explodedlibrary.info

Blogging in the winter

Last week, Kathryn Greenhill asked, “Where have all the bloggers gone?”

It was a short but compelling post. It also got me thinking about this issue.

• To start with, we (readers and writers of the Biblioblogosphere) shouldn’t feel that the decline of blogging is limited to our small patch of Blogosphere. From my reading, I think that the decline in blogging is universal – so far as blogs go. I don’t know if it’s a consolation that it’s not just us who are experiencing this, or if it’s disheartening to find that library people weren’t immune
• Peak blogging was the product of a moment in time, and now this moment has mostly passed
• The rise of the big social media platforms and their changing strategies. The role of Google is particularly interesting.
• Many high profile bloggers are still writing – but some may be doing their writing outside of their amateur and individual blogs
• Fear - the internet is not the friendly place which it seemed to be in the early 2000s. People have lost jobs (or job prospects) and have been sued over their social media activity - including blog posts. To use a gaming term, the risk vs. reward in amateur blogging is unbalanced. There is too much risk for not enough reward.

Then tonight I read another series of posts (which I found via another digital platform, Medium) which said it all for me.

A lot of this difference is on me. I’m older. I have more at stake. But it’s not just me that changed. The internet did too. The internet went from a venue for low stakes experimentation to the place with some of the highest stakes of all. With the rise of online bullying, shaming, and swatting, the internet became emotionally, reputationally, and physically dangerous. It became the dark forest. Our digital breadcrumbs became evidence that could and would be used against us. To keep safe we exercised our right to stay silent and moved underground.
Yancey Strickler (OneZero via Medium.com), Prequel to the Dark Forest

And now what? I know it’s a cliché, but I  think, “It is what it is.”
Things are just different now. The summer was great, but now it's late autumn, going on winter. I want to enjoy it for what it is.

Various readings

Jon Evans (TechCrunch), Where did social media go wrong?

Kathryn Greenhill, Where have all the bloggers gone? Blogjune 2019/11

Alison J. Head, Michele Van Hoeck, Kirsten Hostetler (2017). Why blogs endure: A study of recent college graduates and motivations for blog readership, First Monday, viewed at https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8065/6539

Mathew Ingram (GigaOM), Blogging is very much alive — we just call it something else now

Diane Josefowicz (2015). On (not) talking in the dark: Why I stopped blogging. Biography, 38(2), 307-311. doi: 10.1353/bio.2015.0013

Ben Smith (BuzzFeed), My Life In The Blogosphere

Yancey Strickler (OneZero via Medium.com), Prequel to the Dark Forest

Yancey Strickler (OneZero via Medium.com), The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

June

I like the month of June. I like that some library-type bloggers are doing #blogjune

The one time I tried blogjune, I found it very rewarding- the increased connection with my peers, being challenged to do more.
On the other hand, the post-June blogging hangover was severe for me. I can only speak for myself, but any time I feel obliged (even if it's from my own self-imposed commitment) to do a fun and creative activity, it starts to feel a little like a chore and I chafe against it.

I hope to blog more in June. My plan for June is to rededicate myself to doing some blogging activity most days of the month - which could include reading blogs, commenting on blogs, drafting posts, editing posts and publishing.

I'm not sure if that makes me a part of blogjune this year. If nothing else, I am a blogjune cheerleader. I will definitely be making a point of reading people's blogjune posts. I'm looking forward to adding a new blogjune 2018 blogroll here.

New blogging, new rules

One of the other things which contributed to the end of my blogging last time was a stifling self-censorship. It was a continual monkey on my back and made me second guess everything I wrote. I've been thinking about how I'm going to deal with it this time around. Because if anything, I feel that the imperative for self-censorship is even stronger now

Due to where I am working, I am bound by certain rules which are directly relevant to my blogging and other social media activity. It is safer if I do not even name these rules here, just out of caution that any comment on them may be viewed as critical. This post is not a critique by me of these rules. I accept that these rules apply and I just considering how I can best comply with them.

