Comments on: Obligations of a failed researcher?

By: walt

walt — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:10:01 +0000

Thanks both.

Ivan: They’re not “detractors” as such–they’re virtual friends who are letting me know that, if they’re at all typical, there’s just not much interest.

Realistically, most copies should be library purchases. Factually, that’s not happening to any extent. Such is life.

As to leveraging and indirect benefits–well, if I was a lot younger and had chosen One Big Topic to focus on, preferably oversimplifying my message so that it became The Word, then there probably would be significant indirect benefits: the speaking circuit and being the go-to person for snappy quotes. But I’ve always covered too much ground, and now I’m apparently either a bad speaker or too old to be bothered with, since my speaking invites (with the necessary expenses paid: on my $0 salary I sure can’t afford to subsidize speaking trips!) dropped from 8/year (1992-2000, roughly) to 4/year (2001-2005, roughly) to 1/year (2006-2009) and now down to none whatsoever. That is what it is.

Oh: As to the immediate request for the details–turns out it was for just two columns of one section of rows, basically the names and URLs of the group 1 blogs. Since it would only take me 5-10 minutes to prepare that subset and since the research project envisioned sounded interesting (and not some sort of ripoff), I sent the edited spreadsheet to the person who made the request.

By: Ivan Chew

Ivan Chew — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 03:35:16 +0000

First, the direct responses (I dare not say ‘advice’) to your questions: (1) If the data is in a usable form as it is, there’s no need to spend more efforts cleaning it up if you don’t quite feel up to it. You can always publish the ‘cleaner’ versions successively. Or not. (2) Your detractors will still have negative things to say, regardless of what you do. So don’t do it for them. The benefits are less of monetary value but something else, and perhaps larger.

An indirect response: Your “Liblog Landscape” may not have met your financial expectations, but it is certainly not a failure from the research viewpoint. Realistically, few are interested in statistics and trends, let alone stats on Library related blogs (an even narrower subset of Social Media). I know my National Library here acquires your series systematically. But I can’t see many individuals wanting to buy the series per se, as a matter of personal interest. And I’ve to say I’m one of those who prefer to borrow/ refer to the library’s copy.

But while I don’t buy your series, I go around telling people to look up Walt Crawford if they are interested in social media use and practice by librarians. Is this a beneficial outcome to someone in your position? I think it depends on one’s expectations. Perhaps Liblog Landscape has benefited your reputation rather than your bank account. Then maybe the real question is how to leverage on that subsequently. Cheers! And thanks for your work.

By: Steven Kaye

Steven Kaye — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:15:36 +0000

“The most ambitious and difficult of any of the research projects I’ve carried out, it’s not only had the lowest sales by far, it’s the only case where people have explicitly told me they don’t even want to see the results if they’re free–that, basically, nobody gives a good, well, I won’t finish that sentence.”

I think that says more about the people than the value of your research, frankly.

Considering that this project is a continuing source of stress to you, I think you’d be fully justified in charging a small fee for the effort of organizing the data, if you even wanted to do that. And you certainly shouldn’t feel obligated to put more effort into it.