Why Academics Should Blog: A College of One’s Own is a fantastic post by Stephen T Casper on his blog The Neuro Times. “The amazing thing about blogging,” he writes, “is that an author can capture all of those feelings that sustain scholarship.” Here is an extended excerpt:
“But most importantly, scholars need to make everything they do count in multiple ways: those blog book reviews can become the foundation of essay reviews or serve as literature reviews for new articles. They can also act as brief and searchable notes for teaching purposes that help to maintain a critical and cutting-edge classroom. Similarly, brief critical reflections on recent articles and books can develop with time into abstracts for conferences and workshops, which can become the basis for further grant applications or new articles. The joy of reading a new primary source can be shared with others who have read it and also enjoyed it. And the little things matter too: blogs come equipped with the capacity to tell you that a reader came to your site and read a page from your blog.”
You can read the rest here.
See also Geoff Maslan’s article “Academic Bloggers Everywhere” from the University World News web site, and Deborah Lupton’s fantastic posts about social media for sociologists.