Blogs? Dogs? What is this thing anyhow?

This is Coffee, a German Shorthaired Pointer. She's supposed to be a bird dog but the only birds that really interest her are chickens. Fortunately, we don't hunt and she lives in Key West -- and since I have lots of photos and she is an extremely good-looking dog, I figured she'd be a good subject for this blog, which I made for use in our workshop on blogging at the Monroe County Public Library in Key West.

What is a blog? Since we're using Blogger, we'll borrow their introduction, which seems to be a nice, short explanation:

A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political
soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private
thoughts. Memos to the world.
Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There
are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.
In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing
basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then
they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.
Since Blogger was
launched in 1999, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up
journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with
others.
And we're pretty sure the whole deal is just getting started.

If you want to get into more detail you can read Wikipedia's entry on the subject. Just don't tell any other librarian I said so.

As you can tell, there is a huge variety of formats, subjects, shapes and sizes for blogs. And many websites have blogs within them, like newspapers -- several of the links on the right side of this page are newspaper based blogs -- and websites known as aggregators. These are especially popular in politics, with sites on the left like Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post (which is not itself a blog but an aggregator, but a bunch of left-leaning blogs are hosted on the site) and on the right with Free Republic and Red State.

One of the best way to find blogs you like is to simply stumble around following links within blogs -- either within posts or from a list of links on the side. Just remember to bookmark or otherwise save the address when you find one you like! And remember they're not required reading -- you don't have to keep up with every single post. They're there for perusal, at your wish and convenience, and hopefully your entertainment and enlightenment.