Comments on: Blogging Archivists

By: We Tweet « Curious Child’s Library Wanderings

We Tweet « Curious Child’s Library Wanderings — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:07:08 +0000

[...] Social Networking, twitter | Many moons ago, I asked why archivists aren’t as active in the social networking world and a lively discussion ensued but I never really followed up on my [...]

By: Archives Found » Purpose, intention, goals: what are we doing here?

Archives Found » Purpose, intention, goals: what are we doing here? — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:21:07 +0000

[...] archivists) and reading some interesting and encouraging responses elsewhere (see Archives Next, Curious Child, The Digital Archive, and BlogHer), I decided to try to talk about my purpose in blogging on the [...]

By: curiouschild

curiouschild — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:28:15 +0000

@Sara I think you raise a valid point and the easy answer is that your opinion, your thoughts, matter. The hard answer is that you have to be confident in your abilities to express yourself clearly in order for others to recognize the importance. And if you don’t have that confidence, “you fake it til you make it.”

Sometimes I know the stuff I’m saying is silly but that’s what makes my blog personal to me (and, I hope, appealing to others). This is pretty much who I am: silly, smart, self deprecating and a tad bit snotty. Find your voice and your audience will find you.

By: Sara

Sara — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:15:44 +0000

I’ve tried writing a blog off and on (on this week, but who knows how that will last) and what I’ve found the most challenging is being confident enough to self-promote. I look at what I’ve written and think “is this good enough for other people to read?”

Is this an issue for anyone else? All the blogs I read seem pretty confident & competent.

By: curiouschild

curiouschild — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:39:10 +0000

@Gordon Thank you, I appreciate the support and the kind words. My plan is to set up a blogroll within the next few weeks and show my fellow blogging archivists some love.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:29:46 +0000

I’m enjoying reading your blog and have added you to my own blogroll and RSS feed. This is a great topic. As someone who just recently started blogging, for me it is an exercise in intellectual curiosity. Blogging is a way to throw ideas up against the wall and see what sticks. By communicating my active interests in a blog I not only inform others, but I also educate myself and hopefully make myself a better archivist in the process by interacting with others.

By: Paul Lasewicz

Paul Lasewicz — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:00:42 +0000

I concur with DKemper entirely. I have an internal blog here at my company. I use it to reach an highly technical audience that wouldn’t normally even think of an archives – outreach. I also use it to pull together my thoughts on issues of relevance – elevator speeches. These are tangible benefits for the time investment. But to blog externally, well, that assumes that somebody would read it! And even if that’s so, the time invested produces too few benefits to justify taking time away from other things … like my family.

By: Recent URLs tagged Friendfeed - Urlrecorder

Recent URLs tagged Friendfeed - Urlrecorder — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:15:19 +0000

[...] recorded first by thealmostmusic on 2008-07-21→ Blogging Archivists [...]

By: curiouschild

curiouschild — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:51:12 +0000

@DKemper True. I hadn’t even thought about the time required to maintain a social network (you’d think I would have). I think the small strides that have been made so far (the recognition that more needs/should be done) is incredibly important. And the fact that we are discussing this shows that there is an interest.

By: DKemper

DKemper — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:02:01 +0000

Dani, I agree. We should take a chance and embrace some of these new technologies, and in many ways follow the steps of librarians in the blogosphere.

To embrace these new technologies is really to embrace the ideals of sharing and communicating information and exchanging knowledge, either among new archivists or between senior archivists and the next generation of archivists.

The Social Web is really about using the technology to communicate and collaborate and to form communities, virtual or otherwise.

However, I must caution you that the Social Web (blogs, micro-blogging, podcasts, social networking sites, etc) are time-consuming. It takes time to write quality blog content, for example. And for many archivists, time and other resources are limited and mainly directed to taking care ‘bread-and-butter’ business.

So let’s move forward, one step at a time.