Liz Lawley on blogs as a faculty commons

Liz has a nice post noting how networks of blogs have made the "invisible colleges" (the links of colleagues not connected formally by institutional affiliation who share thoughts, writings, and professional gossip, and frequently play a major part in the advance of scholarship) visible, and wondering what that bodes for the future of both scholarship and the university. Worth reading and thinking about.

One thing I've noticed over the last ten years is that faculty tend to identify with their discipline and peers first, their departments second, and their institution last. This comes as a constant surprise to people who work in the central administration.

This socialization and learning who knows whom is a large part of what makes going to graduate school worthwhile. It's interesting to think about the effect that the visibility of networks made possible by all of this self-publishing and commenting might have on people entering a scholarly field.

...social-software-supported networks have become closer to the ideal of the faculty commons than anything on a real campus has ever been.

So, what happens to research and scholarship—what happens to the current concept of a university, in fact?—when these formerly invisible colleges become not only visible, but more important than the traditional, geographically and disciplinarily (not a word, I know, but there isn’t one for what I want) bound colleges we’re accustomed to?