In my own research for this blog, I was curious as to the blog’s lifespan, how and why it was created, and how it has evolved. According to an article in New York Magazine, author Clive Thompson gives a basic timeline of the blog dating its birth to 1994 from the computer of a Swarthmore student.  He continues showing the blog’s growth into maturity, becoming a word in the early 2000s, its variations, citing everything from gossip to brokerage blogs, and now to the present where Huffington Post has become a reliable source for news for many and Buzzfeed has taken over the free time of college students and working people alike.

As you can see from Thompson’s timeline, blogging is a recent addition to potential scholarship opportunities afforded to historians. The blog gives the historian a unique combination of database and diary. Bloggers can tell history in an informal manner while discussing the intricacies of a very specific subject, typically using lesser known visual aids and interactive material. The blog serves as a diary allowing the author to give personal reflection and opinion on the subject of their choosing. In looking at numerous blogs, I found that the category provides a commentary on the differences of human interest. It astounds me that more than one person found fascination in constructing a periodical analysis of obscure Medieval art or aspects of gender relationships to food advertisements. Blogs provide an outlet for the “buff” in the ordinary, non Ph.D. historian and connects those enamored with the same subject through digital correspondence.

To cite personal experience, I am a recent reader of blogs and even previously condemned the idea of internet history that encompassed the ideas and random comments of web-viewers. Though I am still an avid reader of hard-copy books (which will never change!), I have found blogs useful for my own interests and research. The use of photographs and detail of many blogs has won me over. Though I enjoy reading blogs from architectural and historical commentaries to Buzzfeed (I confess), I still cannot wrap my head around the idea of the blog as a tool of full academic scholarship.

There has been recent debate over the idea of the blog as scholarship in history. Numerous academics, baptized into the old and formal ways of writing and sharing history, call “impostor” when discussing the scholarship status of blogging. In its most basic sense, I find, blogging can be considered scholarship as it involves (in some cases) the same extensive research as a scholarly paper or published work. However, in academia, the blog finds itself in a most peculiar position as it embodies characteristics of scholarship while lacking in many of the formalities required for scholarly publication and distinction. Recently a few brave academics on an OAH sponsored panel have discussed the possibilities of blogging as scholarship and potentially gave a look into the future of the blogging sphere.

The position of academics is understandable as I can’t imagine someone receiving formal recognition or tenure at a University teaching history due to internet sensation. I foresee a time, perhaps by the mid 21st century where Universities have “bloggers in residence,” blogging will be listed on resumes, and most of the generation that condemns blogging will be retired and out of academic conversation. In time as the category of blogging refines itself and gains a comfortable status with academics, I think that the blog will earn its place in the realms of historical scholarship.