Thursday, November 17, 2005

Ann Althouse is blogging on academic blogging again, with a link to a Slate article on the topic:

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of academics keep blogs these days, posting everything from family pictures to scholarly works-in-progress. While few are counting on their Web publications to improve their chances at tenure, many have begun to fear that their blogs might actually harm their prospects. Last July, "Bloggers Need Not Apply," an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education about an anonymous Midwestern college's attempt to fill a position, laid out the perils for academic job-seekers who blog. "Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know 'the real them'—better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn't want to know more," wrote the pseudonymous columnist.

. . .

But academics aren't just concerned about the public display of an applicant's personal eccentricities. Many perceive blogs as evidence of a scholar's lack of seriousness. Shouldn't he be putting more time into scholarship, they wonder, and less into his blog? And if a blogger does have something serious to say, why is he presenting it in a superficial medium, rather than a peer-reviewed journal?

. . .

In many respects, Drezner's predicament was merely a cyber-version of an age-old dilemma. Whether online or off, the kind of accessible and widely read work that brings an academic public recognition is likely to draw the scorn and suspicion of his colleagues.


Ann, as usual, has some good comments. We might add though, that blogging could be an integral part of the teaching process. Many (most?) courses now have much of their materials online for students to look at -- reading lists, syllabi, etc. -- and blogging would seem to be a natural extension to class discussions. Say, for example, an instructor gets the same question five times in office hours. Answer that question on the blog: "I've been asked several times whether chapter XX is required or not; here's the answer:" This would extend to more academic, less bookkeeping questions as well, i.e., the content of the course.

We here at ArchaeoBlog are not sure whether blogging needs a peer-review process or whether it ought to be formally considered part of the tenure-judging process. The fact is, that it is or can be part of that process. The issue is whether it is wholly negative ("They're producing this popular fluff when they should be writing serious papers") at the present time and whether that can be changed. We think blogging, similar to doing public outreach -- especially important in archaeology -- is an important part of the discipline. We work with public funds, often on public land, with materials that really belong to all of us. We need to make sure the public is engaged. Blogging can be an important part of that.