Author: Jonathan Brinley

This is a blog. My blog, in fact. It doesn’t have a name yet; I’ll probably do that on the eighth day.

So, why should I have a blog?, I keep asking myself. Truth be told, I’m not altogether sure that I should. But the last couple of months have persuaded me that it might be time to try one. It’s all about community.

I’ve never really been a part of an on-line community before, at least not in any meaningful way. But recently I stumbled across code4lib, which can best be summarized as a community of library technologists that interacts via e-mailing lists, an IRC channel, conferences, and blogs. After lurking on the IRC channel for a bit, I slowly began to join in on the conversations. I found my head filling up every day with all that I learned from this community. I even find myself, now, involved in the creation of a new professional journal because of my (short) affiliation with this community.

So this blog is my next step, engaging a little bit more with this community, and perhaps others that I might join in the future. I intend it to be a semi-professional blog, so I’ll probably steer clear of inflammatory topics like religion and politics unless they clearly relate to my professional activities. The blog will emphasize libraries and technology, especially those areas where they overlap, including metadata, digital libraries, and computer programming.

I doubt I’ll post all that often. Really, anything over a post every couple of weeks would surprise me. In a couple of months, I’ll assess where I am; the whole project may be a mistake that should be put out of its misery. If I decide to keep going with it, I’ll ask one of the admins to add it to the planet, so a few people might see it.