Digitalist life in the library

Things 3 & 4 – Blogs

• Thing 3: Create your own 23 things blog and make your first post.
• Thing 4: Register your 23 Things blog and explore others.

I have been blogging for a long time. I think I started my first blog in 2000 on the now obsolete site diary-x. For the first few years I flitted around different platforms with different usernames until I settled down with Digitalist and WordPress in January 2009.

For me the key thing about having a blog is knowing what you're going to write about. I struggled for a long time trying to write about both my social and professional interests on the same blog. I also found that none of my readers were entirely happy - my friends didn't care about libraries and my colleagues didn't want to hear about my personal life. Now that I have separated these two I find that blogging is so much easier; it's easier to identify topics to write about and easier to reach the appropriate audience.

Speaking of reaching audiences, in reading the blogs of fellow 23 things participants I have noticed a lot of speculation about who is going to be reading them. In this case the main reason for writing a blog is to keep a record of your progress throughout the programme. The main audience is likely to be other participants who are keen to read about what others have been doing each week and perhaps to learn a little bit more from the experiences of other participants.