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Against the GrainVolume 29 | Issue 4 Article 70September 2017To Blog or Not to Blog-Academic BloggingPat SabosikACI Scholarly Blog Index, psabosik@aci.infoFollow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atgPart of the Library and Information Science CommonsThis document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact epubs@purdue.edu foradditional information.Recommended CitationSabosik, Pat (2017) "To Blog or Not to Blog-Academic Blogging," Against the Grain: Vol. 29: Iss. 4, Article 70.DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.791938 Against the Grain / September 2017 <http://www.against-the-grain.com>and objectives of the activism it describes. It is further important to note that such en-gagement in no way diminishes the rigor or accomplishment of these works.  Perhaps no other work better exemplifies how schol-arship can document resistance — or, in its study of the Kahnawà:ke Mohawk people, a “grounded refusal” to accede to ongoing set-tler colonialism — and serve to advance both cause and scholarship than Audra Simpson’s Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States (2014).10  An exqui-site contemporary ethnography and powerful political act, Mohawk Interruptus encourages readers to appreciate not merely the tenacity of a people, but the audacity and activism of everyday lives.  This and the other works discussed here are complex, sophisticated, and thoughtful scholarly treatments enlarged and enriched by interest, empathy, and in some instances profound commitment to activism and the historical record.  They belong in many academic library collections, particularly those engaged with American Indian, civil rights, or social justice studies.  Collecting to the Corefrom page 36Endnotes1.  Petronzio ,  Matt .   “Indigenous youth used social media to build and sustain the #NoDAPL movement,” Mashable.  Accessed March 31, 2017.  http://mashable.com/2016/12/07/stand-ing-rock-nodapl-youth/#0WKEBHGwRqqb2.  Smith, Paul Chaat, and Robert Allen Warrior.  Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee.  New York: New Press, 1996.*3.  American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk.  Edited by Troy Johnson, Joane Nagel, and Duane Champagne.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.*4.  McKenzie-Jones, Paul R.  Clyde War-rior: Tradition, Community, and Red Power.  Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2015.*5.  Shreve, Bradley G.  Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism.  Norman: Uni-versity of Oklahoma Press, 2011.*6.  Hoxie, Frederick E.  This Indian Coun-try: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made.  New York: Penguin, 2012.7.  Beyond Red Power: American Indian Politics and Activism since 1900.  Edited by Daniel M. Cobb and Loretta Fowler.  Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2007.8.  Indigenous Women and Work: From La-bor to Activism.  Edited by Carol Williams.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.*9.  Davis, Julie L.  Survival Schools: The American Indian Movement and Community Education in the Twin Cities.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.*10.  Simpson, Audra.  Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.**Editor’s note: An asterisk (*) denotes a title selected for Resources for College Libraries.To Blog or Not To Blog — Academic Bloggingby Pat Sabosik  (General Manager, ACI Scholarly Blog Index;  Phone: 203-816-8256)  <psabosik@aci.info>Academics blog.  They are fond of writing about their work and about developments in their field.  How does their academic blogging mesh with their more formal research and publication?  Let’s look at some active scholarly bloggers and discover why they blog and about what.Scholarly blogging is becoming important in its own right as a continuation of published research, updated with new information, de-velopments, or commentary as a new paper or presentation is in the works.  According to Sarah Bond, Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Iowa, and author of the blog Sarah E. Bond: History from Below, not enough quality scholarly blogs are cited nor archived.  This is a similar theme that was dis-cussed in a panel I moderated at the Charleston Conference last November and recapped in a blog post I wrote about the panel: “Why We Blog.”  The three issues scholarly bloggers identified as important to their blogging efforts are having their blogs discovered, cited, and archived for future research.Bond questions in a recent blog post, “Le-gitimizing the Blog: On Reading, Citing & Ar-chiving Blogposts” why more academic blogs are not cited in the footnotes of journal articles or with-in academic books.  She states: “While there are cer-tainly still specious blogs that abound on the web, the number of trusted, well-sourced, and highly researched academ-ic blogs is on the increase.” She gives a few examples of well-researched blogs in the classics and then de-scribes how to quote blogs, cite them, use citation tools like Zotero, and how to archive blogs.  It is a worthwhile and practical guide for scholarly bloggers.  Bond’s blog post was also published in a recent issue of Forbes.Another academic blogger who provides practical insights into scholarly blogging and the craft of writing is Lucy Allen.  In a Janu-ary 2017 post, Allen, a Lecturer in Medieval Studies at the University of Cambridge, wrote in her blog, Jeanne de Montbaston: Reading Medieval Books that blogging helped improve her writing.  This comment is frequently made by academic bloggers.  Allen also suggests that writing blog posts can help to break writer’s block when dealing with difficult concepts in academic research.  She provides tips for academic bloggers and insights into scholarly blogging in addition to insights into her work in medieval studies, feminism, and the topics of gender and memory.Humanists don’t have a lock on scholarly blogging since we know that scientists also blog.  In a novel blog post, represented in fifteen Tweets, Morgan Jackson, an ento-mological researcher at the University of Guelph, recounts his seven years as a blogger stating that blogging and other social media activity provided “countless professional and personal opportunities.”  His blog, BioDiver-sity in Focus, was selected by From the Lab Bench, another science-focused blog, to “help researchers understand how readers use and view science blogging.” William Yates, a physician and research psychiatrist at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research, blogs regularly about aspects of neuroscience in his blog Brain Posts.  He started Tweeting about his work to sharpen his writing skills and then transitioned to writing blog posts so he could explain complex neuroscientific developments and diseases in clear and simple language.  We can read about this contemporary topic in a recent blog post: “Opioids, Benzos, and Risk for Overdose” where he summarizes the findings of a study by the British Medical Jour-nal that found a link between concurrent benzodiazepine prescriptions with opioid overdose, an important step in treating opioid addiction.What is emerging from the scholarly blog literature is disciplined academic writing that calls for citing and archiving in the schol-arly press.  Credentialed academics are writing and publishing outside the formal channels of publication and are looking for ways to have this work recognized as components of their research and scholarly communications.  Scholarly blogs are becom-ing an important component in this research chain.  Column Editor’s Note:  Blogs mentioned in this article can be found in the ACI Schol-arly Blog Index.  “Why We Blog” is published by ACI and can be found at http://aci.info/blog/. — PS

To Blog or Not to Blog-Academic Blogging

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To Blog or Not to Blog-Academic Blogging

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