Walt at Random

On January 4, 2012, I posted “Prospectus: An Ongoing Public Library Social Network Scan.” I’m still hoping to see some results from this (hey, hope is a good thing). Meanwhile, I recalled something that I’d thought about while finishing the fall 2011 partial scan.

To wit: Lots of public libraries have mottoes or sayings on their websites (and probably elsewhere). Not all, by any means; I’d guesstimate 1/3, but that’s a NSWAG (non-scientific wild-ass guess).

Those mottoes are frequently interesting as tiny indications of what libraries are, or regard themselves as.

It might be fun and, I don’t know, uplifting to have a collection of these mottoes. I’m calling it “A library is…” for the moment, although I suspect only a minority of the sayings could be used to complete that statement.

If there’s interest, and if I get funding, preparing that collection could be an offshoot. It certainly wouldn’t be worth looking at all 9,000+ libraries (or the 8,000+, at a guess, that have websites) to find them, but if I was there anyway, capturing and organizing them would be a minor extra task.

Does this seem intriguing to anybody else? (Does the project in general seem intriguing to anyone else?)

If I try the Kickstarter route, A library is… would almost certainly be one of the thank-you items, especially since it could be offered at four or five different levels (PDF or EPUB or HTML; softcover book; autographed softcover book; hardcover book; autographed hardcover book).

Just another thought…

I’m delighted to say that The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing: Helping Patrons and Communities Use Free and Low-Cost Publishing Tools to Tell Their Stories is now available both in paperback (preorder for a few more days) from the publisher, Information Today, Inc. and in casewrap hardcover from Lulu, at 25% off today and tomorrow.

The paperback (I have my author’s copies, and it looks great!) is $49.50 (usual disclaimer: I have absolutely nothing to do with setting prices) but $37.13 on preorder sale.

The hardcover (it just became available yesterday, so i don’t have my copies yet) is $59.95, but for today and tomorrow you can use Lulu’s coupon code “ONEMORETHING” to save 25%, bringing it down to $45.

About the hardcover

The hardcover version does two things:

1. It makes a prebound version available for libraries that want a hardcover copy for circulation. I believe this book is going to be widely used by patrons at thousands of libraries. It’s a casewrap hardcover–that is, the cover design is part of the binding itself–so there’s no issue with laminating paper jackets.
2. It’s a proof of concept. This book is about producing attractive, high-quality books without spending any new money on software (assuming you have Word–or, although it’s more difficult, OpenOffice or LibreOffice). Part of the process of preparing the book was polishing a good general-purpose 6×9 (trade paperback/most hardbound) book template for Word, something that hasn’t been freely available. The book itself uses the template, with no special modification. And, other than the title pages/copyright page and the two ad pages at the back of the book, the body of the book is a PDF generated directly from Word2010, not using Adobe Acrobat. The same PDF is used for both paperback and hardcover–but the hardcover is itself a prime and pure example of what the book’s talking about, producing books in very small numbers without compromising on appearance or quality. The book walks the talk; the hardcover version is proof of that.

Who needs this book?

I’ve been saying that every public library (in the U.S. and in other English-speaking countries where Lulu offers its services or CreateSpace is available) needs this book. That’s probably a little grandiose, although the possibility of adding a new community/creative service to your patrons without any cost (other than a copy of the book), especially a service that speaks to long-form text, strikes me as worthwhile for even the libraries serving fewer than 100 people. (As part of my next book project, I’m now even more acutely aware of the sheer heterogeneity of America’s 9,000-odd public libraries: I’ve attempted to view the web pages of 5,958 of them. So far.)

So I’ll offer some examples of libraries that should specifically find this book more than worth the price. Oh, and it’s potentially useful for a number of academic and special libraries as well: More on that shortly.

• Libraries serving genealogists and family historians: You say there’s a link or tab on your homepage specifically dealing with genealogy? You need this book. Where there’s an amateur genealogist or a family historian, there’s a micropublished book waiting to appear: A book that will probably only be produced in a few or a few dozen copies but will be important to those families (and the local history group). Now that maybe half the libraries in the country are taken care of…
• Libraries with teen or adult writing classes or groups: You probably want to produce a collection at the end of a successful class or as part of a group’s cycle. You can do so without requiring capital at all, and it can look great. This book shows you how. Oh, and quite a few of those writers probably want a durable example of what they’ve done, their own book (possibly 24 pages of poems, possibly a 400-page epic) as a showpiece that might or might not morph into a major publication. This book shows them how–and, by the way, we’ve provided a special copyright exception so that, within reason, you can legally copy the chapters of this book they’ll need as they’re preparing their own books, as long as your library’s purchased one copy.
• Libraries serving local historians and historical societies: While family histories may be the most widespread examples of books that work best through micropublishing, there are also lots of local historians (and historical societies) out there who have manuscripts that deserve very short-run book publication and don’t especially want to spend a few $thousand to make that possible. With this book, all they need is Word (and not necessarily even that). Your library can be the center of this creative process that builds community.
• Libraries serving writers who aren’t part of a writing group: One great thing about micropublishing is that neither Lulu nor CreateSpace claim any intellectual property rights whatsoever. They’re not publishers; they’re service agencies. (The trivial exception: If you use their free ISBNs–and for Lulu, you don’t need to–then they’re the publisher of record for that edition. But the writer still owns the copyright and all rights in everything except those 13 digits.) With this book, those writers can get started with real books, handsome books–and if there’s enough interest, there’s nothing stopping them from taking it to a traditional publisher. (The library could create a great community service by finding ways for writers to swap editorial services, since the best editing and copyediting really does require other eyes than the writer’s.)
• I’m sure there are other cases I haven’t thought of here–but the ones listed here cover nearly every community, I suspect, including most of the smallest communities. Is there somebody in Whale Pass, Alaska (not quite the smallest LSA population at 31, but the smallest library that I know of with a Facebook page) who could benefit from this book? I wouldn’t be surprised…