Please note that even if you have a notion of what rules I am referring to, do not to mention them in any comments on this blog. If there is any way of interpreting your comment as being critical of these rules, I am obligated to delete the comment, or I may be viewed as endorsing the criticism.

You may be wondering, is there any point blogging in this environment? Is everything going to be so sanitised that the only topics I can safely discuss is music and my favourite bands, so long as this music is not too controversial?

To be honest, it would easier and safer for me not to blog in this environment. I have decided it is precisely because of these difficulties, that it has become even more important for me to persist.

Sometimes I'll need to be more vague than I would like to. At other times, I may discuss issues at a fairly high level, despite my preference getting into the nitty gritty details. There will be topics when I will need to try to be neutral to a fault, and not express my own passionately held views. When I blogged before, I set various rules for myself. In the name of self-preservation, all of these rules are going out the window.

Is it all going to be worth it? I hope so. I think that there are still a lot of library and information issues which I can discuss in this environment.

Also, I have developed a safety valve for the words which I feel could problematic. Instead of self-censoring and just not writing them, which tends to just shut down my whole creative process, I am now writing them privately. I hope that one day, the environment may change  and I will be able to publish them. Alternatively, when I change jobs or retire, it's possible that I may be able to publish them then.

I am also open to sharing the full posts on a one-to-one basis via encrypted channels. If you would like to see the non-published version of this post, please email me at [email protected] - except with explodedlibrary in the first part of the address.

I don't want to over-dramatize and over-sell the unpublished content. There are various levels of constraints which bind me. The unpublished blog content is just my response to the most external layer of these constraints, but I still bound by deeper constraints, no matter what format I use. To use a canine analogy: It's not as if I'm unleashed in the unpublished versions of posts, but I'm on a nice extended and retractable leash, not on a short leash.

For what may be obvious reasons, I hope that this is the first and only I will address this issue. I just thought that it was important to draw a big line to separate my current blogging from my past blogging.

 

 

Return of the blog roll

I've just updated my blog design and have changed a few elements, such as adding a new blog roll.
It seems like years since I've ever heard this word said or written, but I want to experiment with bringing it back - albeit slightly differently from how I did things before.

These days, a librarian type blog which is active and has posted within the last year or so is kind of special. I want to do my little bit to help these blogs become known and read. These days we need to help each other out.

I don't want a massive blog roll which overwhelms the layout of this blog, and I don't want it to become a chore to maintain it or feel that it needs to be complete. So instead I want to have a short blog roll of a dozen so, and every so often I'll change it, to highlight different active blogs.

restart

I'm back working in libraries again. It wasn't something which I expected, but an unexpected conjunction of events happened, and here I am!

Absence has made the heart grow fonder. I'm very happy about this change.

In the years before I suspended my blog in 2013, the blog seemed like a chore. It was difficult maintaining a blog about libraries and related issues when I didn't work in a library. Now four and a half years have passed, and so many things are different. I want to write about all sorts of things, including what things are different and what things haven't changed.

There was a time when I was convinced that social media such as Twitter and Facebook were sucking the life out of blogging, especially in terms of readers - and the time and attention span which readers had for blogs. Not to mention my own time and attention span and energy as a writer. Although I think that all this did happen to a certain extent, that's not the only thing that has happened. I would like to think that longer form social media has reached its low water mark, and that things can get better from here.

I even feel more optimistic about the future of working in libraries than I did before. I am currently working in the small library of a government department - the sector known as special libraries. While I was away from libraries, there were some very bad years. I'm not so naïve as to think that this time of contraction is completely over. And I wonder, are special libraries now called special libraries because there are hardly any of us left? Despite all of that, in my own recent personal experience at work, I see more and more people valuing what librarians and libraries can do.

I would like to expand on all of these things in future posts. Not to mention other little things like updating how this blog looks and other design elements.

