When you read a blog post about History what are you looking for?  If you own a blog do you write posts about historical topics?  Why do you do this?  What do you get out of it?  These are all things that are of interest for the Blogging for Historians project. 

The project examines the purpose behind blogging either as an individual or as an intuition for academic purposes.  It looks at ideas about best practice as well as the hopes and desires of those writing or reading the posts.  The idea is to gather a wider body of evidence regarding what people involved in History-related disciplines think of blogging and why they may give it a go.  The project will attempt to do the following:

  • A series of podcasted interviews with practitioners in archives, libraries and history departments who blog about History in one form or another.
  • A workshop (details to follow) about History blogging to be held in the Institute of Historical Research
  • An online survey asking for thoughts and ideas about blogging

A crucial part of the research for the Blogging for Historians project will derive from the survey.  This is live now and it would be brilliant if you could take a moment of your time to fill it in.  The survey is very short and should take less than five minutes to complete.  It is broken down into three sections:

  • Using blogs
  • Creating and managing blogs
  • Personal details

It is the first two sections that will provide the majority of interest and will hopefully raise some interesting thoughts, ideas and questions.  Essentially the survey asks why we create blogs, what do we hope to gain from them, and how do we access blog posts as a reader?  It also asks what do we gain by reading blogs?  From this survey it is hoped that we can further understand the processes and many reasons why blogs have become such a successful forum for writing, reading, and discussion over the last few years, and what impact or importance this might already and in the future have for the History discipline.  

I would be very grateful if you could fill in this survey.  It doesn’t matter if you own a blog or just visit them (or even if you don’t visit them – I would be interested in that too).  The survey is interested principally in History-related blogs, but this does not necessarily mean academic or professional.  There are a variety of History-related blogs out there, all of which have something useful and interesting to offer. 

Access to the survey can be found from this link:

Blogging for Historians Online Survey

It should take no longer than five minutes to complete and personal details will be kept confidential.  Statistics from the results of the survey alongside my thoughts and analysis will appear on this blog early in 2013. 

For more details about the Blogging for Historians project see its own blog here: Blogging for Historians Blog

The project is funded through the SMKE scheme.  For further details about this project see here: SMKE website