Academic and special libraries

This book is primarily written for public libraries, but one chapter focuses on academic libraries and micropublishing, primarily discussing ejournals. To wit: If your academic library is getting into the open access ejournal business, aren’t there a few authors and libraries who would happily pay to see their work in book form? You can add an annual print edition (assuming the journal publishes less than 750 pages per year) with zero financial outlay or risk, although in this case you do need a copy of Acrobat. The book shows you how. Oh, by the way, at least one academic library is already using Lulu to build a virtual university press…and there will be more.

I know, I know, the patrons of special libraries and the libraries themselves have unlimited funds, so this money-saving technique isn’t relevant. (OK, you can stop laughing; I hope you didn’t choke in the process.) But maybe there are patrons of special libraries and even library projects where a book would be a great outcome–but you know there’s only need for one, five, or fifty copies, and you’re just about ready to go the ugly FedexKinko’s route. This book can show you how to do it better and, quite probably, a little cheaper as well.

That’s the story: The book’s out. I believe it’s the most universally applicable book I’ve ever written, the one that details a new service almost every library can usefully provide and the tools to make that service work. Without any cost to the library–other than the price of the book. What a deal!

A word or two about professional editing

I think I’m a pretty good nonfiction writer: a hack in the best sense of the term. For that matter, I think I’m a better than average self-editor, although that may be delusional.

Cites & Insights is self-edited. My self-published books have been self-edited.

But I’ll suggest that all of my editors–and over the past decades, I’ve dealt with quite a few–will tell you that I’m an easy writer to deal with because I know my writing can always stand improvement. (In practice, I don’t even go back to my original ms. when looking at a galley unless I spot a special problem: I read the galley on its own merits, assuming it represents an improvement over the original.)

This book was unusual because I was literally making all of the changes in the three full cycles and two or three minicycles of editing (line editing, copyediting, “proofreading”). I was sending ITI a PDF; they were returning the PDF with “stickies” (comments, which really do work a little like Post-Its) for editorial and proofreading suggestions. There were literally hundreds of such proposed changes (many of them as small as correcting my bad habit of overusing em dashes, one of them proposing a complete rewrite of a chapter). I had to evaluate each change, since I was the only one who could actually make the changes.

I believe I made 99% of the proposed changes, maybe more. I know the book is the better for the cycles of professional editing it received from John B. Bryans, Amy Reeve and Brandi Scardilli (and possibly others whose names I’ve forgotten). I know the book is better for M. Heide Dengler’s advice and cooperation in refining the book template–professional advice that’s reflected in the free .dotx, .dot and .odt templates available for book buyers to use and modify. And, to be sure, the book benefits from professional indexing; in that case, I’m not a hack so much as a talentless hack, so I really appreciate the quality of the index. (They sent the index to me as a Word document, so I just imported it into the manuscript before using the “Save and Send button to prepare the final PDF.) And, of course, I anticipate considerable benefit from the professional marketing skills of Rob Colding.

(I should also thank Robin Hastings, James LaRue and Maurice Coleman for the excellent blurbs they provided after seeing the unedited version of the book. As soon as I receive my hardcover copies, their autographed copies will be on their way…)

So there it is. It’s a book I’m proud of, a book I believe thousands of libraries can benefit from, to the benefit of their patrons and communities. Go buy it. Oh, and I’m available to talk about micropublishing or hold workshops…for a fee.

I’ve seen this minimeme for some years: end-of-year blog posts recounting the number, and sometimes the actual titles, of books the person read during the year. I never actually tracked my book reading, so I never participated.

This year, I decided to track the reading, partly because I (ahem) picked up a book at the library that I’d already read, six months or so earlier, and really didn’t want to do that again. Also because I thought it might be interesting, if sad, to keep track of just how little I was likely to read during 2011.

Just how little?

Yep. Because I knew I was going to write two books from start to finish and do a substantial amount of research and early writing toward the third one, and because I assumed I’d keep doing Cites & Insights and at least one magazine column, I figured I’d be lucky to manage 39 books during the year–more likely 26 or so.

The “39″ number isn’t arbitrary. Livermore Public has a four-week/28-day loan period for books (except for “7-day books,” which I assume are brand-new books; I’ve never encountered that shorter period). I normally pick up three books: one genre (alternating mystery and sf/f), one fiction (“non-genre”) and one nonfiction. I like to read across quite a few disciplines, and I sometimes really like books that are technically outdated.

The math: there are 13 four-week periods in a year. 13 times 3 is 39. If this year was as crazed as I expected, I’d drop back to two books per visit or start renewing books.

The reality

This surprised me. The total for the year–I’m assuming I’m not going to finish the book that’s on the coffeetable before Sunday–is 63.

