I don’t think I’ll add more comments on my own, just point you to “Walt Crawford’s Public Library Blogs: essential reading if your library is (even thinking about) blogging.”
And add my thanks to Kate Davis, one of the many fine Australian libloggers. This certainly started my weekend out on the right foot…
Speak Easily, 1932, b&w. Edward Sedgwick (dir.), Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Ruth Selwyn, Thelma Todd, Hedda Hopper, Sidney Toler. 1:22.
Buster Keaton—but this time in a full-length sound movie (another Buster Keaton Production). He’s a professor, Professor Potts, living a sheltered life and without enough savings to broaden his horizons. He gets a letter saying he’s inherited a fortune and takes off (although the letter’s actually a phony from Potts’ assistant/colleague, designed to get him to take a vacation).
He encounters a truly awful theatrical group, led by Jimmy Durante, and falls for one of its players. With his fortune backing it, the group goes to Broadway. There’s a fair amount of Keaton’s physical comedy and fish-out-of-water character throughout, including Potts’ first encounter with alcohol—and it all winds up in a remarkable 15-minute theatrical sequence, physical comedy of the highest order as the Professor unintentionally converts the sad-sack show into a hit comedy.
All in all, an enjoyable movie, and the last scenes are both funny and well-played. The print and sound track are both fairly good (with a few flaws). $1.75.
Li’l Abner, 1940, b&w. Albert S. Rogell (dir.), Jeff York, Martha O’Driscoll, Mona Ray, Buster Keaton, Edgar Kennedy, Doodles Weaver. 1:18 [1:10].
Some IMDB reviewers felt that Speak Easily was an atrocity as a Buster Keaton movie. I disagree. I’m guessing they haven’t seen this—which, if viewed as a “Buster Keaton movie” (the sleeve lists him as the star), really is an atrocity. He plays Lonesome Polecat, a local Indian (I guess)…and about the best you can say is that he’s only in the movie for a few minutes, and at least he doesn’t have to deal with phony bugeyes, like Pansy ‘Mammy’ Yokum does, or false noses and other absurd prostheses like many other characters.
OK, it’s a comic strip movie. I get that. They do use makeup and whatever to make it look as much like the comic strip as possible—to the point of silliness. And, like some other comic strip movies, it’s…well, just not very funny, unless you’re enormously fond of Appalachian stereotypes. I’ll admit I was never a diehard Li”l Abner fan (actually, I don’t think any local paper ran the strip); maybe if I was, I’d love this flick. Maybe the missing eight minutes are wonderful. As it is…well, the print’s not too bad, so I’ll give it a reluctant $0.75.
It’s a Joke Son, 1947, b&w. Benjamin Stoloff (dir.), Kenny Delmar, Una Merkel, June Lockhart, Kenneth Farrell, Douglass Dumbrille. 1:03.
This movie features a self-caricature, Senator Beauregard Claghorn, a Southern gentleman who hates even the word North and who orates a fine bold streak—but who’s also totally under his wife’s thumb. It also involves a teetotaling Southern ladies’ club and the effects when Claghorn mixes up the grape punch—aided by a little boy who doesn’t really read and pours in several different bottles of “grape juice”—all of it highly alcoholic. The main plots are the relationship between his daughter (a lovely June Lockhart) and her beau, who Mrs. Claghorn doesn’t think is good enough for the daughter (but who he rather takes a liking to), money from his mint farm, and a race for the State Senate in which the incumbent is an old fool totally in the pocket of a gang and Mrs. Claghorn is put up for election by the ladies’ club.
Thing is, it’s funny. Claghorn thinks North Carolina should be Upper South Carolina; he still buys Confederate Victory Bonds. (He’s slender, well-spoken and fairly good looking; this isn’t playing on physical stereotypes. There are also no racial issues involved in the movie.) The title comes from Claghorn’s line whenever he says something, I say, says something he deems funny and gets the usual silent response. The acting suits the movie, the action is internally consistent, it moves right along. The 22-year-old June Lockhart is simply stunning and also good in her role (but then, isn’t she always?). (The Claghorn character as played by Kenny Delmar was a regular on the Fred Allen radio show. The Warner Bros. cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn was a takeoff on Claghorn.) The print and soundtrack are both fine. Since it’s just over an hour, I won’t give it more than $1.25.
