New England's Aborigines - Stocktake on posts

Across on the New England History blog I have just put up a stocktake on posts linked in some ways to New England's Aboriginal peoples.

The post took me some time to write. You can see this from the date, 24 March, which is actually the date I began to write.

The post is also long, very long, at over 4,000 words. However, I wanted to capture some of the main themes in on element of my writing.

I face a growing problem. Since I started using blogs as my main writing mechanism, I have written hundreds of posts across six blogs. While many posts are short, some are quite long thought pieces. The tag and search mechanisms on blogger are far from perfect, so there is a growing issue in keeping track of material.

Apart from a very small band of insanely dedicated readers, I do not really expect people to read all this stuff. However, I want it to be accessible as required both for myself and those who want to find out about particular issues.

Here I am conscious of those who come to my blogs via search engines - over 700 first time unique IP addresses last week, over 37,000 per annum - in search of information. These totals are growing, although no where near as fast as the recent spike in Neil's traffic. I stand in admiration, even awe, of the evolution of Neil's blogs.

Even though my traffic figures are far lower, the numbers are not insignificant. Here in an off-line discussion with Neil, we talked about the need for bloggers to recognise their responsibilities as publishers.

I do not expect any of my blogs to become A list blogs. You do not achieve this by writing 4,000 word posts! I do expect my blogs to occupy a small but respected place as a source of information and comment in the evolving information society.

To do this while also making material more accessible for my own use, I need to find new ways of combining and representing material.

Noric Dilanchian, an old friend, and I often talk about the role of content. Content is no longer a problem. The problem now is how to manage that content.