Walt at Random

Making a mistake is human. Being wrong is quintessentially human.

Failing to admit that you’ve erred, failing to correct a clear mistake–also human, but a whole lot less admirable.

I’ve discussed this before and probably will again.

Right now, there are two examples that I find troublesome, both relating to the same story–that is, the AP/Ipsos poll that showed 27% of adult Americans not finishing a book last year. A poll with no historical context that resulted in a surprising number of doom-and-gloom stories–even though the only obvious context (the NEA “reading at risk” survey of 2002 reading habits) seems to show a substantial increase in the percentage of American adults who read at least a book a year–from 57% in 2002 to 73% in 2006, an increase of 28%.

The first example will, for now, remain anonymous–because I still have hopes that this blogger (affiliated with a very prestigious university) simply isn’t getting her email and will eventually correct the story. A blog entry got the story 100% wrong, reporting that only 1/4 of Americans did read a book last year. That would be pretty appalling, taking us back to pre-WWII numbers (supposedly, a 1937 Gallup poll showed 29% of Americans reading books, that percentage dropping to 17% in 1955). Fortunately, that’s simply not what the story says. (This particular blog only accepts comments from some in crowd; I’ve sent email but the post still has it wrong, several days later.)

The second example isn’t a blog, and the professional journalist has had two days to fix it, so I’m going to name it explicitly: Michael Rogers’ news item at LJ Online, posted early Thursday morning. The brief story is OK–but the headline is simply not supported by either the poll or any other information provided in the story:

“Book News: AP Poll Says Reading Is Down”

The poll said nothing of the sort.. I know. I’ve read the entire report. It simply does not provide historical context. Go read it yourself if you don’t believe me (or search “AP/Ipsos Reading” at Google if you want an HTML version instead of the PDF just linked to).

I left feedback Friday morning pointing out the error. That feedback has not been acknowledged; neither has the unjustified headline been changed.

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Postscript, 9/14/07: It’s been a week. Neither case has been corrected. I will henceforth assume that LJ Online’s “feedback” mechanism isn’t actually intended for feedback–or at least not feedback that questions the original report. As for the blogger who got the story 100% wrong: She still has it 100% wrong; maybe she doesn’t read email. Or maybe she just doesn’t care. Sad either way.

John Scalzi’s daughter just made a shiny dime by knowing the answer to that old question,

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

The answer is not 42. The answer, as explained in a fascinating earlier post at Scalzi’s Whatever, is 35 cubic meters or about 700 pounds–and, according to Cornell, woodchucks do chuck wood, if you give them wood to chuck.

That wasn’t the trigger for this post, though. That trigger came down in the comments (Scalzi gets great comments), to wit a followup to the question

Yes, but what’s the difference between a duck?

The answer, which you should memorize, is:

One of his feet are both the same.

Have a good weekend.

So I had a little fun with the somewhat nonsensical notion that this blog has the 8th highest reach of any librarian blog. (Let’s just ignore the fact that I’m not a librarian, shall we?)

A fair number of people have pointed out various flaws in OEDb’s methodology–and in the whole idea of an objective list. Having done “reach” metrics in the past, I’m acutely aware that they are, at best, SWAGs–statistical wild-assed guesses.

But they’re also a little irresistible if you’re looking at lots of blogs. I do have a “visibility” metric in Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples and I’ll have the same metric in the Academic Library Blogs book I’m working on. The visibility metric bears a vague relationship to the OEDb metric, but uses fewer measures and different ones.

I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a lateral study of liblogs once the current project is done–seeing how the blogs in both of my previous studies (and those that could have been in the first, but weren’t) are doing a year or 18 months or two years or 30 months later. I even put together a spreadsheet containing all of the blogs that would be part of that study (359 of them, as things stand now). And, at some point early this summer (I think), I ran my “visibility” metric for those 359 blogs.

So today, just for fun, I sorted that spreadsheet by descending visibility, printed out the first 25, and checked to see how many of those are in OEDb’s top 25. What would you guess? Half? Two-thirds?

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Four. Count them, four. Certainly not including this blog!Part of that–maybe most of that–is that I used entirely different methods to prepare a list of candidates, mostly relying on self-nomination in one of the two wikis that contain lists of liblogs and library blogs, and adding a few that I was aware of through other means. DMOZ (”DMOZ?”)? Not so much.
Here are some of the ones that would place high on my list–but, of course, if I do the study I’ll redo the metric and might find a way to refine it, and it’s quite possible that I’ll avoid a “top 25″ list:

MaisonBisson, ResearchBuzz, blyberg.net, Tame the Web, beSpacific, Information Wants to be Free, Archivalia, Text & Blog, ALA TechSource Blog, Library Stuff, Catalogablog,Stephen’s Lighthouse, blogwithoutalibrary, Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog, Kids Lit…

As to which four are on both lists? No great surprise: The top four on the OEDb list–but they’re not the top four on my list, although two of them are among the top three and all four are in the top, oh, 16.

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The moral to this story? Rankings are fun, we’re going to get “graded” whether we like it or not, and it’s also all a little silly. But fun.

This one’s just too…whatever…to pass up:

According to OEDb, the Online Education Database, this here blog ranks #8 in the list of “Top 25 Librarian Bloggers.”

Have to admit that’s the first time I’ve seen DMOZ’ listing of “librarian” blogs used as a primary source in quite some time…

Read the criteria before you start snorkling too hard. I agree with what you should be thinking (”That’s ridiculous!”): Far as I can tell, I’m somewhere around #25 to #60 (and that may be optimistic)–I may (or may not, considering how the job hunt is going) have influence, but it’s not primarily through this here blog.

Anyway, an honor is an honor. Woohoo.

Or, “what I did for fun over Labor Day weekend.”

Yes, there is a musical version of Emma–and my wife and I both thought it was first rate. It’s not a beat-you-over-the head, huge-cast musical; the cast numbers roughly a dozen and the orchestra all of four. But that works very well here. The book and score are by Paul Gordon, who did the Broadway version of Jane Eyre in 2000. The songs vary from good to showstoppers (the title song, sung by Mr. Knightley, is a stunner)–and they make up the bulk of the two-hour musical. About 70% of the dialogue and lyrics come from the novel.

You’ll find the San Francisco Chronicle’s review of the musical here and a background piece here

This is the world premiere of Emma (TheatreWorks has premiered 50 plays and musicals), and the run ends September 16. It’s not clear where it will go from there. TheatreWorks is a fine company (and yes, it’s an Actors Equity company). The acting, direction, musicianship and stagecraft all worked well. We had what should have been awful seats–the furthest left in the third row–but the theaters of the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts (next door to the library) really don’t have bad sightlines or acoustics, so we were happy.

I won’t go into great detail; you can read the review. Well written, well played, charming, funny, and (I believe) reasonably true to the novel. It wasn’t cheap (TheatreWorks productions never are, particularly not musicals on weekend matinees), but well worth it. [To tell the truth, I have no idea whether it was cheap or not. Two tickets plus handling cost us $136. That strikes me as reasonable for a professional performance, but what do I know?]