Nice post at Weblogs in Higher Edcucation. Ken writes about discussing weblogs with a friend who sticks mainly with newspapers, journals, columnists, etc.
I found myself saying that bloggers were performing a different function than columnists. Sure, once in awhile bloggers carry out a direct act of reporting or research that could just as well have been done by a journalist. I think bloggers are processing issues and facts, passing ideas around, turning them over and over, nudging them, extending their reach, recontextualizing them, and otherwise living with ideas and information and drawing them out into wider communities to test them and to see how they hold up.
That’s where I see the “Innovator & Commentator” LIS Weblogs thriving: as an engaging method of creating ideas, passing them between the bloggers and developing them as part of a community. Look, for example, at the coverage of IM in Libraries and how much discussion is occuring here, at walking paper, Librarian in Black, etc.