Fairfield Public Library BlogBib
INTRODUCTION
Blogs, or Web Logs, are personal websites that can be updated daily with breaking news, political commentary, or your own private thoughts. Blogs give everyone with Internet access the opportunity to become an online writer and editor. Web logs create online communities of people who share everything from news, opinions, photos and music to book reviews. One source estimates that, as of October 2005, there were over 100 million blogs in existence on the World Wide Web, and that number is growing daily.
The blogosphere, the worldwide community of blogs, has rapidly evolved into a phenomenon to be taken seriously. This annotated bibliography includes definitions, history, articles about blogging, books, studies, links to samples of myriad blogs, and tools for creating and using blogs. The bibliography is organized by categories, then alphabetically within categories, and is available online at http://fairfieldpubliclibrary.blogspot.com/.
Part 1: Definitions & History
Definitions
Paquet, Sébastien. “Personal Knowledge Publishing and Its Uses in Research (1/2).” National Research Council of Canada. http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/253/2010/5/2008.
“Defining the term
Weblogs may be viewed as an evolved form of personal Web pages, or 'home pages'. The term, coined by Jorn Barger in 1997, refers to a web site that is a 'log of the Web', indicating a record that points to material available on the World Wide Web. A weblog editor is often called a weblogger. The shorthand terms blog and blogger are also commonly used; usage of the word 'blog' has become so common that it has recently been drafted for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary.”
Definitions from Peter Scott's Weblogs Compendium
http://www.lights.com/weblogs/definitions.html.
“This is a list of articles, which attempt to explain what weblogs are:
An Incomplete Annotated History of Weblogs – Chymes
http://web.archive.org/web/20031001214934/
http://www.chymes.org/hyper/weblogs.html.
Anatomy of a Weblog - Cameron Barrett
http://www.camworld.com/journal/rants/99/01/26.html.
Fear of Links - Scott Rosenberg
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/1999/05/28/weblogs/.
Here Come the Weblogs - Jon Katz
http://slashdot.org/features/99/05/13/1832251.shtml.
Unofficial Glossary of Weblog Terms - an unofficial glossary of terms related to Weblogs, Webzines, and Personal Publishing by John Hiler
http://www.microcontentnews.com/resources/weblogglossary.htm.
Weblog resources FAQ - Jorn Barger
http://www.robotwisdom.com/weblogs/.
Weblogs: A History and Perspective - Rebecca Blood
http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html.
What are weblogs? - Dave Winer
http://bgbg.blogspot.com/2003_06_08_bgbg_archive.html#200402733.
What is a weblog? - Guardian Unlimited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weblog/special/0,10627,744914,00.html.
What the hell is a weblog? - Derek Powazek
http://www.powazek.com/wtf/.”
Walker, Jill. Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (2005).
http://jilltxt.net/?p=227.
final version of weblog definition
An excerpt from a definitive definition, written for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (2005), by Dr. Jill Walker, Department of Humanistic Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway:
“A weblog, or blog, is a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first (see temporal ordering). Typically, weblogs are published by individuals and their style is personal and informal. Weblogs first appeared in the mid-1990s, becoming popular as simple and free publishing tools became available towards the turn of the century. Since anybody with a net connection can publish their own weblog, there is great variety in the quality, content, and ambition of weblogs, and a weblog may have anywhere from a handful to tens of thousands of daily readers.”
glossary from Samizdata
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/glossary.html.
“Like all internet formats, weblogs, also known as ‘blogs’, have developed many terms which may baffle newcomers. The Blogging glossary is a resource for people who want to decode and demystify the jargon they may encounter whilst cruising through the blogosphere. Although this glossary does not purport to be exhaustive by any means, it is one of the most complete of its kind regarding blog terminology and it is periodically updated. Most of the terms herein really are in use but we must confess that a few are, shall we say, rather whimsical.”
Oxford English Dictionary Online (subscription). NEW EDITION: draft entry, March 2003.
“blog, v.
intr. To write or maintain a weblog. Also: to read or browse through weblogs, esp. habitually.
1999 TBTF for 1999-08-30: Aibo Rampant in cistron.lists (Usenet newsgroup) 30 Aug., Blog..to run a Web log. 2000 Whole Earth Winter 54/1 To blog is to be part of a community of smart, tech-savvy people who want to be on the forefront of a new literary undertaking. 2001 Washington Post (Electronic ed.) 17 May, Journalist Jim Romenesko's clearinghouse for media gossip..showed how a personal blog could go pro when the Poynter Institute hired him..to blog full time.
weblog, n.