Zis Boom Bah, 1941, b&w. William Nigh (dir.), Grace Hayes, Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Benny Rubin, Richard Gallagher, Roland Dupree, Huntz Hall. 1:01.
This one’s tough. On one hand, it’s a charming one-hour movie about college, family, song & dance, and kids redeeming themselves—and it has some characters playing themselves. The basic plot: A successful singer whose son (under another name and being raised by his grandfather) is attending college on her dime looks into how it’s going, finds the son is a spoiled young man and the college is in trouble, and cuts off his allowance. She buys the local student hangout (there’s some funny stuff here) and, through various means, winds up somehow saving the college and its football team and turning all the spoiled kids into polished entertainers.
So far so good. Decent print. Decent sound—with one big and, in this case, nearly fatal exception: Whenever there’s music, it’s distorted enough that it’s painful. In a movie that relies heavily on musical numbers, including most of the last quarter of the film, that’s a pretty serious flaw. With it, I can’t give this more than $0.75.
East Side Kids, 1940, b&w. Robert F. Hill (dir.), Leon Ames, Dennis Moore, Joyce Bryant, Hal Chester, Harris Berger, FrankieBurke, Dave O’Brien. 1:02 {1:00].
Now I remember one reason I put off buying this set: It has at least five movies with the East Side Kids, and I thought three such flicks in the Family Classics set was at least two too many. We shall see; it looks as though the name East Side Kids covered a lot of different casts.
In this case, there’s the bad-kid-turned-good-cop bit, with him opening up a club to keep the gang off the street—but his friend’s facing execution for something he didn’t do, and if that happens, some of the kids will be completely lost. Meanwhile, there’s another nogoodnik acquaintance involved with a counterfeiting ring. At one point, the copy himself is the suspect.
I guess it’s all vintage East Side Kids—but it’s before Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall and is better than the others I’ve seen. On the other hand, it wasn’t particularly funny. Judged as a comedy, I’m not sure it would get any score at all. Judged as a one-hour flick on its own merits—well, the print’s OK. Being very generous and assuming some folks just love the East Side Kids, $0.75.
Once again ignoring my usual “no simple links” non-rule:
George Needham, Joan Frye Williams and half a dozen others did a special podcast for InfoPeople: “A Library Carol.”
It takes a little while to download (at least it did for me), and it’s something north of 20 minutes long. And worth every minute.
I may be influenced by the fact that my first “theatrical” experience in a short and wholly undistinguished career was in a grade-school presentation of A Christmas Carol. Can you guess which part I played? (By the time I was whatever passes for grownup and briefly involved in community theater, my acting qualities were apparent: I helped with sound and lighting.)
Oh–and don’t let the bright lights get to you. You know how it is with visual effects in podcasts…
A few days ago, I canceled my auto-renewing subscription to PC Magazine.
It should have been a slightly wrenching experience. I’ve been reading PC Magazine as long as there’s been a PC Magazine–27 years, I think. It was “The bible” for personal computing from shortly after its inception, through the massive issues (600+ pages in some cases) before it went twice-a-month, into the almost-as-massive twice-a-month issues…and finally to the thinner-and-thinner monthly issues.
The print publication goes away after the January 2009 issue. But it looks as though they’re maintaining (and renewing?) subscriptions for a “digital version.” Sorry, but I’m not interested.
Thing is…
PC Magazine started going away years ago. It stopped being “the bible,” dropped exhaustive group reviews and long, serious articles, started using bigger pictures and less text–and, for a while, didn’t even include the basic facts about items under review. For those, you had to go online.
Effectively, the print magazine had become a promotional item for PCMag’s website.
I remember page after page of automobile reviews, usually with some pathetic excuse for them being in a technology magazine. I remember comparative reviews where you couldn’t really make sense of them because they wouldn’t consistently list basic facts.
