Getting back to the blog…
Matt Hamilton | May 15, 2007So, if you read this, I want to apologize. I’ve been so consumed with other things I’d almost forgotten I had a blog to attend to! However, the semesters at work and school are over and I’m moved in (in the sense that not only are we moved, but we now actually have furniture and our stuff is out of cardboard boxes). For the first time since I was a child, ALL of my books are shelved. That’s right.. in one place, not in boxes, but on shelves. It’s weird, but I like it. Now I am going to start cataloging them so I can lend them out more often. (Just like a librarian…)
I’m going to begin blogging with more regularity again. I plan to return to more library-related content as well… so in honor of that, I’m going to discuss something I don’t see addressed often enough. If there are a ton of blog posts or articles about this, please send them to me!
I’d like to muse a bit about the state of Library blogging. I’ve read a number of articles discussing what library folks do with their blogs: knowledge creation, networking, best practices sharing, etc. What I don’t see a lot of is personal reflection and theoretical discussion.
Often when I read disparaging comments about blogs, I think to myself, “hey that’s what I do with my blog.” I don’t write with a lot of evidence. I basically rant and blow off steam and hardly ever edit and certainly don’t try to be “professional”.
Why?
Well, partly because I’m not really interested in people taking a social medium and turning it into another exclusive intellectual playground. It really bothers me that people only value blogs for that reason because I think that there is value that can be gained from people sharing their feelings, their struggles, their unformed and undocumented thoughts in an attempt to build towards greater specificity. However, it’s chilling to speech if you feel that everything you “publish” (an over-used word in my opinion) has to meet some lofty standard that includes not hurting anyone’s feelings, not offending future or current employers, and always formatting and documenting every post as if it were an article for publication.
So, if you have a brief thought or an unformed idea that you want to explore or develop where can you share it? The original purpose of blogging was an online journal– do you always compose your journal entries?
Now, I’m not one of these people who feels that each medium should remain for only one purpose.. I think it’s fantastic that blogging is done for “professional” as well as personal reasons. I just think it’s a shame if we all start feeling like EVERY blog has to be for professional purposes. I think it’s a shame if we feel limited in our expression because we’re afraid of what people might read.
With that in mind, I’ve read a number of posts about the Biblioblogosphere that suggest that this is exactly what is going on… People are afraid to express anything controversial and are feeling pressured to “never say anything you wouldn’t say in person.”
Well, then what’s the point in having multiple mediums if they aren’t to be used in different ways? That to me is internalized censorship. I should be able to post unformed thoughts and ideas. I should feel free to pontificate and rant… why? because we all should feel free to.
Does that mean we should use our blogs to insult someone personally or to threaten them like Kathy Sierra? Hell no! But if I did. That’s my problem… I’d just be an asshole for doing so. All the reader who didn’t like it would have to do is click somewhere else. Simple as that. If you don’t like what you read in a blog post, it wasn’t forced on you, you can just read something else.
If you want to argue with it, then fine… Try and keep it to a level of useful debate. If you say to somebody, “well, I don’t think you’ve thought through the consequences of what you’re saying” then perhaps something can come from it. If you’re going to say, “that’s a dumb idea” well, something still might come from it in the sense that the author at least knows that somebody out there is not liking what’s been said. It may cause them to invesigate further (it would me).
But if you say, “you dumbshit, you should stop writing this crap.” Well, it’s a little hard to separate the message from the insult. So why bother? Is your life really so empty that arguing online in ways that aren’t constructive or purposely trolling is going to fulfill you? Actually, wow… now that I bring it up in that way… if your life really is that empty, my gosh, if arguing with me or insulting me will bring you some joy– please feel free to use me for that purpose. I feel sorry for you.
But I digress… I am all for *voluntary* civility amongst bloggers, but I don’t think that we should have to feel the need to produce an professional article every time we write and I don’t think we should be or feel stifled from merely expressing opinion. There is value in venting as much as gushing with excitement.
Remember, this medium started as a journal. I want to keep mine for that purpose. I want to reflect, recant, be wrong, be misinformed, develop my ideas, and maybe eventually learn and share and perhaps even teach something along the way. Even if nothing beyond, “Hey, don’t feel so uptight”.
I hope that somebody out there (ACLU are you listening?) is working on preventing online searches from being considered as part of job interviews. I mean, if what I post on MySpace when I’m 14 can affect my job prospects at 22 then what is the point of education? What is the point of learning from our mistakes if we never are allowed to make any?
I think beyond the library blogosphere, beyond the Internet, that this has extremely dangerous social implications. So, if you’ve EVER done anything taboo or embarassing or unwise, you should be hounded by it for the rest of your life? Is that any way to live?
MDH out
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