This is a test. I’ve been talking with Fred about the Lyceum project for a while now, and blogs have taken on a role in my research agenda (a back-burner role, admittedly, but still). And yet I’ve never blogged. (Kristina objects to the word “blogger,” so I apologize for using the word “blogged,” but she has yet to suggest an alternative term, so I remain a philistine).

Joe Janes wrote an article in American Libraries a while back about community-created reference sources. I believe that blogs too may be used for reference, only as a vehicle for reference the reference transaction rather than as reference sources. Joe raises the question of whether such a community-created source is trustworthy; some have said definitively no. Personally, I don’t buy it. I believe that given the right community, a community-created reference source could be as trustworthy as any source vetted by an editorial process. Hell, look at the original OED, that was created largely by volunteers. It doesn’t get much more trustworthy than the OED. Similarly, I believe that a communal reference transaction could be even better — more complete, more accurate — than the traditional one-patron-one-librarian model.

Of course, this blog won’t be that vehicle. This will just be me taking the Lyceum software for a spin, as a way of getting some experience in the creation of a blog myself, so I’m not just talking out of my ass when I talk about them. This will just be me posting things that cross the ol’ transom that seem worth posting, and probably the occasional rant when Yvonne gets sick of hearing it. This is a test, this is only a test.