The subject of the project is "blogging in UK academic libraries". The method is content analysis.
I aim to produce a substantial overview of this sector's blogging activity, including a directory of all openly-accessible blogs.
If you are active in this area or would like to know more, please get in touch.
The story so far
I've compiled an initial list of UK blogs. It's long! One problem may be the sheer length of the list. Although I want to go for completeness, time is a major factor since I want to finish this project by the end of August 2008.
Also, I have reviewed pretty much all the literature I want to review (not in any great depth, but since most of it is fairly basic content analysis, there's not much depth to plumb!). There's a surprisingly large amount, although like the biblioblogosphere itself, it's a minority interest and hugely self-referencing.
The interesting thing is the methodology of these content analyses of blogs. It ranges from the truly minimal to the quite technical (and actually one author was responsible for both extremes!).
I don't think I'm ready at the moment to do major statistical analysis, but I am hoping that either
- It won't be necessary and I can do an initial exploratory exposition... or...
- I can learn it quickly enough! Hopefully my supervisor will advise on this when the time comes. There should be some software to help out in this day and age.
Another good point is that I contacted someone at another University who's doing the same project, basically, but for the public library sector. So we should be able to keep in touch and collaborate a bit (in a fair and transparent way, of course!).
I've also (hopefully) got the previous study which I'm basing mine on in the post to me... so the methodology should be (almost) sorted by next week. Methodology, that's what it's all about!
Since I'm now waiting for a supervisor to be allocated to me, I'm thinking I'll take the weekend (and part of next week!) off. I need some nice ideas for things to do though.
Posts
3 comments:
Have you seen this wiki
http://liswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
There's a list of academic library blogs on there, mostly US of course but there are some UK ones on the public bit so might be some on your area of interest. I found out about this wiki through the Library2.0 interest group on Facebook. Useful for slightly more than wasting valuable time, y'see!
I've seen so many of these things my eyes hurt ;)
Probably I will try to publish the list I'm producing as a wiki or simliar, assuming I get ethical clearance etc.
Hello,
This is a good initiative. I'm just wondering why you do it anonymously ? There a lots of phD students blogging with their real names, and it's a way for blogging to get a recognition...
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