Two UNHCR blogs

UNHCR's Policy Development and Evaluation Service (PDES) has started a blog that focuses on "Witchcraft, Displacement and Human Rights." It shares news reports and related research studies on witchcraft allegations and their impact. The RSS feed is available here.

A second blog was started in tandem with the 2009 evaluation of UNHCR’s Age, Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming (AGDM) strategy. Called "It Begins with Me. It Begins with You. It Begins with Us. Thoughts and Actions Around Age, Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming," its purpose is described as follows: To "encourage thinking, dialogue and action around the challenges and rewards of AGDM. You’ll find the mission, methodology and the milestones of the ongoing AGDM evaluation as well as posts about films, audio, books, paintings, programs, partners, news, op-eds… anything that helps add to our greater understanding of AGDM." The RSS feed can be accessed here.

23 Things: Blog Search Engines

Following on from my post on blog directories, here is a useful overview of four different blog search engines. It looks at the main features of Google Blog Search, Technorati, Blog Pulse, and Bloglines.

23 Things: The Third Tool = Blog Directories/More on Tagging

In my previous post on social bookmarking, I mentioned "tagging." This refers to the process of adding descriptive terms to online content, like a bookmark you save in del.icio.us, a photo you upload, or a post you contribute to a blog. When everyday language is used in tagging, it is referred to as a "folksonomy."

I use tags to describe posts in both of my blogs. In Forced Migration Current Awareness, I select tag terms from the International Thesaurus of Refugee Terminology. So these tags are the same as controlled subject terms used in library catalogs and many research databases. However, in this blog, Researching Refugees, the focus of the posts is on web technologies and therefore not adequately covered in the refugee thesaurus. So I employ folksonomy instead, i.e., everyday language that is better able to describe current concepts (like "blogs," "RSS," "social bookmarking," etc.).

Tags are a useful way to browse or search for relevant content. For example, you might want to see which of my blog posts relate to the "safety of humanitarian personnel." You can also use a blog search engine like Technorati to search tags across blogs; these are the results retrieved when I searched for posts tagged "refugees."

Not everyone uses tags to describe their blog posts, though. So if you want to find out which blogs have posted on forced migration issues or if you want to locate blogs whose main focus is forced migration, you can search Technorati more generally. Google Blog Search is another way to find relevant posts and/or blogs.

23 Things: The First Tool = Blogs

I have signed up to participate in the 23 Things program developed by the Special Libraries Association (SLA). This is a self-paced program designed to teach information professionals about the various Web 2.0 tools that exist and how we can use them in our work. I will use this blog to report on my progress and to promote the application of these tools in a forced migration context. And hopefully, in the process, some readers of this blog will discover something new and innovative that they can use themselves!

I created this blog over a year ago and in one of my first posts, I described what a blog is and its utility. You can read that post here. Over time, quite a few more blogs have been established in the forced migration and humanitarian sectors. Here are some examples:

AidBlogs [access]
- Aggregation of posts from humanitarian aid workers' blogs.

Forced Migration Current Awareness Blog [access]
- My first blog! A current awareness service highlighting web research and information relating to refugees, IDPs and forced migration.

Forced Migration Online: Blog [access]
- Reports on new additions and developments relating to the Forced Migration Online web site.

Freedom of Movement [access]
- Commentary on immigration and asylum law by a UK barrister.

Poliblog [access]
- The British Refugee Council's blog.

RefBlog [access]
- Comment, analysis and current awareness from the Information Centre about Refugees and Asylum in the UK (ICAR).

Refugee Studies Current Awareness Blog [access]
- Blog established to support the MA in refugee studies program at the University of East London (UEL).

Seeking Asylum from the Mainstream [access]
- Commentary on forced migration, asylum, civic engagement and the welfare of young people, from a graduate of the Refugee Studies Centre's forced migration master's program.

World Bridge [access]
- Refugees International's blog.

Keeping Up with Blogs through Google

Google recently relaunched an upgraded version of its Blog Search. If you want to track what blogs are saying about a certain issue, conflict, or other topic, run a search, then scroll to the bottom of the results page. There, you will find options to create an email alert or subscribe to an RSS feed for those results.

What is a blog?

From my personal perspective, a blog simply represents an easy means of establishing a web presence. So it is first and foremost a web site. It also happens to have a certain structure: entries presented in reverse chronological order, monthly archives, comment function, keyword labels, etc. And because it employs a journal-style format, it has been predominantly used by individuals as a vehicle for recording personal thoughts, reporting news, providing commentary, and sharing information.

This article in the Journal of Humanitarian Assistance makes a case for using blogs to more quickly share information in humanitarian emergencies.

For more definitions, see these entries in Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Lengthier introductions are available from:

• ODI, "Blogs," Knowledge and Learning Online Toolkit
• RSF, Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents
• Techsoup (technology resource for nonprofits), Introduction to Weblogs and Ready to Start Blogging?

Why I created this blog...

A proposal for an article of mine was recently accepted by the editors of a special issue of Refugee Survey Quarterly. The theme is "Researching Refugees" and the editors called for articles to fall under one of three topical areas: Historical Overview of Refugee Studies, Methodological and Ethical Aspects of Refugee Research, and New Approaches to Refugee Research.

My article will address the following:

Refugee studies is an interdisciplinary field of study with a strong policy and practice orientation. As a result, the pool of potentially relevant research literature is diffuse and challenging to monitor. This article will review resources and strategies for keeping current with research and publication developments. The focus will be on Internet-based services that any researcher can utilize, regardless of the type of institution within which s/he is based. Resource types that will be highlighted in the article include weblogs, discussion lists, and current awareness services. Relevant tools such as RSS feeds, e-mail alerts, and news readers will also be described in practical terms.

So I will be exploring a number of web services in order to make recommendations, and I thought a blog would be a useful way to not only keep track of my experimentation but also provide an online supplement to the final article.