Not not really, but I am beginning to index my own blog. I have had a very hard time on occasion finding things I know I have written about here.
I export the blog regularly, and still often cannot find what I "know" exists by opening it as a web page or XML and doing a find. It is a help but unless I choose the exact wording, or if a made a typo in the entry, it fails. TypePad‘s categories are increasingly uesless. OK, they have been for a long time. [See the eclectic librarian on indexing her blog.]
Fortuitously, next week’s Indexing & Abstracting assignment is to index another format. Surprisingly, or not, I chose to do my blog. Now this index is really for me, so that I can better find the things I have discussed and thus better stitch the broken thoughts back together. If it helps others, so much the better, but that is not my motivator.
I am going to use technorati to do the heavy lifting, and have been developing my own thesaurus. Ever the overachiever, seeing as I’m not taking Thesaurus Construction until summer. But we did touch on thesauri in I&A, and I sketched a first start at one for indexing the 1000s of archived class and special lectures that we have at GSLIS in Real Audio format.
Of course, this is a (very) long-term project and I only have to index a few posts and answer some questions about my decision-making process on such things as depth and specificity, what is indexable mattter, etc.
My thesaurus is still in the rough stages. I have thought about many of the issues I need to consider, but most aren’t "documented." I need to re-look what I’ve done so far, make some "final" decisions, do some more authority work, and so on, and then document it all. So you proabably won’t see many being indexed right away, even new ones, unfortunately. Or you might see some partial indexing.
Anyway, if anyone who is doing the same thing (with or without a thesaurus) and has some definite suggestions, warnings, or even questions, please feel free to comment here or contact me. Email address on About page.
I am aware of the great work at Library clips on this and related topics, and of a few other sources I have bookmarked or have in del.icio.us, but if you are aware of a great how-to intro on how to accomplish this task, again, feel free to send it along.
Note: Notice I haven’t indexed eclectic librarian nor Library clips, as I haven’t quite decided how to handle blog name authority work, nor individual name authority either.
