Academic bloggers?

I was looking over the blogroll on Bitch. Ph.D., and realized the project of identifying “Scholarly blogs” is even more difficult than I had considered. Many of those blogs do not appear on my list of scholars who blog. I started to add some, but I see this as being a Herculean task. I conveniently avoided defining what a “scholar” was before, but the lack of definition makes things especially difficult. Is it just those with an academic appointment at a university? That doesn’t mesh with what I think of as a scholar. But where is the edge? Is it determined by the content of the blog? I mean, I find this entry about an undergrad who has failed to get into a business major very amusing, and sadly familiar, but is it scholarly when it talks not about a topic but about the process and problems of the academic system?

This is really not a posting about anything. I don’t know that the effort is really worth it. I mean, I am interested in the use of blogs by academics, so it makes sense to try to get something of a handle on what makes up that community, but defining the community itself — the criteria for being a member of the community — is a very difficult process.

It strikes me that a large number of the newer academic bloggers choose to remain anonymous, and that this has a significant impact on what they choose to and can blog. Honestly, there is a lot that I would love to be able to write about, but can’t because I would be promptly fired. On the other hand, a lot of what I blog about really only makes sense when people from my “real life” can connect it with me.

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3 Comments

  1. Posted 11/13/2004 at 4:33 pm | Permalink

    I’m reminded of what my friend, The Life and Times of a History PhD Student says, “this isn’t an academic blog rather it’s an academic’s blog”.

  2. Posted 11/13/2004 at 5:36 pm | Permalink

    And some of us just don’t get with the segregationalism

  3. Posted 11/13/2004 at 6:40 pm | Permalink

    alex: do you write with a pen name? or have a dark side blog site nobody knows is really you?

    hmmmmm….;-)

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