An exploratory analysis of librarians' blogs: their development, nature and changes

Abstract

PurposeThe main purpose of this paper is to compare and examine two points in time of the LIS blogsphere: first period of publication of the blog (first two months for each blog) and a second period (July/August 2008). The research will describe and analyse librarians' blogsphere, focusing on its nature, development, and prevailing tendencies.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents a statistical descriptive analysis and a thorough content analysis of 30 LIS blogs in two periods of time. The first phase in the investigation is the location of the LIS blogs that meet the research criteria; the second phase is the examination of data related to the posts. The final phase consists of the content analysis of the main ideas of the posts and the development of a subject scheme that represents the analysis.FindingsA thorough examination of blogs' content reveals that there is a current tendency to write essay‐type posts with hypertext links; there are fewer posts and postings days, as well as fewer readers' comments, but a larger number of links and tags which are assigned to the posts. Furthermore, three out of the five main content categories are equivalent in both periods and it seems that the same issues still occupy librarians' minds and thoughts.Originality/valueThe research findings are relevant for librarians and information scientists as they cause them to better understand and delve into the phenomenon of LIS blogsphere.