That’s partly because I read a number of books related to publishing and editing as background and resources for The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing. It’s partly because I read a few items as background for the other books.

It’s mostly, I think, because with one book (and only one book) sitting there on the coffee table, I’d tend to pick it up after a few days–and in most cases I’d enjoy it enough to keep going. I never work on the computer after 8:30 p.m. or so, and rarely do any actual work after supper, so there’s always some reading time (since we typically watch 42 minutes to an hour of TV each night, other than Movie Saturday).

What’s suffered, clearly, has been magazine reading: I love magazines, and I take quite a few of them, but I’m also about 2.5 months behind on most of them. My current “to be read” basket has 24 regular magazines and nine science fiction magazines…and that’s about typical. They’ll all get read, cover to cover (yes, I’m one of those), but it takes time.

That really means I’ve read a lot more than 63 book-equivalents in print form. One science fiction magazine (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) has gone to thick bimonthly issues that are effectively a book’s worth of fiction in each issue. The others are theoretically monthly, with a little more than half a book’s worth in each issue, but in each case four monthly issues appear as two fat booklength combos. So I get 26 issues a year in all, and that’s about 18 book equivalents. (I’m probably 15 years behind on science fiction/fantasy in book form, but I’m in pretty good shape for short-story and novelette/novella writers.)

The details?

I’m not going to post the actual list of titles. It’s eclectic. I will say that. A couple of summary notes:

• One book came from ALA as support for a book I’m working on. One was a gift from the author. Two–the only two I abandoned partway through–were old paperbacks that had been hanging around the house for many years (one of them I picked up on an “exchange table” at MFPOW; the other my wife read a few decades ago). The others all came from Livermore Public Library.
• I count 16 “mainstream” fiction titles, 10 that the library categorizes as mystery (most of them from Nevada Barr’s series set in national parks), 29 called nonfiction, and eight categorized as science fiction/fantasy. Plus, to be sure, the 18 book equivalents of science fiction/fantasy in shorter form.
• I found 25 of the books less than enchanting–nine “Meh,” five “No” (including the two I abandoned), two “OK” and nine “So-so.” In most of these cases, I should probably have abandoned the book at the Pearl Limit (in my case, 34 pages in), but I find that hard to do except in the worst cases. That leaves 38 books that I enjoyed, including ten that I liked a lot and 13 more that I liked almost as much. That’s a pretty good track record, given the modified randomness with which I choose books.

So there it is. A little more than a book a week–basically, a book every six days. Essentially, I’ve been going to the library roughly every 2.5 weeks instead of every four weeks.

I’ll keep keeping track–printing out a tiny-print list is a good way of avoiding duplicates (it will be quite a while before that list requires more than one sheet of paper every three or four weeks, so I’m not exactly squandering natural resources).

(Is this post another form of procrastination? Sort of. I finished a wholly revised draft of the second of nine chapters for my next book,  one of two chapters that’s almost entirely new material since I set aside the partial first draft to add another 3,500+ libraries to the dataset, so I’m in good shape. Lots of metrics processing today, but I might hold off on Chapter 3 until Monday. Sunday’s our 34th anniversary, and I don’t plan to work on the book at all… Meantime, happy new year, and if you’re around these parts, “avoid the 21″–don’t drive under the influence. Well, the advice holds everywhere, but the 21 police agencies in the Bay Area make a concerted effort over the holidays, with some success in lowering DUI-related accidents.)

I’ve just finished revisiting 2,406 libraries in 25 states, four months (plus or minus two days) after the first visit–that is, visiting the websites (if they exist) and Facebook and Twitter pages (if they exist).

I also revisited 20 libraries where people contributed comments, three months after the first visit.

Combined with the 3,555 libraries in 13 states who only get a single visit (at least for this project), I’m now done done done with the actual research for my book.

Tomorrow: A day off (hiking in the morning, reading & watching an old movie in the afternoon).

Thursday: Starting in on refreshed and new metrics for the 13 states and the changes in 25 states, and rethinking the book (about 80% of which was written, and most of that will be rewritten).

Done done done. With that phase, that is.

And, to be sure, contemplating the fact that very little of the data I’ve gathered will be used in the book… But that’s gist for another post or three.

To continue a series of progress reports almost nobody will (or should!) care about…

Although a couple of those posts combine progress reports with other things–in one case, the second part of my probably-two-part Relevance and Reward, in another case some notes on the “computer game” I actually play…

Wisconsin done

More reporting libraries/library agencies than any state I’d surveyed before–381 of them in all. And almost all of them with web pages (certainly not true for every state). Probably just finished in time: Twitter’s now showing me Wisconsin tourism ads for every search that includes the word “wisconsin.”

The decision

I’m now at the point where I was going to make a decision on just how much I’d expand the original survey of 25 states and slightly more than 2,400 libraries (but more than half of the people).

The eleven states I’ve done now add another 2,537 libraries–which means I’ve now checked more than half of the 9,000-odd public libraries (not physical locations, but reporting entities) in the U.S.

There are two more states I could reasonably survey (the rows are in my spreadsheet but not yet checked): Pennsylvania and Texas. Each of which has a whole bunch of reporting libraries–1,014 between the two of them.

If I stop now, I’ve covered 72% of the states, just about two-thirds of the population, and around 55% of the libraries.