And we have the spectacle of PC Magazine‘s “double columnist” (he gets two columns), the ever-irascible John Dvorak, becoming more and more of a self-parody over time.
I started in on the penultimate print edition yesterday. The December issue is typically the Technical Excellence Awards issue, with a sizable article naming and explaining the magazine’s annual Technical Excellence Awards. (I’m old enough to remember the year that the cover had it as “Tehcnical Excellence”)
This year: A cover line for the awards. Inside, one page with a big picture of the award seal and a description of what a wonderful thing the awards are, and mentioning a few–
and a half-page article (including illustrations) on the awards themselves.
That’s just pathetic, and pretty indicative of the shell of its former self PC Magazine has become.
I’m not willing to risk an automatic $36 renewal. Will “digital subscribers” have access to stuff that’s not on the free PCMag website? I’m not sure I care.
Someone on a library list noted that Christian Science Monitor is “going digital” (not quite true: they’re retaining a weekly print edition) and PC Magazine dropping print and suggested a “snowball effect.” Well, maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it. Consider the cases:
Will other print magazines and papers disappear? Well, they do every year (always have), so why should the future be any different? (Are magazines being born and are big-circulation magazines gr0wing in circulation? Yes on both counts.) Will print magazines “become digital” as a matter of course?
I’m not a futurist. I won’t say it can’t happen. But I don’t see any snowball…
And if you’d like to support C&I and my blog research in a tangible manner, why not buy the downloadable version of Cites & Insights 8: 2008 (or C&I 7:2007 or 6:2006), or even the print version (with exclusive additional material in 2006 and 2007, and great covers on all three)? Each sale–particularly each downloadable sale–counts as direct, visible support.
I have a quandary and I think I need to make a decision by Friday, December 12. Help?
Should I try to do another “discursive glossary” like this one?
One big one: I’m not sure I can actually add value doing a “glossary” like that again.
Between Wikipedia, other quick web reference sources, the areas I’m just not dealing with any more, the fact that I haven’t been following specific legislation lately…
Well, I’d have to do a lot more work to come up with (say) 40-50 new items for the issue, in addition to those I could salvage and update (which I estimate to be about a third of the old issue).
There’s another minor “con”: If I do it (it would be the February 2009 issue, out in time for Midwinter), I’d need to put a bunch of other stuff in the January 2009 issue–and that “other stuff” currently amounts to more than 33,000 words, awfully long for an issue. (Probably 36-38 pages after copyfitting.) If I don’t do it, two of the seven essays currently lined up for January immediately move to February, bringing the January issue down to 25,000-26,000 words (still 30 pages or so, but that’s not so bad).
If you have an opinion on this, add a comment (or send me email) between now and Friday, December 12, 1 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (4 p.m. EST).
If you have specific topics or words or terms that you believe would make great additions to such a special issue, ones where you think I could add value, feel free to include them.
In addition to the comments here, I received three other comments (email, etc.), all saying “Do it if you can.”
And CW came up with a great suggestion, seconded by Pete–a suggestion that means I should be able to do a plausible issue without too much difficulty.
So the January issue will be a little strange (I’m holding two not-terribly-time-sensitive sections over to March, but there’s stuff I really want to get out of the way), which isn’t unusual.
And, if all goes well, the February issue will be some sort of glossary/followup and will appear at least a few days before ALA Midwinter (which, fortuitously, is late next year).
Thanks again.
I don’t often do link posts, but sometimes…
John Scalzi posted “The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time” on December 1, 2004.
He’s linked back to it once in a while, including this year.
I didn’t start reading Whatever (Scalzi’s blog) until recently, so this is my first exposure to this list.
Go read it. And before you object “But wait! Where’s The Star Wars Holiday Special?”– well, read it again, and think about it a little (if you can stop laughing).
Then read the comments, including ones taking it Very Seriously.
