Will historians use blogs as sources?

One of the exciting things about creating a seminar on social media, in particular blogging and podcasting, is having the chance to take a step back and consider not just the how-to's of these new media, but the broader social repercussions of our using them.

Josh Hallett of the Hyku blog has been writing some thought-provoking posts about the effects social media are having or will have on history. This line in particular from The Social Media Revolution v. .8 resonated with me:

They say history is made by those who write it, well the bloggers are the ones doing the majority of the writing now, 1.2 million posts per day at last count.

I am reminded of some of my first history classes in which we learned about sources--that primary sources are more reliable than secondary, or tertiary, and so on. And we learned to compare multiple primary sources to use critical thinking skills to extrapolate what actually happened and then to draw conclusions about the broader social effect and ramifications. I remember wading through obscure contemporary texts and diaries to get different perspectives to form a more complete picture of both everyday life (what we in the foreign language field call "small-c culture") and major historical events ("big-C Culture").

So Josh's post struck me as astounding--are historians really going to cite hundreds (thousands?) of blog posts about, for example, Hurricane Katrina to compile a complete picture? Are they going to wade through thousands of pictures taken on the spot with cell phones and uploaded to blogs in addition to the official media coverage? What will count as a source for the history books? Can we as bloggers really make a difference?

And then, the next question would be, naturally, what is our responsbility as bloggers/journalists?