1. A file storing a detailed record of requests handled (and sometimes also errors generated) by a web server.
1993 comp.infosystems.www (Usenet newsgroup) 4 Nov. (title of posting) Announcing getsites 1.5, a Web log analyzer. 1995 Computer Technol. Rev. July 10/2 The Key creates a log
the WebLog
listing everyone who has accessed software from a particular Web site. 1998 Boston Globe (Electronic ed.) 19 Oct., The server Web logs..indicated..which computers were hitting his site, the number of visitors, and the time they retrieved his page. 2002 Network Computing 21 Jan. 60/3 We were interested in seeing the most viewed products... Was chicken-wing sauce viewed more often than steak sauce..? We got a good, diverse group of actual Web log data.
2. A frequently updated web site consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc., typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or diary.
1997 J. BARGER Lively New Webpage in alt.culture.www (Usenet newsgroup) 23 Dec., I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis:..www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/weblog.html. This will cover any and everything that interests me, from net culture to politics to literature etc. 1998 Village Voice (N.Y.) 8 Sept. 33/3 Jorn Barger's Robot Wisdom WebLog..might not be pretty, but it's one of the best collections of news and musings culled from the Web
and updated daily. 2000 Independent 23 Oct. II. 9/1 A weblog is simply a site where you post your thoughts whenever the muse strikes. 2002 Times (Electronic ed.) 14 Jan., There is a way to be stupendously well informed... Scour the highlights in..weblogs.”
History
Blood, Rebecca. “weblogs: a history and perspective.” Rebecca's Pocket. 7/9/2000. http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html.
Prolific writer Blood's comprehensive essay on the history and development of weblogs.
Chymes, M. “An Incomplete Annotated History of Weblogs.” http://web.archive.org/web/20031001214934/
http://www.chymes.org/hyper/weblogs.html.
An abandoned web site, archived in the Internet Archive, still provides a useful timeline, including links, to the earliest blogs.
Paquet, Sébastien. “Personal Knowledge Publishing and Its Uses in Research (1/2).” National Research Council of Canada. http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/253/2010/5/2008.
“Early years
The first weblog was Tim Berners-Lee's ‘What's New?’ page at, http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/News/
9201.html, which pointed to new Web sites as they came online. The second weblog was Marc Andreessen's ‘What's New?’ page at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (archived http://web.archive.org/web/20050322091307/http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.
edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html), which performed a similar function until mid-1996.
Several new weblogs appeared with the explosion of the web in 1996-1997. Early weblogs include Dave Winer's Scripting News http://www.scripting.com/ , John Barger's Robot Wisdom http://www.robotwisdom.com/ , and Cameron Barrett's CamWorld http://www.camworld.com . Although it is now collectively edited, Rob Malda's Slashdot http://slashdot.org , deserves mention, as it became (and to this day remains) phenomenally popular.”
Timeline of Early Blogs. BLOCKSTAR.
http://www.blockstar.com/blog/blog_timeline.html.
A timeline of blogging's early history with links to some of the first blogs.
Winer, Dave. “The History of Weblogs,” Weblogs.com News, May 17, 2002.
http://www.userland.com/theHistoryOfWeblogs.
Blogging pioneer Winer, a Harvard Law School Berkman Center fellow, is author of the Scripting News weblog, “which was one of the earliest and is currently the longest-running weblog on the Internet.” He provides pithy commentary and links on the evolution of weblogs.
Articles & Interviews About Blogs
Bauer, Elise. “What is Blogging?” elise.com: On the Job, October 17, 2003. http://www.elise.com/web/a/what_is_blogging.php.
Bauer, who advises technology companies on their business and marketing strategies, provides one of the best descriptions of the motivation for and act of blogging: “… discovered blogging in the spring of 2003, and have since become hooked. My goal is to blog everything I know that I think others might find useful, and everything I learn that I might want to reference later. Instead of filing away a clipping into the dungeon of my file cabinet, I just blog it, so not only can I find it but others can as well. As I have a lot of interests, I now have a lot of weblogs. They have become a sort of public extension of my brain, except with a much more reliable data retrieval mechanism.”
