You’ve no doubt heard of them on your email lists, you may even have seen them in your favorite print publication. But what is a blog and why are they such a big deal?

Blogs are most often described as online journals or diaries, and many do fall into that category. But just like all librarians aren’t catalogers, blogs can have a wide variety of content and purposes. Mostly, they are simply websites that are updated frequently. This site, for example, is a blog. But I don’t talk about my personal life or even my beliefs very much (though they aren’t very well hidden). It’s mostly a repository of news and information. On my personal site I have another blog where I post about my personal life and my interests away from Information Science. It was formerly 3 different blogs, one for news, one personal, and an online bookmark file.

Blogs are used in such a variety of ways, how can you tell when a webpage is one?

1. First, each entry or post is annotated with the date and time it was created.
2. Second, there are usually links where readers can post comments on the post.
3. Third, there is almost always an archive of past posts that you can browse through.
4. Finally, you may see a button or link that says “XML”, “RSS“, or “Syndicate”.

Why are they important?

Blogs have become so popular because of they are so easy to publish. The software used to manage blogs makes publishing new information as easy as filling in a form with no coding or html knowledge needed. They are so powerful and flexible that they are even being used as full content management systems. The real CMSs have better management capabilities but the blog software wins out because of it’s low price and ease of use. Their real value comes from how easy they make it for everyone to communicate and to keep up with what’s being said.

More Information

• Building Blogs
• Weblogging: Another kind of website
• How Blogs Work in 7 Easy Pieces
• Library Weblogs
• This is a website