Sounds good.
In terms of networks, Freenode [1] is a worthwhile network to look into - you don't have to worry about running your own IRC server then. They're also pretty friendly and are used by a number of open source and free software projects (including Ubuntu, Fedora and the Colchester lug). Of course, you can always run your own if you'd prefer, they're not too difficult to set up with a little time and always fun to play with :P.
If you want to log IRC channels you'll probably want to use an IRC bot to do it. Supybot[2] is quite a popular python based bot which is quite easy to use (and comes with a boatload of plugins, including a channel logging one). It's also in the repos for Debian and Ubuntu (it used to be in Fedora as well, but I've not checked recently).
[1] irc://
irc.freenode.net[2]
http://sourceforge.net/projects/supybot/