Blood, Rebecca. "Ten Tips for a Better Weblog." Rebecca's Pocket. March 22, 2003. http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/ten_tips.html.
Prolific writer Blood's expert advice.
Conhaim, Wallys W. “Blogging – What is it?” Link-up 19, Issue 3 (May-June 2002). http://web.archive.org/web/20050305061458/http://www.infotoday
.com/lu/may02/conhaim.htm.
Conhaim, who writes about the Internet and online environment, provides a comprehensive overview of blogging as both a communication tool and new online culture. She asserts that “…by leading people to important information, bloggers are exercising a new and perhaps very effective form of non- hierarchical, 21st century leadership.”
Fiedler, Sebastian. “Personal Webpublishing as a Reflective Conversational Tool for Self-organized Learning.” Paper Draft for BlogTalk 2003. May 12, 2003. http://seblogging.cognitivearchitects.com/stories/storyReader$963.
Fiedler, Doctoral Student of Media Pedagogy, Universität Augsburg, Germany, suggests that “…personal Webpublishing technologies and practices can be conceptualized as a reflective conversational learning tool for self-organized learning. Beyond the examination of the theoretical basis for such a claim, initial ideas for specific learning environment designs on the basis of a ‘conversational framework’ are presented.”
Gahran, Amy. “Blogging Style: The Basic Posting Formats (Series Index).” 9/22/2004.
http://blog.contentious.com/archives/2004/09/22/blogging-style-the-basic-posting-formats-
series-index.
Gahran, writer, editor, trainer, and publisher of the blog, CONTENTIOUS, deconstructs blog postings from a writer’s perspective.
Gillmor, Steve. “Google's Blogger Boss Focuses on the User.” eWeek, May 20, 2004. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1595760,00.asp.
Gilmor interviews Blogger co-founder and Google Program Manager Evan Williams about the revamped Blogger, which focuses on the user, with “an ease-of-use factor”, by “building out some of the community aspects”, and “improving the experience and esthetics of the blogs themselves and the flexibility with what you can do with them.”
Good, Robin. “The Death Of The Webmaster: Why Weblogs Bring A True Revolution To Internet Publishing”. MasterMind Explorer, July 28, 2003. http://www.masternewmedia.org/2003/07/28/the_death_of_the_webmaster_why_weblogs_
bring_a_true_revolution_to_internet_publishing.htm.
Robin Good, aka Luigi Canali De Rossi, is a communication skills expert and apioneer in exploring and adopting new ways of integrating new media technologies into communication and learning activities. A prolific writer, his articles may be found in a weekly newsletter called MasterMind Explorer
___. “What Is The Difference Between A Normal Web Site And One Powered By A Simple CMS Or Weblog?”. MasterMind Explorer, June 11, 2003. http://www.masternewmedia.org/2003/06/11/what_is_the_difference_between_a_normal_
web_site_and_one_powered_by_a_simple_cms_or_weblog.htm.
Good provides one of the best differentiations available.
Grohol, John M. “Psychology of Weblogs: 2002.” May 23, 2002. http://www.psychcentral.com/blogs/blog2002.htm.
Grohol, an online psychologist, who focuses on the study of online human behavior and the interface between psychology and computers, updates his 1998 essay, exploring the growth and impact of blogging from a psychological perspective.
Grumet, Andrew. “Deep Thinking about Weblogs.” http://www.grumet.net/writing/web/deep-thinking-about-weblogs.html.
Grumet questions the meaning and relevance of blogs and compares them with home pages, stressing that “a weblog can thereby provide:
- a way to feel closer to friends and family members who may be geographically distant
- a way to locate and to stay current on the activities of professional peers or people who share a common interest
- a range of firsthand accounts and armchair perspectives on current events, as they happen
- a voyeuristic glimpse into the life of someone that interests you.”
Hourihan, Meg. “What We're Doing When We Blog.” O'Reilly Network. June 13, 2002. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/06/13/megnut.html.
A classic from Hourihan, one of the founders of Pyra, the company that created Blogger, and a co-author of the book, We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs. Hourihan deconstructs the anatomy of a blog post and explores blogging as “a communication evolution.”
LeFever, Lee. “What are the Differences Between Message Boards and Weblogs?” http://www.commoncraft.com/archives/000768.html.
A thoughtful exploration from LeFever, who created Common Craft, where he works with businesses to realize business value from online communities and weblogs. The table is especially helpful.
