I’m not a huge TV watcher, but there’s something about finding a good blog which reminds me of finding a good TV show. It’s something to look forward to – the next episode or the next blog post. And it’s always a shame when a TV show you liked is cancelled, or when a blog you enjoyed stops posting.

Cancelled TV shows have their reruns and dvd sets, which have their own benefits, but they lack the excitement of viewing a new episode where you really have no idea of what’s going to happen with the characters or how the plot will develop. Most discontinued blogs also have a half-life where they exist as a static web page, and sometimes I get a lot out of reading posts which are several years old. Yet I think that blogs, more than other forms of writing, are creatures of their time. When a post is taken out of its time, it can lose something. Blogs also change and develop over the months and years and that’s one of the things which makes them interesting.

My point is that it’s better to read a blog while it is being written, rather than retrospectively, after it’s stopped.

Last night I was looking through the list of Australian blogs on Libraries Interact. It’s been a little while since I’ve taken a good look at all of the new-to-me blogs that are there. The saddest thing about doing that is that I found a number of well-designed and well-written and innovative blogs which I’ll never really know because it looks like they’ve already been discontinued or abandoned.

I would never criticize anyone for discontinuing or abandoning a blog, as I’ve done both of these things myself. There are good reasons why people do this. I think it’s better if people create blogs and try blogging, only to stop it later on, than if they never try blogging at all.

But abandoned and discontinued blogs aren’t the main subject of this post. What I want to do acquaint myself, and hopefully other readers of this blog, with some of the newish (or at least new to me) Australian blogs.

Here are four which caught my eye. In alphabetical order:

Accidental Aussie
I was particularly glad to find another Australian librarian who’s interested in legal KM and other things relevant to law librarians and special librarians. I also like how this blog pays attention to the similarities and differences between Australia and the USA. I’m kicking myself for not finding this blog earlier.

Angels have the phone box
I like this blog because it’s thoughtful and very different from other librar* blogs I’ve seen lately. Posts often consist of a haiku poem accompanying a picture. It speaks to the right-side of the brain, which is sometimes neglected in the blogosphere. The author of this blog is a New Zealander living in Australia.

Bibliothekia
The tagline of this blog is “21C Libraries / Technology / Web 2.+ / Social Networking / Learning 2.+” So it’s not surprising that there are a number of tech-focused posts here. What I like about Bibliothekia’s approach is that he often links to directly various reports and websites, sources which I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.

Stained Glass Waterfall
Stained Glass Waterfall has some insightful commentary on 2.0 issues, he also has entries about conferences and other library events he’s attended. There are some detailed posts about work-related technology projects, although my favourite would be the lo-fi post with the picture of the walkman with auto reverse.