If I add PA and TX, I’ll have covered 76% of the states…but also about 80% of the population and about two-thirds of the libraries. Pennsylvania and Texas combined have almost as much population as the 11 states I just finished surveying…

As very populous states with lots of independent libraries, they also add to the incredible diversity of the states I’ve included (although Massachusetts also fits in this category); California and Florida have relatively few–or at least fewer–reporting library agencies. (New York is one of the dozen states that just isn’t going to be part of this survey, both because of time and because the state library doesn’t show a spreadsheet of library names and LSAs on its statistics website. Illinois and Michigan are also in that group.)

The book really doesn’t need the extra data, but having it will add a little more richness to the picture.

So, well, I’m 99% certain I’ll continue with those two. Not that it matters.

Except….

That I’m formulating a newer “ideal job” picture, one that might be worth posting. I don’t know that it has any more real-world chances than other pipe dreams, but it might be worth fleshing out. Maybe in another post, before or after a stub issue of C&I (yes, I think there will be another 2011 issue; no, I don’t think it will be a substantial one).

How many more Facebook pages and Twitter accounts have I surfaced this time around? Dunno; I haven’t done any analysis of the 11 states. “A bunch” would be one fair summary, as would “certainly not present in nearly all libraries”–but that’s nothing new.

As I’m scanning public library websites and looking at Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, I’m finding a growing number of occurrences of a message.

The same message, on each page. I’ve seen it already half a dozen times this morning, and probably at least two dozen over the past few days. Currently, I’m seeing it in Wisconsin libraries, but that’s because those are the libraries I’m looking at–there is nothing in the message specific to Wisconsin, as far as I can tell.

Paraphrasing…

Without quoting the message directly, it’s a pitch for a new book, posted by the author; the book is related to the Human Genome Project, supposedly in plain language, and published by Xlibris (a PoD house that charges several hundred to several thousand dollars in advance, making it a vanity press by my standards).

The message is identical on every Facebook wall. It’s either attached as a comment on some library post (none of which have anything to do with the HGP) or offered as a standalone comment, presumably on pages where that’s easy to do.

I’m doing this post for two reasons–and will link to it in a message on Publib and Web4lib for both reasons:

1. If you’re an administrator for a public library Facebook page and you see this message and wonder what it’s all about: You’re not alone. It’s popping up all over the place. It’s not specific to your library, although I suppose it’s indirectly arguing that you should buy the book. If you choose to treat it as spam and delete it, you’re probably making a sensible choice. (By the way, for libraries whose Facebook pages are largely inactive: Do you check them once in a while to delete the make-big-money-at-home spam that pops up on such pages?)
2. A tiny little part of me wonders whether what this author is doing could be considered legitimate self-promotion? That tiny little part notes that I’ll have a book–from Information Today, Inc., definitely not self-published–out early in 2012 that is directly relevant to every public library and its relations with its community. Should I be posting a notice about that book to every public library Facebook page? Even more interesting: The reason I’m looking at all these Facebook pages is the other book I’m working on, which should be out later in 2012 from ALA Editions–and I suppose you could make the case that it would be directly relevant for me to post something on each and every public library Facebook page (that I’m aware of) about the book. After all, the Facebook pages are the major basis for the study, and the book will allow libraries to see how their Facebook page compares to their peers.

Don’t worry: I have no intention of doing either one. It strikes me as inappropriate and maybe a little unsavory. But I’ve always been a terrible self-promoter, and maybe I’m wrong here. What do you think?

Another state done (OK, so it’s only 47 libraries, but still…)

Rhode Island crossed off. Next up: Virginia, also a reasonably small set of libraries (91 of them).

Nothing more to say: A short progress report for a small state.

The Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County serves around 238,000 people and has a bunch of social icons on its clearly-organized homepage, including a Facebook page with nearly 2,000 likes and a Twitter account with…well, with 157 followers.

And, given that this library appears as “YOUNGSTOWN AND MAHONING COUNTY, PL OF” in the spreadsheet, that’s the last Ohio library–a few days after Ada Public School District Library started it out.

Ohio went a little faster than expected because most (but certainly not all!) Ohio libraries have websites and most (but certainly not all!) of the libraries with social network accounts (which might or might not be a majority of the libraries–not doing that sort just yet) have icons on the homepages that link to those accounts. That makes it faster, and “encouraging” searches (those that yield results) keep me going longer between breaks.

Good luck with the levies

It’s abundantly clear, doing this sweep between November 5 and 8, that a fair number of Ohio libraries are going out for tax levies. I’ll assume (and hope!) that these libraries have engaged their communities and been strong enough contributors that they’ve made the case for financial support. Good luck to all of you in passing the levies.

Next up, Rhode Island, and with only 47 libraries to check, I should finish that today and move on to Virginia. Interleaving that with continued work on the first 2/3 of the manuscript, based on the first 25-state survey, to be sure. And maybe, just maybe, an entirely different post.

Meanwhile, if you’re in Ohio, go vote. Or, for that matter, if you have local elections (not everybody does, as some offyears in some places don’t have any contested positions), go vote–if you have an opinion and know what or who you’re voting for [or in some cases against]. I certainly will.

