I agree this would be a useful first step at carving out a more defined space for academics in the blogosphere. I encourage you to make it happen. You could also provide a simple moderated submission form where other academics can add their blog.

i like it because whatever else ben and bob come up with, this aggregated roll likely would be a good starting point, possibly the nucleus.

i've been thinking about how to motivate or otherwise empower one of our campus brainiacs, dr. peter lawler, a bioethicist, to blog. what would it take? it would take free software with a REALLY easy interface and hosting outside berry's network (for all the reasons we discussed). i dreamt of a smallish (handheld?) device just for blogging that non-computer users could in fact use to blog, one that would seek the wifi connection it would need. a on/off appliance.

If you're going to build a list of academic blogs, the first question is going to have to be, "what is an academic blog." I suppose the best way to address this is probably to be as inclusive as possible. Is my blog Cognitive Daily, which accepts ads, an academic blog? It's hard to say that it's not. What about Mind Hacks, a blog created to promote a book? Whatever edge you find, you'll always find something else just over that edge.

The best you could do is probably give a really vague definition of the edge, then make it a matter of judgement beyond that.

I suggest that an academic blog is one that is an extension of academic practice. So a blog promoting a book is not an academic blog. It's not about scholarship or knowledge building, but about marketing. I don't care if blogs have ads. But I do care about the content of the blog itself.

So activity related to book promotion doesn't count? How about blog promotion? Does that mean no one should list their URL when they put up comments, because that's a promotional activity?

Also, doesn't the activity of talking about your book or blog and what it's about actually function to promote said book or blog?

And say you're asked to blurb a book. To blurb a book is to help promote it, but my guess is that as you undertake the task, you're going to be talking about the scholarship in the book (or blog).

To be sure, the fields of marketing and book publishing (and advertising and PR) have given the work of "promotion" a bit of a bad smell about it, but that's defining the act of promotion by its current practices, sort of like defining all political handling and management by Karl Rove.

Just talking about your book could be construed as promotion, which would sort of preclude ever talking about your book/blog, right?

Chris

"Publication is the Auction of the Mind of Man"

Emily Dickinson