I have been hoarding several articles on academic blogging but have been too busy to get around to writing a full post about any of them. Perhaps that is for the best; I have likely said all that needs to be said about the topic--at least for a while. (For background see my posts here, here, here, and here.) But I did want to be sure to share some of this exciting writing about the issue.
(1) I absolutely LOVED Henry Farrell's CoHE piece, "The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas." Academic Coach has already written a nice piece in response to it, so I'll just point you there.
I do want to add, though, that I do believe blogging is a way to help develop "authentic scholarly voice," a topic I took up in this post. (The seminar, btw, was wonderful. I do plan to write a follow-up post soon.) Farrell talks of blogging in ways that bring to my mind several themes of voice. For example, he says some scholars
see blogging as an extension of their academic personas. Their blogs allow them not only to express personal views but also to debate ideas, swap views about their disciplines, and connect to a wider public. For these academics, blogging isn't a hobby; it's an integral part of their scholarly identity.
Farrell also talks of the widespread (and spreading) nature of academic blogging in several fields (--not, alas, family science):
Look at what's happening in the disciplines of law and philosophy. ...In both of those disciplines, those who don't either blog or read and comment on others' blogs are cutting themselves out of an increasingly important set of discussions.
(2) In a recent IHE column, Scott McLemee discusses the potential benefits of blogging for improving the academic publishing industry:
[O]ne possibility that has emerged comes to my attention via Colleen Lanick, the publicity manager for MIT Press... Earlier this week, she pointed out the new MIT PressLog and a similar blog run by Oxford University Press.
To find out if any other academic publishers had climbed aboard this particular bandwagon, I contacted Brenda McLaughlin, the communications manager for the Association of American University Presses. She mentioned the one maintained by Cork University Press, in Ireland. But otherwise, Oxford and MIT seem to be in the vanguard — though McLaughlin says that AAUP itself now has a restricted-access blog for its members under development.
An interesting development, then – if only for the timing, given the recent wave of anguish over the danger that a reputation for blogging might pose to an academic on the job market. ...But the iron cage of bureaucracy is, after all, a strange thing: Today, there are timid souls who worry that a prospective colleague’s blog might be a record of torrid threesomes indulged while plotting to assassinate the dean. Tomorrow they will be retired, or laughed off campus — whereupon blogging might well become mandatory, rather than forbidden. Stranger things do happen.
(3) Speaking of academic publishing, I have added a link on my blogroll to the blog of the American Journal of Bioethics. The editors still seem to be getting their blogosphere legs under them. But in general I think this is a wonderful effort and a great example of journal editors' making a stab at expanding their disciplinary reach and opening up a broader conversation. Editors of Journal of Marriage and Family and Family Relations: Please take note!!!
(4) Here's something just to show you I am not uncritically head over heels with this whole blogging in academia thing. Maybe I'm just old, one of those clueless folks who I suggest other anti-blog people may be. But I think I register a little high on the tribblemeter about many of the situations described in this IHE piece:
A lot of students hope, though, that professors and employers realize online forums should not be taken so seriously. Joe Williams, a 2004 Cornell University alum, said he understands that peer-to-peer sites “give this air of exclusivity, like a country club,” but that, as far as the possible viewers, “we might as well be on national television.” Williams is in the group called “I’ve kissed Portia Mills.” “I don’t know if I kissed her,” he said, “we hung out a bunch of times wasted.” He said that the idea that “there are a million pages out there, why would anybody come across this one?” is part of the risk, but also part of the fun.
Students would prefer to keep just the fun. “I think it’s pretty lame that people are using the Facebook as a substantial indicator of someone’s personality,” said Anna Posner, a Columbia University senior who started the group called, “We like to have hott sex in Butler [Library] and then get coffee from Blue Java.” “Facebook is supposed to be…irreverent,” she said. “I’d be mortified if someone seriously asked me if I liked to have sex in Butler and then get coffee from Blue Java.”
(5) Finally, Check out this example of an academic blogger who seems to have not only not been hurt by blogging, but to have received a book deal as a result of it!
Blog On!
Posted by perry032 at October 7, 2005 11:04 AM