Comments on: Commonalities and generalizations

By: walt

walt — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:42:17 +0000

Ivan: I love the conjectures, but (as in the followup post) it’s nothing that interesting. I’m working on the “frequency of posts” chapter now. As to degree of library-related content…that’s the kind of subjective evaluation that I don’t feel capable of doing. (Quite apart from the fact that, personally, I like “mixed” blogs, blogs that mix professional commentary with personal notes.)

By: Ivan Chew

Ivan Chew — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:15:57 +0000

Hi Walt, before I read Steve’s answer (and your confirmation), I had two guesses. One was it had something to do with the frequency of postings of those blogs. Two was the degree of library-related content of the blogs in each list. But now I’m not so sure. I might have missed the point entirely! Will read your posts to find out.

By: walt

walt — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:22:26 +0000

Steve’s first answer is right–and the point, if any, is that you could build a reasonably good “representative sample” of liblogs from any one of those lists and accidentally assume that the program in question is used by most libloggers.

(Well, it would be tough with MovableType/Typepad…)

As to the second answer: Some of the people in the second list use MovableType because they’re required to do so for other, entirely sound, reasons. I speak from recent experience.

On the other hand, Angel raised an interesting conjecture, and in the post I do later today (or tomorrow), revealing this answer and giving some stats, I may investigate that a little further: E.g., among blogs with high Google Page Ranks (the easiest surrogate for high-profile blogs), are the percentages markedly different?

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:14:34 +0000

Oh, and the people in the first list are thrifty, the people in the second list are loyal beyond reason and/or behind the times, and the people in the third list are made of solid gold awesome.

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:05:37 +0000

List 1: Blogger/Blogspot
List 2: Movable Type/Typepad
List 3: WordPress

By: walt

walt — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:32:29 +0000

John: I like that one–it’s something all three have in common, as opposed to what unites each of the three lists.

By: John Dupuis

John Dupuis — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:09:21 +0000

In each group, I’ve actually met the same number of the bloggers in person: 4.

That’s probably not what you had in mind, though.

By: walt

walt — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:33:16 +0000

Angel–nah, this is just a slice of the liblogs out there–I was aiming for three lists of 50 blogs each, but the second one doesn’t quite have 50 in it. And the study I’m working on includes 521–down from over 600 last year, partly because I deliberately made it a smaller sample.

Other than that, deponent sayeth not. At least for now.

By: Angel

Angel — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:29:09 +0000

Hmm, for a moment, I thought if I looked at this long enough something would “pop out,” you know, like one of those magic eye things. But serious, if I had to say, the third list/set seems to be a blend of the high end celebrity libloggers who are also very technologically inclined. But there is also a certain activist streak: Info Wants to be free, Library Juice, Librarian.net, Free Range Lib, which, except for Lib Juice (based on what I read on his blog) also are technologically inclined and fairly high end.

If nothing else, I did learn there are a lot of librarian blogs out there. That is one huge list overall. I will wait to see what else you post.

Best, and keep on blogging.