I restart this blog with no promises to keep to a particular schedule. That said, to maintain something like this completely in my free time will involve recreating some positive habits. Initially I hope to publish weekly, but to write more frequently than that - to give time to draft, edit and tweak various posts.

My very first incarnation as a blogger was to be quite ranty. These days, any person (or bot) is capable of ranting on Twitter or Facebook or Reddit. It's nothing special. So now I'd prefer to be a little more considered.

One aspect of this blog is going to be deliberately old school. I will continue using the same publishing platform I used for most of this blog's existence. On the other hand, I also plan to cross publish this on Medium. I like the possibilities it offers for reaching new readers and interacting with existing ones.

random thoughts about the end of Google Reader

• It's an understatement to say that Google is a rich and powerful company on the internet. Google is reputed to be a very smart company. Scrapping the Google Reader seems to be a public declaration that the days of blogging are numbered. Once I move on from feeling sad about this, and feeling annoyed about the disruption it will cause in my life, I wonder if it will also be a good thing for blogs to be slightly extricated from Google. This company is not infallible - I remember Google Buzz and other misteps.
• It's interesting that Google's focus on Google+ has been provided as the real reason why the Google Reader is being discontinued. I used to use the liking and sharing features on Google Reader, but stopped using these when they were assimilated into Google+. There is no way that I'll be using Google+ more when Google Reader is gone.
• Feedburner will be next - I wonder if losing the Google Reader and Feedburner will cause any disruption in libraries, particularly special libraries?
• Twitter is not the answer - at least for my blog reading. I always appreciate it when people tweet about a new blog post, but the chance that I will always see these tweets is zero. I simply subscribe to too many feeds and I'm not in a work environment where I can keep an eye on them all day. The upshot is that I miss a lot of stuff. Google Reader and other dedicated blog readers made it possible infrequent  readers like me not to miss things. In Twitter and Facebook, the ethos seems to be, "you snooze, you lose."
• I think I'll give NetNewsWire for Mac another go. I used to like it back in the day (2002-04) when it was my main way of reading blogs before I switched to Bloglines and then Google Reader. Although I like Flipboard and other tablet apps, for me it's more important that my blog reading happens in an environment which also allows me to write blog posts (should I feel inspired to do so).
• I don't cull my blog subscriptions frequently. It's not an activity I particularly enjoy, but I have decided to give my subscriptions an autumn cleaning before I leave the Google Reader. There's no point in subscribing to blogs which have become infested with spam posts or haven't been updated since 2007. I'm an occasional blogger and I can make all sorts of arguments that there is no downside to subscribing to an infrequent blogger in RSS, but even I have my limits, and for me that's twelve months. If you haven't posted in a year, I'll assume that you're no longer blogging. I'll also be dropping a few blogs which may still be active, but which I have drifted from in the last few years.
• At first I was shocked when I heard the news about the Google Reader, then angry and then depressed. Now I feel ok about it. Google was so dominant with its Google Reader, I am glad that there will be some diversity in this space again.
• Nonetheless, I will miss using the Google Reader. It was very well done, especially before they integrated it with Google+. But I am also glad that one part of my online life will not be completely dependent on Google.
• When I first started blogging over ten years ago, I was very aware of the disjunction between my online life and everyone else in my life. At the time this disjunction annoyed and frustrated me. But over the years it has gradually eroded and has virtually disappeared, thanks to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Now I kind of miss how it was in those early years when things weren't so integrated. I wonder if this is just regular nostalgia, or could it be that there's something positive to be said for a more fractured life?

ten years ago

Handwritten version of this post

It's been ten years since I started blogging. It wasn't this blog and I didn't call it blogging at first, but that's what it was. I was writing directly online, where anyone could read my words - which were published in reverse chronological order. Everything about this new medium excited me back then.

Now I'm excited by the act of writing this post on paper, in long hand with a fountain pen. It seems almost subversive.

