I was determined to keep quiet as long as the upcoming job interview wasn’t over, but in spite of the fact that I am pretty absorbed by the preparation, things seem to be rushing at me. One in particular I think is worth mentioning before I do so with the other ones in some kind of July cascade.
I have become a member of the editorial board of hypotheses.fr (and incidentally in parallel also of the new DH Commons-DARIAH journal on projects and tools – more on that later -), which is a great honor – and some responsibility as well. So this afternoon I browsed through the catalog of the hypotheses blogs to make a list of those I want to keep an eye on. I was feeling sweat drops sliding along my temples as I went through the letter A. A as in Archive: every other blog came on my list, if not every blog. Things began to lighten up when I reached the B and were definitely more relaxed when it came to C. I have done a selection until L and will finish later tonight (L as in LieuxDeSavoir).
Going systematically through the catalog and opening all the blogs that seem to fit to my research interests is an interesting experience. Some blogs seem to contain mostly calls for participation, conference programs, reports, book reviews, seminar announcements or links to the corresponding archived recording. They are mostly taken care of by an institution or a research group. It is those that display information the least linearly, more with a set of boxes split on the page. Blogs that are closer to research texts go for a display that emphasizes the linearity. This is what I do for instance, and I was fairly irritated when I noticed another blog that uses the exact same color combination and page setting as me. The header still makes the difference – it is a close call though. I put this one on my list. Because of the topic, of course, not the looks (what do you think?).
There are personal blogs, group blogs (a particularly audacious endeavor!), thematic blogs, institution blogs: 657 of them. I am self-curious to see how these o so different kinds of information get sorted by a human brain (mine) in the end. In the “publish first, filter later”, it is my job now to contribute to the filtering. Not a small thing. And when I find some contribution worth having its visitors’ statistics hit the ceiling, I can flag it with a #hyporadar: my Horse Radar, riding on blogs and occasionally neighing.
