Redundancy all over again

Tangognat blogs:

"Is there anyway to quantify the time you’d save by weeding out links to a common library topic before you decide to also segregate all the good commentary attached to the link you find redundant?"

While I don't know the technical answer to her question, I would assume that the techies behind aggregation tools can definitely come up wiith a method to weed out links to redundant library topics. Maybe "weeding" is not the right terminology (although it fits the librarian mode very well). Maybe categorization is the better word. Maybe there needs to be something that will place all posts to a similar link (or permalink) into a separate folder so that all of those posts can be read at the same time (and then weeded out?) I like that she mentioned segregating content. I would be more inclined to read my aggregator without any redundancy, and then be able to open up one folder and read (or not read for that matter) all of the posts on a particular subject. This is kinda what trackback is all about, a linear discussion on one particular post. The problem with trackback is that not all blog software (hello Blogger) can participate. In my world of aggregated permalink folders, its the aggregators job, not the weblog software.

Back to Tangognat's post:

"I don’t think that to be a librarian blogger you automatically have to be contributing to the profession in the more traditional sense, by providing a human filtered SDI service on librarianship to your blog readers. I greatly enjoy reading the slice o’ life librarian blogs created by libraryblooze, tinylittlelibrarian and malelibarian centerfold. I suspect that once the semester starts and the students come back, I’ll have a few stories like that to tell myself. I decided to start blogging because I wanted to write more even it was very informal, and I wanted to be able to tinker with my own web site."

Exactly my post from a few days ago. While we both enjoy reading "slice o' life" blogs, we are not forcing them upon anybody. For those that only want to read "library informational weblogs", be my guest. Why should we worry about the overload of weblogs in the library field, regardless of their content. If you don't want to read them, then don't. They won't bother you. I think that all librarians should be taking part in a method of "publishing" that is bound to come up in their workplace setting in the future (look at what Jenny has accomplished over the past few years with her organization). To say that librarians shouldn't blog because they have nothing to say is missing the point. Librarians should blog to find something to say. When I started posting to LS, I had nothing to say (some would argue that I have nothing to say now!!!), but I worked at it and I found my niche (I think). If librarians don't blog, then they might not have the opportunity to find their niche. Why do it on a public forum? So that others can read what you write. I can't write in a vacuum. I need feedback from others as to my ideas/theories/etc. Blogging enables that all to happen with ease. Don't knock it 'til you try it.