This form of writing is not new to me - not exactly. I've been using word processors for writing since I was in grade 6. Back then I was an early adopter - the first kid in my class to hand in a piece of creative writing printed by a jagged dot matrix printer.

Since then I've done most of my writing on computers. I've liked it and it's seemed to work for me. The only exceptions have been my diaries which I started in 1988 and stopped ten years ago, in 2002, when I started blogging.

I've been thinking if I'd like to blog during every day in June, as I did (well, tried) last year. I won't. For one thing, I'm getting married on June 6 and after that I'll be on a honeymoon for a couple more weeks. It's going to be a busy time. I'll probably be connected to the internet via my iPhone for most of my travels, and so it would be possible to do something. But I think I'll keep an old fashioned travel diary and send the occasional tweet.

2012 is proving to be a very big year.

• I've had not just a job change but a career change
• One of those scary milestone birthdays
• Getting married
• And now, a strong questioning of the method of writing which has underpinned my blogging for the last ten years

I've just finished reading the Shallows. I found it both insightful and disturbing. Its premise resonated for me. I had hoped that it would end with some ideas about how to constructively deal with the situation we're in. Maybe it was the author's intention that each reader should contemplate these things for him/herself.

My initial reaction is that it's pointless to consider turning back the clock to how things were 20 years. No, that's crazy neo-Luddite talk. I'm more interested in reaching some balance in how I personally engage with the internet. I would like to relearn different ways of writing and thinking which don't involve internet-connected computers, tablet devices or smart phones. I could never imagine abandoning those devices, but I'd like not to be so completely dependent on them.

the day finishes and starts at dawn

Something I like about activities like this blogging challenge, and also the way Libraries Interact works in general, is that there's a kind of anarchic order. There's no person in charge and no code of rules defining how #blogjune is meant to operate.

If somebody wants to complete the challenge by posting single word posts for a month, nobody is going to jump up and down and say that the single-worded blogger is not acting within the spirit of the rules, because there are no rules. People get to interpret and even modify the challenge for them as they see fit. It's good to be consistent about it, but there are no hard and fast rules there either.

There are two things I may be doing differently. I may as well write it here so nobody will surprised.

1. The day finishes and starts at dawn

I know, the day is meant to finish and start at 12:00 midnight, but that is a very arbitrary dividing line and it doesn't work very well for me. People of some faiths believe that sunset is the moment when the old day ends and the new day begins. That makes just as much sense as midnight. The only thing midnight offers is rigidity - 12:00 midnight never changes, while the time of sunrise or sunset does. But who cares about this rigidity when we have so much interaction with people from different time zones? I'm so used to thinking that my midnight is not other people's midnight that I may as well take this one step further.

I have nothing against midnight or dusk, but for me, these points don't represent any meaningful transition. At midnight I may be sleeping, but it's more likely that I won't be. It's just another moment in the night. I could be doing anything at dusk - working, commuting, shopping, doing other chores, admiring the sunset while walking in Mulligan's Flat.

For me, dawn is when the new day starts. One moment I'm sleeping, then I wake up, and it's around this time when the sun rises. As we approach the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere, dawn is later than we'd like it to be, but for me at least, it works and that's what I'm sticking to.

This means that for Day 3, I could publish a post at 1:00 am Saturday morning (EET - everybody else's time) but for me it will be 1:00 am on Friday night. Basically I refuse to allow midnight to be my deadline for each #blogjune post.

The next post I write may take longer than my average post but it absolutely must be my third post.

2. The blogging may not all be here

Although it's convenient - and really the only practical way - to list blogs which are participating, it's the bloggers who really sign up for the challenge. This means that one day, I may write a post in my badly neglected LiveJournal and that will count as a post. Who knows, I could (unlikely as it is) start a new blog halfway through June and do the rest of my blogging from there.

These are my interpretations of the blogging challenge. I'm not seeking to impose them on anyone else, but if other people adopt them for themselves, that's fine with me.