As a Modesto boy, seems to me I have two choices for a proper seasonal special:
Let me make this clear: No, I am not under any circumstances suggesting that anyone send me a bootleg DVD of TSWHS. Dear Gaia, please, no. If you own such a thing, do Lucas’ reputation a favor and smash it into little pieces. Or not. Just don’t send it to me.
The profund-o-meter rates this post a big fat zero.
I thought I’d find a new home for the periodic retests of this blog’s “personality type,” rather than keep adding more and more comments to this post.
When I wrote the post (November 13, 2008), I was surprised to find Typealyzer rating me (or rather “me as in this blog”) as Myers-Briggs ESTP, particularly given that “E” stands for “Extrovert” and the description of this type, “The Doers,” includes “They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through.” I believe the latter is demonstrably false, and I’m pretty clearly an introvert (and scored that way on a real Myers-Briggs test).
A handful of people may or may not be doing their own tests every couple of weeks to see how things change over time. I was still ESTP on November 21–but started out as INTP, a much more plausible finding, on November 10.
I’ll try to remember to update this blog every week or two for a while…and somehow I forgot to do that on December 1. (Unless I posted it somewhere else.) So much for the controlled experiment. Anyway:
December 7, 2008: ISTP – “The Mechanics.” At least I’m back on the Introvert side, but “They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters”? Not so much.
Kathleen de la Peña McCook left a nice comment on the last of twelve promotional posts for The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look. She said, in part:
I think maybe all this (blogs) may fade and that your books may document the movement.
I think blogs are already fading in one sense, but I also think it’s unlikely that they’ll fade away any time soon–no more likely than, say, the end of mail lists or email itself. I believe they’ve become reasonably well established as one medium; the uses for that medium are changing as other media emerge–so, for example, Twitter and delicious are probably reducing the number of pure link posts.
But that’s another discussion. It’s the second half of the sentence that generates this post.
I did this particular project, by far the largest and most time-consuming blog-related project I’ve done, because I thought it was interesting–and hoped it would generate some interest. It’s too early to tell whether the amount of interest (as expressed in book sales) can in any sense justify continuing the project.
I have not, so far, continued the library blog investigation, which I believe could be useful to the field (probably done differently, certainly done over time)–because I don’t find it quite as interesting and it’s pretty clear that book sales can’t possibly justify continuation.
Sanity enters in here. The time spent on that project would serve the household budget a lot better if I was writing freelance articles, preparing possible courses or workshops, or, for that matter, greeting people at a big-box store or flipping burgers somewhere. (Flipping burgers would pay much better.)
Alternatively, if income isn’t the answer, then there are a few thousand novels I’d like to read, a lot more time I’d like to spend with music, more places to visit (if the budget allows–you can’t check trips out from the library), and other ways to use unpaid time that make more sense.
I suspect sponsorship is the only reasonable answer–I’m sure of that for library blogs, and unless ongoing sales surprise me, I’m fairly sure of it for liblogs. And, frankly, I’m not sure who to approach for sponsorship (I sent out a handful of remote possibilities, which all turned out to be as remote as expected).
I’ve recently seen another library-related service asking for sponsorship, and specifically approaching most library schools (which could certainly sponsor my work). The amount that service is looking for, for one year, would sponsor my library blog/liblog investigations (and free PDF publication of the results) for three years.
How big an audience could these investigations serve? I’m not sure, but I can give you a few figures for the last year’s use of Cites & Insights (December 6, 2007 through December 5, 2008):
A quarter per download and a dime per article view would yield more than enough money (by a long shot)–and, without mentioning figures, that’s a whole lot more than the sponsorship I do have (or than the maximum I’d ever suggest for C&I).
(If you’re wondering, this blog has had 48,754 unique IP addresses over the last year, for a total of 490,000 sessions and just over a million pageviews. A million pageviews? Really? Apparently. At one point, I had Google Adwords–and was earning a grand $3 to $5 a month. Yes, I have more traffic now than I did then; based on that, I might earn some huge amount like $6 to $10 a month: Librarians aren’t much for clicking on ads.)
I won’t be. I was pleasantly surprised that sales of Cites & Insights 8, 2008 in paperback form are infinitely higher than I expected: It’s sold one copy, and I wasn’t really expecting to sell any.