NetGuide Magazine. “47 Key Tips From The World's Best Bloggers.” NetGuide Magazine 79, October 2003.
http://www.netguide.co.nz/magazine/pulp/79/blog47tips.php.
Good advice from veteran Bloggers like Hourihan and Glenn Reynolds.
Pollard, Dave. “The Blogging Process.” July 30, 2003. http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2003/07/30.html#a346.
Pollard, recent dropout from his position as Chief Knowledge Officer of a Big 4 accountancy, is a prolific writer and consultant. Pollard’s post in his blog, “How to Save the World”, is subtitled “A pretentious and presumptuous attempt to document what bloggers have learned, without any formal instruction, to do every day. And then a description of what's needed to make blogs a medium for real conversation.” Pollard presents a unique, visual perspective of what we do when we blog, accompanied by his vision for the future.
___. “Time-Savers For Bloggers.” December 29, 2003. http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2003/12/29.html#a571.
This essay is required reading for everyone who finds it challenging to keep up their blogs: specific, useful suggestions.
Powazek, Derek M. “Weblogs as Community.” In Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places. Indianapolis, IN: New Riders, 2001. http://web.archive.org/web/20021017105308/designfor
community.com/display.cgi/200202182129.
Powazek is a writer and performer, leading the storytelling magazine/movement Fray, and creator of many award-winning websites. In this excerpt from Chapter 12, Powazek portrays weblogs as a powerful community phenomenon, forming communities, “almost by accident.”
Rodgers, Anni Layne. "Targeted Serendipity." Fast Company, March 2002. http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2002/03/blood.html.
Rodgers, Fast Company Senior Web Editor, interviews Rebecca Blood and observes the explosion of blogging following September 11th.
Sherman, Chris. "Pass Me the Blog, Please." Searchday, June 14, 2001. http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2157101.
Sherman, Associate Editor of SearchEngineWatch, writes about blogs for competitive intelligence research and other types of web search.
Siemens, George. "The Art of Blogging - Part 1: Overview, Definitions, Uses, and Implications." December 1, 2002. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/blogging_part_1.htm.
Siemens, an instructor at Red River College, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, provides a comprehensive introduction to "the uses, benefits, implications, and art of blogging."
___. "The Art of Blogging - Part 2: Getting Started, ‘How To’, Tools, Resources." December 6, 2002. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/blogging_part_2.htm.
Part 2 provides the tools you need to get started.
Sullivan, Andrew. "The Blogging Revolution: Weblogs Are To Words What Napster Was To Music." Wired 10, May 5, 2002. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.05/mustread.html?pg=2/.
Former New Republic editor Sullivan asserts that blogging is "a publishing revolution more profound than anything since the printing press."
Tanglao, Roland. “How Blogs Work in 7 Easy Pieces.” March 23, 2004. http://www.streamlinewebco.com/blog/_archives/2004/3/23/
28903.html.
For visual learners, a very effective representation from Tanglao; blogging since 1999, he now works for Bryght.
Blog Tools
Baker, Loren. “Blog Search Engines.” The Search Engine Journal, 10/7/2004.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=935.
Baker, director of search marketing at WebAdvantage.net and editor of The Search Engine Journal, outlines blog search engines.
___. “IceRocket Adds Blog Search to New Features.” The Search Engine Journal, 10/7/2004.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=933.
Baker profiles IceRocket’s Blog Search and interviews Blake Rhodes, CEO of IceRocket.
Bauer, Elise. "An Overview of the Weblog Tools Market." elise.com On the Job (August 6, 2004).
http://www.elise.com/web/a/an_overview_of_the_weblog_tools_
market.php.
Bauer, who advises technology companies on their business and marketing strategies, provides a comprehensive examination of the myriad blogging tools on the market.
Blogdex. MIT Media Laboratory.
http://blogdex.net/.
“Blogdex is a research project of the MIT Media Laboratory tracking the diffusion of information through the weblog community. Ideas can have very similar properties to a disease, spreading through the population like wildfire. The goal of Blogdex is to explore what it is about information, people, and their relationships that allows for this contagious media.”
Blog Style Manual. June 30, 2004. Georgia State University Library.
http://georgiasla.blogspot.com/2004/06/blog-style-manual.html.
“This is a set of suggested best practices for bloggers in a ‘multiblog’ environment, to encourage uniformity among the blogs. Uniformity improves usability. This was written for the bloggers at Georgia State University Library, but you're free to usurp these recommendations for your own organization.”
