Done!

After a long and rather protracted struggle, my MSc thesis on the potentials and practical applications of weblogs in the context of academic libraries is finally finished and will be submitted on Monday. One more exam to go in late March, and then you can download it from a thesis server near you.

Abstract:

Since the late 1990s, a new kind of publication on the Internet has raised an increasing amount of attention: the weblog, basically a website that is frequently updated, contains short postings that are arranged in reverse-chronological order, which can contain anything from everyday experiences of their author to project notes, political commentary, technological newsbites, or even cat pictures. A weblog also typically contains an archive of all previous postings, a unique URL for each entry, an XML feed that allows subscription to the entries, links to related websites and comments from its readers.

Through linking to each other, weblogs form clusters of information; through the chronological order of the entries, they put strong emphasis on processes rather than on results; through the open structure, they invite conversation and communication.

Libraries and librarians are working from the understanding that their goal is to propagate information and access to information. As a consequence, librarians have embraced the weblog concept right from its inception as a medium to connect and inform.

This thesis takes a brief look at the mechanisms of weblogs in general, and some of the principles governing their application in a library context in particular. It also analyses the use of weblog-like web pages maintained by Austrian academic libraries (for both external and internal communication) and to what extent these pages make use of the advantages of weblog technology. These findings are contrasted with examples of how weblogs are used by libraries in other countries. Finally, the thesis will show how personal weblogs written by librarians can rectify negative images of the profession, and will introduce a number of personal weblogs to illustrate the point.