Why Blog?

Much of the popularity of blogs is that you decide their content and purpose. Whilst behaving like a news site, where most recent news appears at the top of the page, this one simple feature can be put to any number of uses, including:

• Personal notebook.
• A reflective Learning Journal for yourself or a class.
• Departmental news.
• Personal profile raising.
• Prospective student outreach.
• Improving management and co-worker transparency
• Public or University of York-oriented marketing.

...but they are also easily used for ...

• Exposing unfinished ideas to one's peers at an early stage in order to get early feedback or input.
• Explaining one's research papers to a wider audience, beyond one's peers and fellow practitioners.
• Finding new collaborators or being found.
• Making feedback easy - blogs normally have comment fields whilst papers in repositories don't
• Dissemination - being found for "niche" search terms particular to your field

Examples at York

• York Web Office Blog
• Language & Linguistics
• Social Policy Research Unit
• Collaborative Tools Project
• Human Research Centre Treehouse