Bradley, Phil. "Search Engines: Weblog Search Engines." Ariadne, no. 36 (July 30, 2003).
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue36/search-engines/.
Bradley, UK Information Specialist and Internet Consultant, writes a monthly column for the CILIP Update magazine and a quarterly column on search engines for Ariadne. In this column, he provides an overview of blogging and pointers and tools to search for blogs.
Denton, Nick and Meg Hourihan. “Kinja.”
http://kinja.com/.
Kinja is a new tool to blog your favorite blogs from Hourihan (Pyra, Blogger) and Denton http://nickdenton.org
Benefits:
- keep up with favorite authors, and friends who blog
- discover new weblogs
- save time: scan excerpts before clicking through
- legible excerpts, rather than a list of headlines, or a garbled search result
- no knowledge of RSS or syndication standards required
- no reader application to download, accessible from any computer
- favorites page easily shared with friends and colleagues
Feldman, Michael. “What exactly is a blog posting?” http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dowbrigade/2004/11/07#a4124.
Feldman, aka the Dowbrigade, a Boston University Senior Lecturer teaching mostly foreign law and business students, wrote a taxonomy of blog posts.
Fichter, Darlene. "Finding Blogs, Blog Posts, RSS Feeds and RSS Entries." http://library.usask.ca/~fichter/weblog/.
An up-to-date, comprehensive, annotated list of tools.
Gallagher, David F. “Blog-Bleary? Try (What Else?) a Blog.” New York Times, April 1, 2004: G.3.
http://tech2.nytimes.com/mem/technology/techreview.html?oref=login&res=9900E4DB1539F932A35757C0A9629C8B63.
Gallagher, a New York-based writer on technology issues, profiles Kinja, the tool to blog blogs.
Hiler, John. “The Microcontent News Blogging Software Roundup.” Microcontent News (July 22, 2002).
http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/blogware.htm.
Hiler, co-founder of WebCrimson, which makes blogging software, helped build Xanga.com, one of the largest weblog community sites. While somewhat dated, this article is a comprehensive overview of blogging software. The Weblog Software Family Tree alone is worth a look.
Pikas, Christina K. "Trends in Blog Searching." b/ITe 21, no. 2 (March-April 2004.) http://www.sla.org/division/dite/bite/MarApr2004/TrendInBlog.pdf.
Pikas, Technical Librarian, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, provides tips on two types of blog searching: “information from within blogs/across blogs or addresses of feeds from blogs so that you may subscribe in your aggregator.”
Pilgrim, Mark. Dive Into Accessibility.
http://diveintoaccessibility.org/.
Pilgrim updates “30 days to a more accessible weblog.”
Scott, Peter. “The Weblogs Compendium.”
http://www.lights.com/weblogs/.
The Compendium is owned and operated by Peter Scott, Internet and blogging pioneer. Scott is Internet Projects Manager, University of Saskatchewan Library, Saskatoon, SK, Canada and owns the Internet company PScontent.com. He is the creator of HYTELNET (1991), the first electronic browser for Internet resources. The Compendium includes annotated lists of blogging software, tools, directories and innumerable blogging resources.
Sherman, Chris. “Managing the Firehose of Real-Time Information.” SearchEngineWatch, November 17, 2004.
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3436591.
Sherman, Associate Editor, SearchEngineWatch, writes about PubSub, which “combines the real-time benefits of feed aggregation with the retrospective query capabilities offered by web and blog search engines…. PubSub monitors nearly 6.5 million information sources, including more than 3.5 million ‘active sources’ (those that both exist and have regular updates). These sources include weblogs, SEC Edgar filings, Newsgroup postings, press releases and airport delays. The company says that from this mix it extracts more than 2 million new items per day, including over 1.2 million blog postings.”
Stone, Biz. “Blogging around the world.” Blogger. November 15, 2004. http://www.google.com/googleblog/2004/11/blogging-around-world.html.
"The Blogger team has begun the process of internationalizing our service. While the posting interface and some other pages throughout Blogger are not yet translated, they soon will be. Meanwhile, right now native speakers of French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Korean will see an increasingly familiar version of Blogger in their own languages when they sign in."
BlogBib: Select Blogs
Some blogs that I recommend.
Copyright © 2006 Susan Herzog