I didn’t find evidence of a Facebook page or Twitter account for the Woodsville Free Public Library in New Hampshire–and that’s the last of a scan that began with Aaron Cutler Memorial Library on Tuesday. (Aaron Cutler does have a Facebook account with 125 likes, the most recent update on the day I checked, the fifth most recent within the last quarter but not the last month, and clear community engagement. But no Twitter account.)

Since I was looking at New Hampshire public libraries this week–following a major weather situation–I was reminded once again that most public libraries, even (or especially) the smallest, really do serve as centers of their communities.

Now on to Ohio–just one more library/library agency than New Hampshire, but roughly nine times as many people, so I’m guessing the patterns will be different once more.

When, in the first part of the manuscript (devoted to the initial 25 states), I discuss possible regional bias, I noted that–at the time–the Northeast wasn’t very well represented (including New England). Now that I’ve added Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and will definitely add Rhode Island and Vermont (and probably Pennsylvania), that won’t be true for the larger set of results.

Hmm. I also turned around the fifth revision of The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing (to take into account proofreader’s notes and another round of copyediting). So I guess it hasn’t been a wasted week. (By the way, the people in Information Today, Inc.’s book division are not only a pleasure to work with but excellent at what they do. The fifth revision of the book is significantly better than the first submitted version, as I anticipated it would be.)

As for C&I…still no writing, still no urgency. I should do the second part of the Relevance and Reward series of posts..maybe soon.

Update Sunday, November 6, 2011: Partway through Ohio, I’m realizing that I really would like it to be the case that nearly all PLs have FB pages and Twitter accounts–it’s faster for me (than attempting to be satisfied that they don’t), and it’s a lot more fun to look at how PLs use social networks than whether they use them.

(The first 16 Ohio PLs–alphabetically–all have Facebook accounts. The string runs out there, although I continue to see a healthy percentage. Even there, only half of those 16 have obvious working links to their Facebook pages on their homepages.)

And I’ve gone far enough to see that, while Multnomah has the most Likes of any public library in the first 25 states surveyed, it’s definitely not the most of any PL in the nation (nor, as far as I know, does it claim that distinction). Columbus Metropolitan has more than half again as many Likes. But then I checked a library that won’t be in the expanded survey–New York just doesn’t have the downloadable spreadsheet of library names and LSAs–and there it is: NYPL’s primary Facebook page has more than 42,000 Likes. Is that the highest? If not, I’m sure someone will let me know what library has even more.

If there’s anyone out there who wonders why Cites & Insights hasn’t appeared for five weeks now (and isn’t likely to for quite some time), and who doesn’t read posts such as this one, here’s an update of sorts.

Massachusetts down…

I’m currently interleaving work on the draft text for Libraries in Social Networks (working title, from ALA Editions, some time next year with luck) with work on expanding my survey of actual public library presence on Facebook or Twitter from the current 25 states and 2,406 libraries to a total of 38 states and 5,957 libraries (or, if energy runs out, 36 states and 4,963 libraries).

I’m doing the remaining 13 states (all of them I hadn’t already done and that have readily-available spreadsheets of library names and population served) in alphabetic order–except that, regarding the parenthetic note in the previous paragraph, I’ve now moved Pennsylvania and Texas to the end, since those are the two with the largest number of reporting libraries.

I’d already done Alabama and Indiana. A few minutes ago, I finished Massachusetts (and the first three libraries in Maine, since I stopped at a “20 multiple” convenient spot).

Which means I’ve looked at the websites and other evidence of social networks for all the public libraries, memorial libraries, free libraries, incorporated public library associations, city libraries, town libraries, just plain libraries, reading rooms, citizens’ libraries, social libraries, athenaea (what’s the plural of athenaeum?)…and, last but not least, the Young Men’s Library Association in Ware, which has both Facebook and Twitter accounts. I’ve even managed the cases where two libraries in two different communities have exactly the same name (I think there were three of those), with a little help from Wikipedia.

Now on to Maine (and Chapter 5)

So now I’ll start in on Chapter 5 of the text…and interleave that with Maine’s libraries. (Odd coincidence: The number of reporting libraries/library systems in Maine is exactly the same as the number in Nebraska, which will come next. Whereas the numbers for New Hampshire and Ohio, the next two after that, differ by one.)

And that’s the news from South Livermore…in the heart of one of California’s lesser-known (but also one of the earliest) wine countries.

For many years, I said “I’ll keep writing as long as people keep reading what I write.”

That may be a bad formulation. Here’s a better one:

I’ll keep writing (in a particular area, in a particular manner) as long as it continues to be relevant and rewarding.

“People keep reading what I write” is one measure of relevance and reward, to be sure, but it may not be one that works very well at this point. It worked fine when I earned my living doing something else that was both relevant and (usually, and always financially) rewarding. It worked great when the combined package of paid columns and articles, paid speaking invitations, citations and discussions based on what I was writing, and other linked measures made it clear that my writing (and speaking) was relevant to a reasonably large group of library folk.

Now? I’m wondering.

Relevance?

I hadn’t thought about it explicitly, but when I lost my full-time position, I was as much concerned about remaining relevant as I was about financial rewards.

At that point, Cites & Insights still seemed pretty clearly relevant to a fair number of people (based on feedback and the extent to which items were cited elsewhere). While speaking invitations were on the decline, there were still some of them–and I still had two paid columns in print magazines.

