Uh…blogs will replace listservs?
I’m no fan of listservs, but saying blogs and rss will kill them? That doesn’t really make sense. Listservs are for discussions. They are far more analogous to forums than to blogs. Many of the listservs I am subscribed to, take ILL-L as an example, serve as a central point of discussion for a specific community. They go there for help or to get information from a large pool of people. Weblogs, on the other hand, are distributed nodes comprised of publishers who have the time, energy, inclination and know-how to set up a blog system. It’s not for everyone. And finding and compiling a list of blogs takes time and energy. There’s nothing easy about getting a large list of feeds in an aggregator. To a user, a listserv takes little set-up, no specialized software/skills and anybody can contribute with near zero effort.
Is something strange happening with the requests and OCLC? Ask at the listserv. Want some input from other folks about a new policy you plan to implement? Ask at the listserv. How are you going to do that with a blog?
I know that many people, including Steven Cohen, despise listservs, but why promote blogs as a replacement? A more useful replacement would be a forum system like phpBB or the lightweight PunBB. You know, somethat that is actually made for discussions. “Heck, even forums work better than listservs,” Steven says. Well, heck, forums even work better than blogs. But forums aren’t even a replacement for all listservs, as noted in a number of comments on Cohen’s post.
But I’ll take it up a notch: listservs are actually better than blog rss feeds for the listserv “job.” Why? Because they are essentialy feeds that anyone can contribute to. My email is set up just like an aggregator, with a folder per feed (listserv). Isn’t everyone’s? I don’t have to look at posts unless I want to, and when I want to I do it exactly as I would in an aggregator.
There are different web apps for different uses. That’s kind of the point. Blogs are great and all, but let’s not go overboard.