30 days

I'm writing this post from my iPhone during a brief visit to Sydney. I've decided to participate in this year's blog every day in June challenge.

For someone who rarely tweets even once every day, this will definitely be a challenge. But at the very beginning of this blog, I blogged virtually every day. I know it's not impossible for me.

As I've said before, blogging is habit which I've largely fallen out of in the last few years. I'm hoping that this will help me get back into this habit.

responding to the blogging contraction

August and September have been months in which I have questioned my commitment to blogging, again. The trend which I wrote about over a year ago in "the halcyon days of blogging are over” seems to have accelerated. The news that Bloglines and Vox are closing - two services I have used and liked - was depressing. There seems to be a definite contraction in the blogosphere. Then last week was the announcement of Six Apart merging with Video Egg. I currently publish this blog on Six Apart’s TypePad product.

Six Apart customers have been assured that TypePad will continue in the new company, Say Media. It may continue, or it may be quietly discontinued after a year. I have learned that reassurances made on mergers are best taken with a grain of salt. If I don’t like what I see in the new company, I’ll be moving this blog to Blogger or WordPress - but I’m prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.

There was a time when having a blog and reading other blogs via RSS was the main way of participating in web 2.0 conversations. There is no denying that this time is over, thanks primarily to Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr and others. Given this change, what is the purpose of blogging?

I am someone who has a tendency to write infrequently when online, but when I do write online, I usually want to write more than 140 characters or 1000 characters. I don’t write all that often, so when I do write, I want it to matter more.

Maybe this is egotistical, but I feel that when I am blogging, I am creating something unique which wouldn’t be there but for my work. It may or may not be good or read by large numbers of people, but it is mine.

It’s different with updating Facebook, which ranges from interacting positively with a community (best) to interacting with software which is designed to exploit me and the push the envelope as far as possible when it comes to privacy safeguards (worst).

I don’t have the same privacy concerns with Twitter, but Twitter seems so ephemeral - it is all about the present and it is not good at looking back or reflection.  For example, in July I tweeted some of the sessions of the KM & Collaboration conference in Sydney (#kmaus10). If I needed to do a write up of the conference and wanted to refer to my tweets and everyone else’s tweets on that hashtag, it is not very easy to track them down two months later. Or am I wrong and there’s a really good way of searching old tweets by hashtag which I don’t know about?

This week I’m attending the 2010 ALLA / NZLLA joint conference in Melbourne (#crs2010). I’ve decided that I’m going to attempt to both tweet and blog the conference. Tweeting will be my initial notes and will be a way of interacting with other people at the conference. But I need to synthesize these tweets into something more meaningful, such as a blog post, or that information will just dissipate.

I don’t want this to be seen as an anti-Twitter and Facebook rant. I don’t think that any blogger can ignore or hate these applications. For one thing, as RSS loses its prominence, engagement with social media is increasingly important as a way of informing readers about new blog posts. But I remain dubious of the services which promise “post once, distribute everywhere.” I prefer to do this manually and keep control over what happens.

I would much rather adapt to change than resist change. On the other hand, who knows what is really going to happen? It is extremely easy to parrot something like “blogging is out, twitter and facebook are the way of the future, you better get used to this” - but it’s more complicated than this. For one thing, it depends on what sort of writing and interaction you want. I can imagine a world where my twitter account is my primary window  onto the world, so long as I have a blog or something like it to supplement that.

Update (1 October 2010): As much as blogging and tweeting are great ways of sharing information, it's hard to beat face to face. I've just returned from the ALLA/NZLAA conference in Melbourne, and from conversations at this conference, I found an answer to one of the questions I asked in this post. The US Library of Congress will be archiving tweets. It was announced in April 2010, and now that I've been reminded of this, I vaguely remember it. The downside is that the Twitter archive is not yet available to be searched by the public, as mentioned in the Library of Congress' FAQ on the topic. So in the mean time, I've just copied all the tweets on #crs2010, just in case they go away before I write a post about this conference.