And I was offered a part-time position that, while never well paid, yielded results I considered highly relevant and valuable to the field, doing something I thought I could do exceptionally well. So, all in all, I was happy enough with relevance, and there were enough rewards overall to keep me reasonably happy.

Rewards…

The last 18 months or so have been a little more difficult. The part-time position went away and, in the process, the work I’d done was scrapped entirely, as though it was of no importance to anybody.

Look: My day job was library systems analysis, design and programming for five decades. I knew that very little I did would survive long after I left. I doubt that any of the code I wrote anywhere is still being used; I’m not sure much of the design work survives in any fashion. That’s OK–it comes with the territory. Abruptly deciding to deep-six an entire interlinked body of professional literature with no real warning, two or three months after updating of that body has ended: That’s something different.

Cites & Insights has always been a little tricky. It was sponsored for several years (continued thanks to YBP!); it was clearly being quoted and cited for several years. Apparent readership (based on Urchin statistical reports) was strong, and each issue or essay continued to gain readers over time.

Meanwhile…well, speaking invitations dried up completely. (That might change–given at least one of the books that’s coming out, I hope it will.) The “freemium” model wasn’t working: C&I wasn’t yielding speaking invitations and attempts to produce something special for a fee were essentially useless. (Four copies of the hardcopy limited edition sold. Four.) And, while the numbers still seem reasonably strong, I’m not seeing much of any secondary recognition–not much sign that C&I is part of the ongoing professional conversations. And, of course, there’s essentially no revenue (I believe donations this year total two digits before the decimal point).

I tried something mildly interesting in producing the Library 2.0 Reader for a PDF and hardcopy price that yielded a nominal $4 in revenue–and adding a slight speedbump to the original C&I issues, both of which were still being downloaded–apparently–hundreds of times each month. The speedbump, a substitute PDF, suggested buying the book, but also gave the very brief URL for the continued free copy.

That’s been extremely discouraging. Not only has the Reader barely sold at all–five copies in June 2011, two in July 2011, zero copies (also true for all C&I books) in August, September, and so far October 2011–but Urchin statistics show that, while there have been 783 downloads of the stub issue since July 1, there have been only 16 PDF downloads of the new version of the original essay and 7 or fewer of the more recent ones. HTML hasn’t done much better: 17 of the original, 13 of the followup, 11 of the more recent essay. In essence, not only won’t people pay a nominal sum for these essays, all but a handful aren’t even ready to copy-and-paste a URL. I can only assume that, for 90+% of the downloads/clicks on the PDF, there’s no real relevance there.

Oh…and my print magazine columns dried up, one at the end of 2009, the other at the end of this year. In both cases, I think the editor’s decision was right: The column had run or has run its course.

I’ve said most of this before

True enough, including the Bibs & Blather in the August 2011 C&I. There I talked about relative priority of various projects, with C&I going back to a lower priority level.

I also said “It’s still here. I’m still here” and that C&I was likely to continue, “Possibly with less regularity. Probably with less intensity.” I said I was nearly certain to reach issue 144 (one somewhat natural stopping point, a gross of issues) and better than 95% likely to reach issue 150. (I also made some changes and, I believe, improvements in the layout and in the HTML versions. For what those changes are worth…)

C&I has reached issue 144: the current issue, dated October 2011. It actually appeared on September 17, 2011; that’s on the late side for relation of actual appearance to issue date, but not by much.

What’s changed?

Maybe nothing. On the other hand, it’s now October 19, and not only isn’t a November issue imminent, I haven’t written anything toward such an issue.

Something curious happened toward the end of last week and early this week. I turned around a second round copyediting draft of The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing, the book (to be published by Information Today, Inc.) that I regard as something every public library would benefit from–and yes, “every” does include some very small libraries–and possibly the most important and relevant book I’ve ever written in the field, up to and including MARC for Library Use, although it’s a very different kind of relevance. I won’t be doing anything on that book for at least another week and a half, and remaining steps are quite small…

Meanwhile, work’s well begun on my 2012 book for ALA Editions, on public libraries’ use of social networks. I’d completed the first pass survey of libraries in25 states. As of the end of last week, I was about a third of the way through the draft of the book itself.

It would have been a perfect time to turn some attention to Cites & Insights, printing lead sheets for an essay and starting work on the actual writing during breaks in working on the new book.

Instead, I decided to expand the social network project: Building a new spreadsheet with public libraries in another 13 states (all the remaining states with readily-available spreadsheets of library names and service areas), some 3,600 of them, and starting a slightly more efficient survey of social network use in those libraries. That, combined with an already-planned “quarter later” rescan of the original 25 states (which may now become a four-months-later rescan), pretty much takes up library-related energy, one reason there have been so few posts.

Where does that leave Cites & Insights?

Caught in relevance-and-reward limbo, at least for now.

I  know Open Access: What You Need to Know Now is and should be relevant, even if it’s gotten a lot less attention than I was hoping.

I know The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing is relevant and should be rewarding.

I know Libraries on Social Networks (working title) will be relevant and, I hope, rewarding.

Doing the substantial amount of additional research for that project will add slightly to its value. “Slightly” is probably the operative term. And yet, when faced with the choice of working on that slow, slogging, slow process or working on C&I essays, I chose the research.

