Calling all bloggers (even if you aren't quite sure what that means!)

This year, the NCPH conference blog will be open to anyone who wishes to post reports, impressions, rebuttals, or other responses to what's going on at the conference. We'd like to hear from a wide range of voices, so if you'd like to share your thoughts or questions with others in the public history realm (at or beyond the conference itself), you're invited to participate.

To join in, you just need to let us know that you're interested, and we'll add you as an author so that you're able to post directly to the blog. Any NCPH member or conference attendee can join. Email the blog editor, Cathy Stanton, at cstanton@tiac.net to be added to the list.

Not entirely sure what blogging is all about? That's okay - this is a good chance to find out! A blog (from the term "web log") is a form of instant online publishing that people use in a wide variety of ways. Some blogs have a single author (for example, Dan Cohen's Digital History blog (see his April 2006 discussion about reasons to blog). Others have many contributors - the group blog Cliopatria, hosted on the History News Network, is an example. In general, blogging is a fast form of publishing (although there's also an emerging slow blogging movement), somewhere in between the immediacy of text messaging and the, well, stately pace of academic journal production.

At last year's NCPH conference, we had a small team of bloggers reporting and reflecting on various aspects of the conference. This year, we're opening up the floor. Please let us know if you're interested in joining in. The only requirements are that you contact us before the April 1 conference start date, so we can add you to our list, and that you commit to posting at least once during the conference itself.