Karen Schneider, who writes Free Range Librarian and who also runs the venerable Librarian’s Internet Index (note new name) gave a talk about blogging ethics. Although the Search Lounge is about search, and I don’t want to make it a blog about blogs, I did want to mention some things she said on this topic.
New terms (to me this first one was new, but a quick search on Yahoo returns many matches, including this news.com article from February, 2005):
Astroturf: a blog that looks like a personal blog, but is really sponsored by a corporation. I often wonder, for instance, about blogs I see dedicated to 1970s TV shows. The term can also be applied to political groups who start fake grassroots blogs.
biblioblogosphere - the world of librarian blogs.
Good quote:
“There is nothing more pathetic than a librarian who gets the facts wrong.”
The context for this quote was her adamant insistence that we as librarians fact-check everything we publish.
Another good point she made was about transparency and how important it is to provide “About Me” sections. I totally agree. It doesn’t have to be an extensive bio, but at least provide a brief paragraph so that I can at least think I’m reading a real person’s writing and not astroturf or a splog.