"Scholars’ Blogs or Scholarly Blogs? Perceptions and Implications for Promotion, Reward and Preservation" by Dr. Carolyn Hank

TITLE: "Scholars’ Blogs or Scholarly Blogs?  Perceptions and Implications for Promotion, Reward and Preservation"
 

Presenter: Dr. Carolyn Hank (Ph.D. '11), assistant professor

ABSTRACT:

Informal modes of communication are a staple of academe. Blogging emerged as a novel channel for such informal communication, but considering the ubiquity of blogs today, the idea of this channel being “new” seems, well, a bit old. Blogs are everywhere, and the blogs of scholars are no exception. And while blogs may be characterized as informal, can we still consider them “scholarship?” That is, are the blogs of scholars actually scholarly? Scholars’ adoption of blogs as a channel of communication and their opinions on how blogging does – or does not – constitute scholarship, is well-documented, though most of the reporting has taken the form of anecdotal reports. This presentation contributes to these reports with empirical evidence from studies of scholars who are blogging in the areas of history, economics, law, biology, chemistry, physics and, currently ongoing, the biblioblogosphere. In addition to providing insight into how scholars’ perceive their blogs in relation to their respective cumulative scholarly record, this presentation will also highlight scholars’ motivations to blog, perceived rewards from blogging, and preferences and practices for blog access and availability, both now and into the future.  

About Carolyn Hank

Dr. Carolyn Hank is an assistant professor at the School of Information Studies at McGill University. She received her Ph.D. in 2011 from the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Currently, she is PI on an OCLC/ALISE grant funded study, “The Biblioblogosphere: A Comparison of Communication and Preservation Perceptions and Practices between Blogging LIS Scholar-Practitioners and LIS Scholar-Researchers.” She is also PI on another ALISE-funded study looking at information and library science faculty and students interactions via Facebook. She serves as the North American academic expert on BlogForever, a co-funded European Commission project on blog preservation. She is also an instructor in the Digital Curation Professional Institute: Curation Practices for the Digital Object Lifecycle. The Institute is a component of DigCCurr II: Extending an International Digital Curation Curriculum to Doctoral Students and Practitioners, a four-year project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Previously, she served as project manager for the DigCCurr I project (2007-2009) and program manager for the UNC-CH Digital Curation/Institutional Repository Committee (2005-2008), and Carolina Digital Repository (2008-2009). She teaches in the areas of digital preservation and access, digital curation, human information interactions, and research methods.