I wasn’t planning on updating this blog today, but then I realized the date - which happens to be the exploded library’s first birthday.
I started this blog as a lark. I was writing an article on blogs and thought that the best way to really understand what blogs are about was to make one of my own. During the past year, my intentions have changed a number of times, as have the content & style of this blog.
I am surprised that this I’m still doing this. The blogosphere seems even more transitory than the rest of the web - better blogs than mine have arrived and then faded in the past year. I think that this is because blogging is so personal. Even if a blog isn’t about personal events, its oxygen supply is dependent on the blogger’s personal life, which we often don’t know about.
Here are some important happenings of the past year: Switching to Salon blogs; switching to blogging on my iMac; taking a few more risks with my content - especially about political issues. Most importantly, it has been slowly discovering what I really want to do. I prefer to take a limited number of issues and look at those from a slightly different angle. Maybe this is looking at the law as a librarian, or viewing library issues with a legal eye. Viewing the US against my Australian perspective, or commenting on Australia from my viewpoint as an ex pat who's living across the Pacific. This blog is about ambivalence as much as it’s about law libraries.
So what’s on the horizon for the next year? Hopefully more regular updating. I know that Google prefers it when I update every day or so - but that doesn’t fit in with my temperament and circumstances. I find myself very attracted to writing a lot when the inspiration takes me, and then doing nothing for a little while.
I can promise that I’m not switching this blog to Movable Type - which everyone else seems to be doing - not unless they make an idiot proof version. I may consider switching to iBlog. I’d like to personalize this blog even further with some of my own graphics.
Input into this blog - I have a low tolerance for information overload and if I added every worthy blog or news source into my aggregator, I would never get anything done. That said, I would like my aggregator to be dynamic and up-to-date while still manageable.
I want more value-added content. Although bare links (called "mere mentions" in this blog) and unsubstantiated rants have their place, they are more ephemeral than pieces which combine links and the other fruits of research with analysis, commentary and opinion. This also shows how librarians can add value in the exploded library. I plan to be updating my article on news aggregators (which thanks to Yahoo, gives me a large proportion of my hits).
Most importantly, I still want to be blogging in another year.
Music: Björk, Live at the Royal Opera House DVD, Human Behaviour
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