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Time to Rewrite Your Blawg/Blog’s Description?

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I looked at my original blog Oregon Legal Research (OLR) description (aka header) (unchanged since I started blogging in October 2005) and gave a small shudder. I then read through a sampling of my OLR blog posts over the intervening years and wondered, “what HAS this OLR blog been about anyway?

Here is my May 2008 rewrite (leaving room for future rewrites :-):

The “Oregon Legal Research” (OLR) blog explores the world through the (decidedly non-linear) mind of an Oregon public law librarian (and guests). Legal research tips, advice to the legal blawger/blogger, commentary on reading material (online and print), not a small amount of humor, and a few digressions will be included. A regional flavor will prevail, primarily Oregon and Portland-metro area, though the OLR bloggers reserve the right to post about places once lived and experiences savored – all with a legal research connection, of course (we can rise to that challenge!). [It has been edited a bit more to fit into the 500-word limit required by Blogger. Surely one doesn’t need more than 500!]

Do Blog Descriptions matter? Maybe. Some aggregators (e.g. here and here) include your blog’s description in their indexes, so to me, yes, it matters. Will it change the world? Probably not, but who knows? Maybe thinking about it, and asking other people to think about their own blog descriptions, will serve to raise the Blog World to new heights. (And now all I have to worry about is how to change the Old to the New on all those aggregator sites– tomorrow is another day.)

[In the interest of pedantry, I’ll include the full text of my original OLR blog description. One does learn from one’s past. And if this is as bad as it gets for me, it’s not really all that bad – dull, but not awful. Onwards from here:

A blog containing information about and links to Oregon legal research resources, in addition to comments about cases, statutes, and interesting events in the world of legal research and law libraries. Please feel free to read, search, leave comments or suggest future post topics.”]

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