At the Thursday night blogging confab at the Berkman Center, the question of how to define blogs briefly surfaced in a meta way. It reminded me of a page I’ve wanted for a long time, but apparently haven’t wanted enough to build.

The idea is that most living terms are impossible to define cleanly. We do much better by pointing to some examples that everyone agrees “If these aren’t ___s, then nothing is!” (This is part of the rejection of Aristotelianism built on Eleanor Rosch’s work in prototype classification, but that’s an example of a different color.) So, if you wanted to explain to someone what a blog is, what would be a reasonable set of examples to which you could point? These aren’t necessarily the award-winning, big time blogs. In fact, they probably shouldn’t be because, by definition, the award winners aren’t typical. You’d want the list to include a good range of types and styles.

What would you put on a list of prototype blogs that would give a newbie — or a journalist — a good sense of the nature and range of blogs?

BTW, here’s now not to define a blog:

“A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web.”

This would be slightly amusing if it didn’t come from Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, and Dean of Library Services, Madden Library, California State University, Fresno

Categories: Uncategorized dw