Shawn’s article, “The Space Between” does demonstrate that citing sources is not a problem in blogs. Although the tone of blogs tends to be more casual, serious bloggers make use hyperlinks and cite print sources. WordPress can certainly handle a Chicago or MLA citation. On the other hand, I agree with Jeff that web sites lend themselves to the presentation of polished digital scholarship. And, in this digital world of blurred genres, one does not exclude the others. An online exhibit, for example, may present conclusions or interpretation along with the raw data — a collection of historical documents — while remaining open-ended and providing opportunities for discourse.

I see a couple areas where blogging, because it is so timely, maybe the best way to present significant work by an historian although many historians would call into question the definition of this work as scholarship in history.

The first area is as commentary that brings a greater understanding from the perspective of history to contemporary events or developments. In this case, blogging may also culminate in a publication but the public and/or an academic audience may be served by the ongoing commentary on, as examples, an archaeological excavation, efforts to rebuild museum collections disrupted by war, the impact of a hurricane on historical structures, issues in presidential politics, or developments in international relations.

The second area is blogging about the impact of new media on history and the humanities. The online discourse regarding digital humanities has been repeatedly noted by professional organizations such as the American Historical Association. The pace of innovation and the need to share both new developments and commentary about the implications of new resources, lends itself to blogging rather than to the slow pace of peer-reviewed, print scholarship. Digital history is the focus of the Oral History Association annual meeting in October — there’s no reason why a paper presented at the conference should have greater merit than blogging in a serious way on the same subject.

My sense about defining “deep and sustained” involves both the academic blogger’s intent and peer reviews of the results. I’m a bit at a loss why a department cannot construct a review process that is open to innovations, collaborative scholarship, and digital productions. Why not create a framework that permits an historian to indicate the intent to use this new media to produce something as significant as a scholarly article? The department’s promotion committee and the individual should be able to reach an agreement on how to assess the work. The college and/or the union must play a role in crafting an agreement that will be acceptable beyond the department.

Thank you again for your comments.

As a journeyman academic, toiling away in the shadows of pasted-together distance sessional teaching assignments hither and yon, my blog is just about the only outlet for my more creative thoughts. Moreover, since I don’t actually live anywhere near a bricks-and-mortar university, the blog and the correspondence it generates lets me feel like part of a greater community of scholars…

(as an aside, blogs remind me sometimes of the cut and thrust of the early modern scientists, who often circulated their research through letters. I get impatient sometimes too, as you guessed, with the pace of publication, since a lot of my work revolves around digital media. By the time I get something out, it can be enormously out of date!)

Individual blog posts are almost uniformly too short and off-the-cuff to really have the “heft” that is desired from “serious scholarship.” But the overall, sustained effort of blogging over a length of time on important topics by a scholar should certainly be counted as part of their corpus.

Blogger/scholars like Henry Jenkins (just to name one name among several) blur the lines… their work in their blogs really is integral to understanding their overall body of work.

One thing that might be helpful would be edited volumes by some of these academic superstar bloggers. Compilations of the best of their online work finding their way into print might help egg on those more reluctant to accept change to see that there can be serious work going on here.

As for why “archaeologists and librarians seem so much more innovative than historians,” all politics aside, there seems to be a deep-seated conservative streak in the very nature of many historians. Something about an obsessive, immersive relationship with the past– the past may be a foreign country, but many historians are, or aspire to be, expatriates.