What is a blog? Blog terms Some types of blogs Finding blogs Aggregators What are the potential use of blogs in the museum? Creating Blogs: Why blog / Why read blogs?

 

What is a blog?

• it's short for "weblog"

 

Wikipedia says:

• a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.
• often provide commentary or news on a particular subject
• the "commenting" feature of blogs allows readers to post responses to author's entries
• typically combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.
• blogs can be usually be navigated by the reader using "catagories" or the archive links; some blogs have search engines for their own content
• blogs often link to content in their posts, either to other websites or other blogs

 

Blog terms

 

• "post" - (n.)an entry on a blog; (v.) to publish an entry on a blog
• "permalink" - the url for a specific blog post
• "categories/tags" - subject words assigned to a post by the author that describe the post's content; a way to organize posts
• "Trackback/pingback" - links to other sites that refer to the entry
• "blogroll" - a collection of links to other blogs created by the author; usually found in the sidebar
• "widget"
• more than you probably ever wanted to know...

 

 

"The weblog form is unique to the Web, highly addictive, and may be changing how we communicate with one another."

--Donna Wentworth, Web Publications Editor at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society via UThink's FAQ

 

And don't forget: "a blog is usually a part of a community.'No weblog stands alone, they are relative to each other and to the world,'"

--Dave Winer of ScriptingNews.com

 

 

Some types of blogs

 

• Museum blogs:

 

Walker Art Center

Visual arts

Off Center

Education

New media

All of Walker's blogs

 

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Eye Level

 

• Blogs about museums:

 

Museum Madness

Mario Bucolo Museums Blog

 

• Art blogs:

 

Modern Art Notes

 

• Subject specific

Egyptology blog

Egyptology news

Southeast Asian Archaeology News Blog (SeAArch)

Material World "Material World is an interactive, online hub for contemporary debates, discussion, thinking and research centred on material and visual culture."

 

 

• Library blogs:

 

The Robert Goldwater Library

UThink Blogs at the University Libraries at the University of Minnesota (has a good FAQ about blogs and blogging)

Information Today Inc.blogs Links from Information Today

 

• Blogs related to journals:

Museum Anthropology

ArtForum Diary

 

Finding blogs

 

• Google Blog Search

 

The goal of Blog Search is to include every blog that publishes a site feed (either RSS or Atom). It is not restricted to Blogger blogs, or blogs from any other service.

You can use Blog Search to find either specific posts or entire blogs. Restrict results to any of 35 specific languages by using the Advanced Search options.

 

Just type the word(s) you want to search for in the text box and click "Search." That's all there is to it! Advanced search option also available. Sort by relevance or date.

 

Since Blog Search indexes blogs by their site feeds, it will only include items that have been posted since it started indexing a given blog (June 2005 for most blogs).

 

At the bottom of each page of search results you can find several links, offering the top 10 or 100 results as either Atom or RSS feeds. Just grab the links from here and subscribe to them in the news aggregator of your choice and you will get updates whenever new posts are made that match your query.

 

example searches :

\"metropolitan museum of art\"

\"african art\"

 

You can also sign up for Google blog alerts, which will send you email notification

 

 

• Other Search Engines

Technorati

Blogdigger

Bloglines - search for blogs or blog posts

Feedster

IceRocket

PubSub

Sphere

Google Reader

 

 

• Look at the blogrolls of blogs you like

 

Aggregators

• Keep track of you blog feeds for you so you don't have to check them everyday to see if something is new

 

A nice & easy one to use is:

• Bloglines

 

And there's also:

 

• Google Reader

 

 

What are the potential use of blogs in the museum?

• Departmental blogs -- How can we reach the departmental adminstrators who could potentially be the right demographic for starting departmental blogs?
• Blogs for research assistants and associates -- Research staff that has recently finished school and may be looking to communicate with other recent grads about job opportunities or professional development. This group will most likely be the easiest to train on blogging.
• Curatorial blogs -- Curators can use blogs to communicate with colleagues in and outside of the museum about their current research, exhibitions and publications.

(blogs can be public or private)

• Blogs for education staff

 

Creating Blogs:

• Free and easy to use: Blogger
• I created this blog in about 5 minutes: Watson Test Blog

 

Why blog / Why read blogs?

Scholars who blog The soapbox of the digital age draws a crowd of academics

By DAVID GLENN

From the June 6, 2003 (!) issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education