Blogrolling

In this Saturday post, Sheila Lennon muses about blogrolls and whether they're important, after Doc Searls announced he'd removed his from his new blog. Says Sheila:

Blogrolls are endangered. Read the discussion -- More blog, less roll -- at Doc Searls' new Harvard hang. The applause for white space and splendid isolation makes me squirm uncomfortably.
I regret the dust bunnies and shrunken heads of my own blogroll. Linking is a generous way to participate in and extend the Web, and I hope soon to replace this archaic relic with blogs that feel intelligently alive to me now, each in a different way.

I hear you, Sheila. My blogroll, not the one on the side of this page, (which is -- mostly -- up to date, except for a couple that have changed or been rarely updated since I added them and I keep hoping they'll come back --) is dearly in need of a total makeover.

Most of the journalism links on that separate page are still good. Some other categories (like Florida blogs, library blogs, and photo blogs) I don't check as much as I used to. But are still many, many blogs here that I check regularly. Of the rest, some probably don't exist any more. Keeping track is time-consuming and that's why many people use feed readers. I don't, much. I like clicking on the blogs and seeing what's changed. But I don't have time to check as many as I once did.

Like Sheila, though, I believe in the power of linking as the real value of the Web. We don't link to our online friends and sources regularly in postings but want those links easily available. I use my blogroll much more than my bookmarks, and I can get to it from anywhere. It will stay and will -- soon, I hope -- improve.

(In addition, the Curious Expeditions blog that Sheila links to has a posting I meant to note last week when someone mentioned it on the NewsLib listserv: Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries. I've seen only a couple of these libraries and find these photographs amazing.)