Community Lists, released by PubSub, is list of blogs collected by humans with PubSub's linkranking system used to rank them. PubSub's Community Lists were born from emails and calls from people asking for a list of influencial blogs within various professions.

According to Steven Cohen of Library Stuff (and the editor of PubSub's Librarian List), 'the lists change daily and shows a view of the blogosphere that you haven't seen before: A daily ranking of "influencers" for the previous day (linkranks runs once a day) for specific community. You will also be able to see the highest gainers for that day."

I almost feel that this list is kind of like the blog version of the citation index and impact factors and I don't want it to turn into something like that. I would love to see more information added to the list so that we know a little bit more about these blogs other than the Blog Site name, it's place on the list, and it's LinkRank. Afterall how helpful is it to know that Tinfoil + Raccoon is 9th on the list and has a LinkRank of 3,547? What does that tell us about the Tinfoil + Raccoon? Not much. It is only after I click on the blog site do I know that the Tinfoil + Raccoon is a public librarian who writes about "the new and shiny in libraryland and beyond."

Perhaps a bio button next to each entry would be more helpful. That way somebody interested in the law library, medical library, or cataloging side of things can quickly see determine whether they would be interested in it. Perhaps if PubSub could create something similar to BlogPulse's blog profiles and use it within this list, it would make it more informative and less like a "greatest hits" list. However, BlogPulse profiles is not without flaws. Because BlogPulse profiles many many many blogs in the world, the profiles for many blogs within narrow fields (such as libraries) are incomplete because they do not garner the kind of attention as a Slashdot would. For example many of blogs listed in the Librarian List do not have compete profiles on BlogPulse. (Check out the Tinfoil + Raccoon BlogPulse profile).

If one were able to take PubSub's lists and add information similar to Blog Pulse, then you could have a really neat list that could help get a clearer more accurate picture of the blogging community within that genre.