Know of a possible sponsor? I’d love to hear from them. I discussed that possibility just exactly a month ago. More details are here (noting that C&I is off the table for 2009, at least).
I’d love to “document the movement”–but with no full-time job and a lack of independent wealth, I really can’t justify doing it as a lark. I may be a little crazy, but not quite that crazy.
If you’ve been holding off on buying The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look because you really need to have an ISBN, your time has come.
The link on the title takes you to the CreateSpace page for this book. The CreateSpace version (which should also be available via Amazon in a day or two) has ISBN13 978-1440473845, ISBN10 1440473846.
The price is $35.00. Other than an ISBN, it’s pretty much identical to the Lulu edition–and since CreateSpace now offers cream book paper as an alternative to bright-white paper, it’s on comparable (maybe identical) paper. (The Lulu edition will be $22.50–plus shipping–until January 15, 2009.)
Buy the book!
The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look.
This 285-page 6×9 trade paperback looks at 607 liblogs (nearly all English-language) and, for most of them, how they’ve changed from 2007 to 2008.
It’s the most comprehensive look at liblogs ever done–and the only one I know of that shows how they’re changing from year to year.
From now through January 15, 2009, and only from Lulu, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 is available for $22.50 plus shipping.
On January 16 or thereabouts, that price will go up to $35.00. If and when the book is available on Amazon, it will immediately sell for $35.00.
At least a couple of you have said you were looking forward to my comments about blogs–and, at least on the individual level, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.
The book includes lots of comments about how liblogs work in the aggregate and how they’re changing. The first 11 chapters are very much in my voice and include my opinions.
But I don’t attempt to discuss what bloggers are posting about–that’s just too complicated and too transitory. To be honest, with some of the more prolific blogs, I was just marking-and-counting: Adding up the number of posts, comments and figures, and measuring total word count, but not really reading each post. (Hey, the blogs included more than 22,000 posts during March-May 2007 and more than 19,000 during March-May 2008. I’m a fast reader, but that’s a lot of reading–more than 9.5 million words, or the equivalent of at least 95 good-size books.)
As I was building the preliminary version of Chapter 12–that is, building the profile for each liblog as I measured its metrics, knowing I’d go back and fill in some derivative measures later on–I was adding a brief evaluative comment in some cases: One or two sentences describing the blog’s nature as I saw it during the 2008 period.
I wound up stripping out all of those comments for four reasons:
Part of me wants to do that part–but I think it would be a separate book. Is that book worth doing? Am I the right one to do it? (Would I be able to keep on as even a part-time participant in the library field after doing it?)
Damned if I know. For now, I’m not sure how I’d go about it. The task of categorizing and judging 19,000 posts is far beyond me, I think; the task of providing useful evaluative comments on even 500 blogs–well, possible, but I’m not yet sure how.
We shall see. Meanwhile,
Here are the remaining liblogs included, with the number of times each appears in the index.
I was browsing a blog I rarely visit and ran into an authoritative statement from someone, talking about all the time spent converting “images” like PDFs into text, saying that only text can be reflowed and resized.
And I scratched my head. And opened up Adobe Reader to my latest book. And clicked on View, then Reflow, then changed the size of the window in various ways.
Odd. It sure looked as though it was reflowing the text. If I wanted to resize the text, I could Zoom–and as long as Reflow was checked, it would just keep reflowing.
(OK, the reflow isn’t perfect: It turned a series of bullets into a single paragraph. But that’s not so terrible.)
I also tried the read-aloud feature, which I haven’t really tried before. Much better than I would expect, with a reasonably natural-sounding flow (a female voice). I could listen to that without being bothered by its artificiality.
Sure, some PDFs are just images and won’t reflow worth a damn (nor will the read-aloud features work). But some are not all.
Some PDFs–many PDFs, I’d guess, for contemporary documents as opposed to scanned books and the like–are PDFs in order to preserve desired typography and layout. Such PDFs can, unless the creator says not to allow it, be reflowed, resized, read aloud…
Am I missing something? Was I imagining that Adobe Reader was reflowing the PDF?
