10 Years of Librarianiana

Happy BlogsDay (a few days ago) to Jessamyn West's Librarian.net. Ms. Jessamyn started her library-focused blog ten years ago on April 20. She's just catching up to the anniversary now.

I "met" Jessamyn on-line about five years ago through the group-blog Metafilter, for which she serves as a moderator. Metafilter was my entrée into this world of on-line communities. I count Jessamyn as one of my inspirations for starting Mike's Musings, which will celebrate a half-decade this fall.

Ten years is a long time for a blog, though there are some older out there. In her anniversary post, Jessamyn muses on the slowdown in posting that all bloggers eventually experience. I think sometimes it is the case that we reach a point at which we've covered all of our personal "evergreen" topics and become reluctant to repeat ourselves. So we count on real-life activities for inspiration. And there are times when the things that happen at work, or in our families, are not really appropriate to share with the world at large.

So we slow down a bit. and, as new technologies emerge, we spread our communications over new channels, some of which stick while some fade. Bloggers, if I may generalize for a moment, are people who want to communicate with a broad audience. We're excited by new possibilities and new tools. Hopefully, we return to home base often enough to keep a blog alive.

And on occasional anniversaries, we like to look back at who we were then. Jessamyn ends her anniversary post, as I will, with a link to the first few days of Librarian.net.

Who were you ten years ago? What were you thinking? What did you write?