I <3 Data :)

So, the quest for data, lovely data continues. I am ticking off blogs and categories literally by the tens as the days roll by. Content analysis is actually quite a time-consuming and detailed business, when you get down to it.

I am still in the market for a catchy title: if you are a reader / follower of this blog (presumably a "follower" need not actually read it, just like "joining" Facebook groups doesn't actually commit you in any way!) then please will you post some suggestions for a snappy blogging/content analysis/academic libraries/information literacy-related title in the com-box for this post?

The more buzz-words the better!

I must say, I feel my own information literacy increasing even as I analyse the blogs. There are some shining examples of IL best practice out there, and some really cool resources and tools linked to and described by all you pragmatic bibliobloggers (TM) out there.

Hopefully, I can somehow represent this wealth of knowledge, experience and obvious enthusiasm in my final dissertation. My monthly supervision was yesterday and focussed on running through my results so far, figuring out how they can be presented (shiny graphs and percentages, woo hoo!) and what kind of story they can be made to tell (lies, damned lies...).

I was pretty pleased to find that my supervisor agreed that they do actually tell some kind of story, even the basic numbers regarding how many blogs there are, how often people post etc.

The Multi-Faceted Content Analysis (TM) proper gives another side to the "story" and a third "facet" should consist of an anecdotal report based on my reading of the blogs (after all, I have pretty much reviewed the whole of this "sphere", limited as it is to UK university blogging) and illustrated (literally) with example postings.

It's very tempting to get all sentimental about "my" blogs and keep on adding data ad infinitum but it seems more realistic to aim for ad nauseam and keep my "n" to a level I can cope with. After all, I have to submit this thing. Thankfully, most of the blogs in the UK population ("N") don't fit my criteria for content analysing (based on posting frequency and consistency, not quality at all!) so it's been quick to get through a lot!