Or is this just another example of sloppy generalization, probably coupled with an anti-PDF attitude?
What blog has (a) been around six years, (2) is written in English but comes from a European country, (iii) has an ISSN and (d) has as its slogan “Essence, effervescence, obscurity”?
In this case, the answer actually is in the chapter discussed here–Chapter 12, Liblog Profiles, which makes up somewhat more than half of The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look.
And, for those who somehow missed it over the past week or so, the book is on sale for an introductory price of $22.50 from now through January 15, 2009, only from Lulu.
Fifty (or so) more liblogs and the number of times each one appears in the index:
Page 123 introduces that blog, including its author, his affiliation, and 19 metrics (there would be 20, but the 20th is blank for reasons that may be obvious). Some of you probably recognize it from the slogan. More would from the unusual animal that forms part of the blog’s name.
Here’s a precision grouping: What do Swiss Army Librarian, Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia, Tinfoil + Raccoon and the pod bay door have precisely in common?
You’ll find the answer and more in The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look.
This 285-page 6×9 trade paperback looks at 607 liblogs (nearly all English-language) and, for most of them, how they’ve changed from 2007 to 2008.
From now through January 15, 2009, and only from Lulu, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 is available for $22.50 plus shipping.
On January 16 or thereabouts, that price will go up to $35.00. If and when the book is available on Amazon, it will immediately sell for $35.00.
Many blogging gurus (mostly outside the library arena) would say visibility is the most important thing for a blog–how many readers, how many ad impressions, how many links?
In previous studies, I’ve looked at it as an interesting factor–but also one that’s hard to judge externally. (Internally too: Given the way aggregators work, it’s hard to tell how many readers you actually have.)
This brief chapter discusses how I’ve looked at visibility in the past, what I did this time (and why it was only used as a lower limit for inclusion, not as an actual metric), why it’s getting even more difficult–and what I’ll do in future studies.
This very brief chapter looks at the 2008 Technorati State of the Blogosphere report and draws some comparisons between the liblog landscape and the larger blogosphere. Portions have already appeared elsewhere.
Fifty-one more liblogs (if I’m off by one or two, hey, counting while you’re marking to copy is hard):
Page 48.
Do pseudonymous/anonymous blogs differ significantly from the liblog landscape as a whole? What about Canadian blogs–or blawgs?
In this case, there are no actual blog listings to highlight. Chapter 9 takes a dozen groups of blogs, including most groups with at least 15 blogs, and offers some brief notes on how they differ (quantitatively) from the entire study. It’s a short chapter (including a dozen figures and notes on each figure) and an interesting one.
The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look looks at 607 liblogs (nearly all English-language) and, for most of them, how they’ve changed from 2007 to 2008.
From now through January 15, 2009, and only from Lulu, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 is available for $22.50 plus shipping.
On January 16 or thereabouts, that price will go up to $35.00. If and when the book is available on Amazon, it will immediately sell for $35.00.
Fifty more…
Cites & Insights 8, 2008 is now available as an 8.5×11″ trade paperback with a full-color wraparound cover (photographed in Scotland). The 346-page volume differs from the issues and index only in that color photos have been changed to grayscale.
My best guess is that anyone buying any volume of C&I as a book is at least partly doing so to support C&I and my other non-job-related-efforts. Given that guess, the new volume is priced at a level that would actually provide significant support: $50.
Volumes 6 & 7 have also been repriced to $50 each.
In practice, the main reason to create each book is so that I can have a bound copy that will work well over the years. I did provide lagniappe in volumes 6 & 7 (in addition to the great cover photos), but not in volume 8.
If you’re inclined to support C&I but really don’t want another book in the house, I’m also offering the three volumes as downloads from Lulu, for the same price.
All three will be available until the end of March 2009 or two months after any copy is sold, whichever comes last.
All issues of Cites & Insights continue to be free for the downloading, including the title sheet & indexes that close each volume.
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