INLS 224, Our Reflections on the Project

Michael C. Habib
Haley Hall
May 9, 2005

Overall we are very pleased with the way our project turned out. Critical to our success was our decision on a method for collaboration. Early on, we were randomly looking at resources, but we weren’t taking notes of what we found. Basically, we were at a loss as to how to begin. Haley sent an email suggesting that we each maintain a log or diary that documented our research. This would include both what we hope to share with one another and what our current plans were. We also thought that such a journal would offer us the opportunity to look back on how our research process developed over time. It was when trying to figure out the best way that this could be accomplished that Michael suggested the use of a blog. This choice of medium was ideal for a number of reasons. First, as a journal, it would be easily accessible to both parties. Second, the comment feature would allow for easy collaboration. With our busy schedules, it would have been tough to coordinate our research in another way. Essentially, there would have been a whole lot of emailing. Furthermore, there would have been no integrated product, which would make it hard to abstract any clear patterns. An additional reason that the use of a blog was appealing is that not only is it a medium for collaboration, but also a means of resource creation. It was our idea that the project could eventually grow to be a valuable reference tool for someone researching creation. Once these decisions were made, we then had to implement our idea by creating a blog.

The use of Blogger software was chosen for a number of reasons. First, due to our lack of familiarity with blogs, it was by far one of the easiest to get up and running. A basic template was chosen, and Michael worked to customize it for the purposes of the project. This has been an ongoing project as it has taken a considerable amount of time to understand what all of the possible settings mean. Some technical difficulties arose throughout the course of the project. At one point, the sidebar was displaying at the very bottom of the blog, below the entries, in Internet Explorer. This appeared to be due to a flaw in Internet Explorer, as this problem did not occur in standards based browsers. The other reason Blogger was chosen is because of our goal of resource creation. We thought that because Google owns Blogger, our resource would be indexed better by Google and thus accessible to a wider audience. Blogger also allows the option of building a Google search bar into the blog, thus allowing for local search. We thought this feature would greatly expand the functionality of our blog as a reference resource. The RSS feed for the blog has been turned on. This will allow a regular reader to get updates as new posts are created. We thought this would be an important feature for a researcher.

Now that the project is finished, Blogger will also make it very easy to incorporate new members while maintaining administrative control. Hopefully, researchers and hobbyists will begin to become involved in adding new entries. While we have not yet done extensive Internet research on our topic, it appears that most, though not all, existing resources are heavily biased towards one side of the creationist vs. evolutionist debate. This blog should offer a well-rounded alternative to researchers who are either not concerned with that debate, or hope to look at the debate from a variety of perspectives.

One of our initial hopes was that we would be able to abstract from our work patterns of research that developed over time. One particular area we look back on is how we used this medium to collaborate. At first, we didn’t use the comment feature very much. Instead, we added comments to new posts. Because of the reverse chronological order of the entries, this method worked well when we only had a few entries. However, as the blog began to grow, we began to use the comment feature much more extensively because it would have been very confusing to follow our strands of thought and research otherwise. Furthermore, the commenting feature made it very easy to build upon what was already created. Many of our later comments were also used as a way of cross-referencing earlier posts to later posts. As the blog grows, this cross-referencing will make it much easier for a researcher to locate quickly all posts related to one strand of research.

Another thing that we noticed is that we each began by stating our backgrounds with the topic. This proved very useful for understanding each others approach to the project. This medium made it particularly easy to share our backgrounds because it was very easy to point to outside articles and websites that demonstrated what we are already familiar with.

One last point we think is particularly interesting is our writing styles. Haley maintained a relatively casual style throughout the project. On the other hand, Michael gradually became more formal as the project progressed. He did this for two reasons. First, during the course of the project, Michael became increasingly concerned with the way that blogs are preventing people from getting and maintaining jobs. This definitely effected how much opinion went into his later posts. The other reason that he became more formal is the recent debate within the library and information science community over the legitimacy of blogs as a tool of the trade. This debate came to the forefront of the community’s attention with the publication of an editorial by the President-elect of the American Library Association Michael Gorman. This opinion piece was highly critical of blogs and the people that make them. By becoming more formal in citations and writing style, it was Michael Habib’s hope that this project could help demonstrate the value of this medium as a tool of the library profession.

By focusing primarily on reference sources, we have developed a good understanding of what disciplines creation is studied in and in what way it enters the discourse of these various disciplines. This should lay a solid foundation for a more in depth analysis of the topic. Eventually, it was determined that in many ways, the topic of creation is only marginally covered by many disciplines in the social sciences. The aforementioned debate between Creationists and Evolutionists has caused the majority of the discourse to focus on a Christian Fundamentalist view of creation. By determining this, we have been able to set a clear direction for future work, and lay a solid foundation for the continued development of this reference tool.

To conclude, we would like to mention one feature that we would eventually like to incorporate into the resource. Many blogs have a feature where posters can add descriptive tags to each post. We are not sure if this feature is available in Blogger, but, if possible, this would add a much more robust human indexing system to the tool. Such a method would also be much less time intensive than the current method of cross-referencing through the comments. Other future directions of collection development are written into the blog.