So in posting new material, I’m finding that it’s hard to actually keep up with my own expectations of “good” research and “good” blogging.  The real question I face is one of genre and writing research: how am I using this blog? (Activity, Representation)  How do I think others will perceive it?  (Reception, Representation)  How will it help me write my dissertation?  (Activity, Socialization)

The real issue comes up as I try to decide where to post my Works Cited entries.  Should I rely on my lists that are already MLA-formated in Google Docs?  Should I add new MLA-formatted citations to Google Docs or to my blog posts?  Where will this stuff be the most useful?

For archival purposes, Google Docs works better – everything can be sorted into folders and organized by document.  But that won’t help others who are reading this blog – it might not help me in the future, assuming this blog experiment actually does work as a research tool.  Because let’s be honest – I frequently lose things in Google Docs.  I forget what I’ve written, can’t find my sources, and have a real hard time trying to straighten things out.  On the other hand, things in Google Docs can be straightened out.  I can move files around as needed.  With a blog…well, not so much.  Sure, I can edit posts and change the keywords, but that doesn’t really change the organization all that much.  On the other hand, keywords will (I think) help overcome the whole issue of forgetting things.  In a sense, the keywords allow every blog post to inhabit multiple folders (the folders of the keyword.)  The downside, though, is that keywords can become flooded with posts.  At a certain point, I might need to go through again and sort through which posts are relevant and which aren’t.  Not that this is a bad thing – it’s just something I’ll have to keep in mind.