and Brzozowski, M. (2009). Blogging at work and the corporate attention economy. CHI '09 Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems ACM. Retrieved 20 September from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1519016

Blogging can also be a subject for your research. A number of Masters students in the Sheffield University iSchool have written Masters dissertations which include investigations of blogging e.g.

• Wang, J. (2011) Use of blogging, social networking sites and microblogging for knowledge sharing, focusing on Information Management students in group work. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 29 September 2013 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2010-11/External/JWang_100220696.pdf
  
• Bullingham, L. (2010) What would Goffman think about furries?: Persona adoption and identity masking in blogs and second life. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 29 September 2013 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2009-10/External/LBullingham_Bullingham_090125096.pdf
  
• Evans, I (2008) An evaluation of the user experiences of web 2.0 tools and technologies amongst NHS staff. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 29 September 2013 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2007-08/External/Evans_Ingrid_MScHI.pdf
  
• Rigby, A. (2007) Looking for freedom: An exploration of the Iranian blogosphere. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 29 September 2013 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2006-07/External/Rigby_Alexis_MALib.pdf

Please do add comments if you have examples of useful blogs, or want to say why you blog.