Comments on: Surveying the biblioblogosphere

By: walt

walt — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 18:30:46 +0000

(Some day soon, I need to pull the many pieces of this discussion together…)

Michael, another person suggested using PageRank as well. Maybe for next time (ITIANT), I’ll add that–at the same time that I drop Google link: count, unless Google’s dropped their “this is just a sample” proviso. I’m not sure how much weight it deserves, and it’s certainly another “The rich get richer” measure, but interesting nonetheless.

If I do add that, it’s an easy enough one to do that I’d use it as part of the original “reach” calculation done against 200+ blogs, not just the 60 more carefully studied.

By: Michael Lorenzen

Michael Lorenzen — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 17:44:45 +0000

Walt, I found your look at Library Blogs interesting. I went out and did my own ranking of library blogs on your list based on the the PageRank score Google assigns each one. It can be found at: http://lorenzen.blogspot.com/2005/08/library-blogs-and-google-pagerank.html. This is yet another way to look at blogs that some my find of interest.

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 19:23:04 +0000

I took the survey–fun, though I agree the regional question was too subjective. Would have been easier to split the question (are you from the U.S.? Yes –> State dropdowns). But creating surveys is how you learn. We brought in an outside consultant this year, and she was wonderfully helpful in refining our survey. Surveys be innerestin’!

By: walt

walt — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 16:41:29 +0000

Simple enough, Steven: Work’s been so busy and strange the past few months that any residual crankiness was easily explained. Even when the inevitable (and blessedly small) amount of negative reaction over my study came out, it didn’t make me particularly cranky–and if I had been, it would have nothing to do with being (lessee, counting now) 22 days shy of Six-Oh. And I promised I wouldn’t use the “cranky old” cliche for at least a year, so I got out of the habit…

Gotta say this for the stuff at work: At least it shows me that I’m still capable of learning fundamentally new tools and techniques, and learning rapidly when it’s needed. Which, I suppose, is one way of keeping … well, “young” is the wrong word, but “flexible and alive” apply.

As for geography, I just did a little checking, and I guess I can accept Mountain View as “Southwest.” Turns out MV is almost due west of Richmond, VA–we’re at latitude 37.39, while Richmond, VA is at latitude 37.55, which puts MV just a bit south of Richmond, VA (San Francisco’s almost precisely west). Curious.

By: Meredith

Meredith — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 03:14:45 +0000

No worries, Walt. It can be so easy to misconstrue things in this online medium. I’ve certainly been guilty of being snarky from time to time. I agree that Central CA is not the Southwest, nor is Maryland the Northeast or the Southeast, but I didn’t want to put up a million categories for the U.S. and ignore the rest of the world. I felt far worse about calling what’s between eastern and western Canada “the middle of Canada”!!!

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 01:53:18 +0000

Wow, a mention of your relative age without telling us that you are cranky. Score two points for Walt!