Is C&I defunct? No, at least not yet. Is it on indefinite hiatus? I honestly don’t know at this point. (You could put that another way: Will there be a November/December 2011 issue? Damned if I know…)

Could this change? Of course. But for now, that’s where things stand. Or sit.

Relevance matters. So do rewards, of which relevance itself is an important (but not the only) one.

Yesterday afternoon, I sent a PDF back to Amy Reeve at Information Today, Inc.–namely, The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing: Helping Patrons and Communities Use Free and Low-cost Publishing Tools to Tell Their Stories. ISBN 978-1-57387-430-4. (Since it’s listed in the latest ITI catalog, I’m comfortable using the full title.)

It’s a PDF because this book is an example of what it’s about–using low-cost software most patrons already have (Microsoft Word or, if not that, LibreOffice/OpenOffice) and low-cost service providers (primarily Lulu, but also CreateSpace) to produce micropublications: Books, such as family histories, geneaologies, oral histories, microniche items, etc., that will have a market of from one to 50 copies. While the book will be published traditionally, the PDF used to publish it will come entirely from Word 2010 on my computer (albeit with title page design supplied by ITI).

This PDF is the third version, following Amy’s superb copyediting. I’m not sure I accepted 100% of her editorial suggestions, but it was close to that. As a writer who’s published more than a dozen books traditionally (with editors, copyeditors and the whole process) and more than half a dozen via Lulu (with only my own flawed editing), and who’s also published a couple hundred columns in print magazines where editors are involved, I really and truly appreciate high-quality editing and copyediting. The second version followed John B. Bryans’ editorial suggestions, which resulted in considerable improvements. I’m certain Amy Reeve’s work has also improved the book. (Let me not forget M. Heide Dengler, who worked with me to refine the Word template I created for the book–a Word template that will be publicly available as part of the methodology described in the book.)

There are still more steps. There may be a proofreading step. There’s certainly an indexing step (done by professionals at ITI, for which I’m especially grateful, as I’m not a competent indexer). In a few weeks, the results of those steps will come to me and be combined with the existing (or further revised) document to create the final PDF.

Meanwhile, and really, I’m not just procrastinating a bit longer on starting to actually write my next book, truly I’m not…

A few idle thoughts

• For every ten textual changes in a book–no matter how small those changes are (down to and including changing an em dash to a comma and space)–there will be at least one new bad break (line-breaking hyphen that doesn’t follow agreed layout rules), orphan word or other layout problem
• There is no substitute for high-quality editing and copyediting. You can do a good job on your own, but an independent mind will bring more to the table.
• Adobe Acrobat just may be a tool of the devil. While the book discusses using Word’s own PDF output with PDF/A selected (which assures that all typefaces will be embedded, thus meeting Lulu’s upload rules), I was using Acrobat as a “printer”–with explicit inclusion of all typefaces–because I thought it would yield a smaller file, as it has in previous cases. For some reason, I’m still not sure why, I could never convince Acrobat to embed Lucida Bright and Lucida Sans (used as examples of possible typefaces)…and, when I reverted to Word’s PDF/A output, there was no significant difference in file size. Not to mention the fact that Word’s output process is a whole lot faster than Acrobat’s “printing” process.
• This stuff is fun. It’s also work, but it’s an oddly satisfying form of work. And, once you’ve done page-by-page checking and handling of orphan words and other layout issues, you become very aware of how many big-publisher books apparently haven’t had that level of attention (three-quarters of a sample of 40 recent Big Six books I checked at the library, for example). Independent and smaller book publishers (definitely including ITI and ALA Editions) really do try harder, and it shows.

I’m sure I’ll be writing more about the book as it nears real production. (One private copy, without index and final title page and with a very odd cover, is being produced as I write this–I wanted to make absolutely sure I was walking the talk. And, hey, Lulu’s still offering a “create a new book, get one copy free” deal, so the private copy’s only costing me the $3.99 postage charge.)

Now, on to libraries in social networks…

My weekend list of must, should and could goals includes “one good post,” by which I mean one post in this blog that actually says something. It’s also a standing item on my weekly to-do list (the weekend list is handwritten, and when I run out of slowly-yellowing 4×6 index cards, I might stop doing it; the weekly list is a Word file and kept to one printed page. In both cases, I just love crossing things out as completed–and in certain cases, putting an item on the weekly list and, after two or three weeks, bolding it, will keep reminding me to do something I’d just as soon postponed).

As I was saying…I aim to do one good post a week at a minimum. Lately I’m missing that aim. That may continue. You can partly blame FriendFeed. You can partly blame my being old and lazy.

You can mostly, at this point, blame a confluence of events:

