Bloggership, or is publishing a blog scholarship? A survey of academic librarians

The aim of this paper is to gauge how academic libraries treat publishing a blog.

As blogging becomes more popular, the question arises as to whether it should count as scholarship or a creative activity in academic promotion and tenure. To find out, the author sent a link to a questionnaire to several e‐mail lists, inviting academic librarians to answer a short survey.

In total, 73.9 percent of respondents indicated that their institution expects them to engage in scholarly activities and/or publish scholarly articles, 53.6 percent indicated that their performance review committees do not weigh a blog the same as an article published in a peer‐reviewed journal.

As technology changes, policies will need to change.

Libraries may need to adapt to new forms of scholarship. Electronic scholarship needs a mechanism for peer‐review.

The paper is original – the author did not find any other surveys regarding blogging as scholarship in the library literature.