It’ll be interesting to see where blogs are in a year, or 2 in terms of original reporting, and improved editing.
Marylaine Block gave me this bit of wisdom once, I think she said it best:
"blogs and listservs as helping to solve one of the problems our machines create for us, the running as fast as you can to stay in one place phenomenon. It's such an elegant mechanism for librarians to help each other identify what's worth learning and help them learn it."
GD: What's the difference between a blog and a zine?
BC: I think mefi, slashdot, and lisnews fall more in the zine camp, since they are more of a collaborative, and almost editorially controlled type. Again, Marylaine Block made this distinction clear in her story on blogging. (See Communicating Off the Page.)
GD: Who are some librarians that your admire?
BC: Walt Crawford and Gary Price because they work so damn hard all the time. Jean Armour Polly, no one else can say they said “surfing the net” first.
GD: Who is out there right now doing great things in the profession?
Walt Crawford and Gary Price; Dan Chudnov; Eric Lease Morgan; Rory Litwin, and Steven M. Cohen
GD: Are there any upcoming developments/trends in the library world, technological or otherwise, that you see as having a significant impact on our profession?
BC: eBooks, I’m not sure how or when, but eBooks and ePaper are really going to change things at some point. The web in general, as it evolves, as people use more wireless stuff to access the web, this will change libraries. I wish I knew how, I wish I could see how patrons will be approaching and thinking about libraries in 10 years. Some people say we will be gone, others say we will be more important than ever, I think it’ll be somewhere in between. Many of us will be gone, and some of us are going to be more important than ever. Bots like SmarterChild could have a huge impact on us as well. Check out Joe Janes article “How To Think About Technology” in February issue of Library Journal, he’s much smarter than I.
GD: What can we expect from LISNews in the future?
BC: Good question, I have many ideas, but truth be told, probably more of the same, and a slow evolution into something more open and more professional.
I have a list of very specific ideas like some kind of page ranking, that is story ranking, vote for this story, so the most popular ones win out. Some kind of ranking based on # of hits, # of votes, average vote, and comments, like a formula kind of thing.
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