• I thought I’d finished the first-phase research for the social networks book and was just about ready to start actually writing the draft in the middle of this week. Well, I did start writing the draft…and found after two pages that I wanted to think about it a little more.
• In timing that couldn’t be better, the managing editor at ITI sent me the PDF of my micropublishing books with loads of copyediting suggestions just at the point where I had to admit I was procrastinating, and that took priority. I’ve now gone through all the suggestions, sent back a couple of small questions and one larger question, and am just about halfway through revising the draft. (I love good editing: while ITI is clear about editorial suggestions being suggestions, not mandates, I’m likely to accept somewhere between 95% and 99% of the suggestions, maybe a little higher than 99%.)
• You don’t do this two-screen revision (the book in Word on the larger left screen, the PDF on the smaller notebook screen over to the right) all at once. Or at least I don’t–it leads to new mistakes and irritability. I’m doing one chapter at a time, with substantial breaks in between. I could be using those breaks to start the other book–but I don’t really want to do that. Fortunately, it turns out there was one more metric that I needed, one that requires a few hours (literally “a few”–no internet searching involved) scanning. So I’m interleaving that scanning (and occasional pure fun stuff) with the revisions.
• The scanning has to do with “currency” of the most recent post or tweet on a library’s account, as of the date I did the checking. For some reason, while I saved recent tweets and posts, I didn’t actually record currency (although I planned to do so on the second pass in late fall). I’ve come up with a sortable single-character code that gives me a useful hierarchy of currency without much effort.
• One reason to check currency has to do with the many library Facebook accounts (and some Twitter accounts) that don’t show up as links on the library’s home page. While I went into this project believing that no model of social network use would suit all libraries equally well, I had sort-of assumed that direct links on the home page would be one typical sign of active library use. Until, just for fun, I checked out the library website where one of the field’s better-known and more thoughtful advocates of library social networking works (it’s in one of the 25 states I didn’t survey)…and found that there were no obvious links. But, searching for and checking the Twitter and Facebook accounts, there was also no question that these were active, well-read, viable accounts. So I sent an email inquiry to the person involved–and received a response that convinced me that my assumption was wrong: That even “put links on the home page” isn’t necessarily an obvious choice for every library. That, in turn, is leading me to rethink my definition of “active” accounts, or at least to add a new category.
• In other words, lots’o'activity, and I don’t really feel like doing long, thoughtful, coherent blog posts at the end of the day. Some day…
• Oh, as for early work on the November Cites & Insights… Well, it’s possible there will be a November/December C&I, which could come out any time up to, say, December 10. We shall see. (The current issue is #144. That’s one of the magic numbers for calling it a day…I’ve done a gross of issues, just as Buffy did a gross of episodes. I don’t believe the October 2011 issue is the final C&I…)

Hmm. I guess this will do as “one odd post” until a good one comes along. Oh, and given recent comments about blind sources: The person involved is David Lee King, and I found his thoughtful response to my clumsily-worded question convincing and, well, thoughtful. Thanks, David.

Yawn. If there’s a staple of blogging, it’s the “I haven’t been posting much” post.

But heck, what good’s a meme if you can’t participate?

I’ll probably continue not posting much for at least another 10 days, because… (in my mind, I hear that intoned as part of a Almond Joy/Mars ad–odd, since I don’t eat either one)

Into phase 1.5 of research for the new book

Well, that’s along with turning around the book on micropublishing, writing one long essay for the October Cites & Insights, writing one short piece for C&I, wrapping up the first half of a 50-movie megapack (all of which means that I probably have the draft form of the October issue in place), going to see H.M.S. Pinafore, running scenarios to see when I should start collecting Social Security and how much we can spend without risking running out of $ by the time I’m 100, and being a lazy oaf as usual…

Phase 1.5? Going through 875 sets of tweets and Facebook statuses captured during Phase 1 (I copied-and-pasted, text only, the most recent five of each as I was noting other metrics), turning the raw text into something I could use (that is, one paragraph per tweet or status, shorn of most overhead) and noting the overall theme of each group and, for libraries with both, how they relate to one another. (I looked at the most recent 20 tweets or updates; in almost every case, what I see from the most recent 5 is true of the whole stream–e.g., some libraries use a social network entirely for events, some entirely for events, services and programs, some for a whole mix of stuff, at least one strictly to announce weekly sets of new books.)

That’s all additional fodder for the book, but with 875 sets–841 sets of Facebook updates, 370 sets of tweets, 336 with both–it takes a while. “Piecemeal” effort: do ten sets, play a little poker, do ten sets, check FriendFeed, do ten sets, check gmail, and so on. After or during which I’ll do more metrics and try to contact some of the libraries that stand out (for the good) in some respect, to get more feedback.

Target: Finish phase 1.5 while I’m still 65 years old. That gives me 10 days, which seems about right.

So that’s why I’m not blogging much and probably won’t be for a while. In the time it took to write this, I could have done another five sets…but I needed the break.

I’m delighted to note that there’s a review of Open Access: What You Need to Know Now on pages 452 and 453 of the September 2011 Journal of Academic Librarianship. The reviewer is David Gibbs at Lauinger Library (Georgetown University); as far as I know, I’m not acquainted with Gibbs.

It’s an excellent review–not only because it’s favorable but because it’s careful (and not wholly favorable–Gibbs says I’m “not always the clearest writer,” a comment that brought forth approving laughter from my wife, the librarian).

Here’s his conclusion, after noting that–by design–the book only deals with scholarly journal articles:

That said, this is a highly readable and recommended survey of one of the most important issues facing librarians and libraries in the 21st century.

If your library doesn’t already have a copy, it should. It’s never too late to order one–noting that Amazon offers a Kindle ebook version and ALA Editions offers a whole bundle of them, if paper isn’t your thing.

Turns out there’s at least one other print review (in addition to John Dupuis’ blog review, which I believe I noted earlier)–in the August 2011 Voice of Youth Advocates. Unfortunately, that one concludes that “This is a helpful work on an important trend, but most VOYA readers will find the cost a barrier.”