Walt at Random

You may recall that a while back (February 4, 2010), I posted “EPub, First Attempt“–noting the possible emergence of a new book collecting all of the C&I essays on open access, and wondering how to produce a (free) ePub version of that book.

In that post, I offered links to two attempts at producing an ePub version (from the complete Word version, lacking only an index):

• ePub from PDF (the PDF produced by Word’s “Save As” Option for PDF with Acrobat installed)
• ePub from Word’s “filtered HTML” output.

Three days later, I added a third option:

• ePub from RTF (as produced by Word’s “Save As” option).

Since then, I’ve seen quite a few access for the versions–through yesterday, 161 for the HTML version, 22 for the PDF version, 15 for the RFT version. I’ve only received one response based on somebody actually trying out the versions on their own ereader.

Still draft, but here’s the PDF

While I’m still waiting for other feedback and to see whether one possibility for indexing the book actually happens, I’m increasingly aware that, even by my modest expectations, a print book version of this massive compilation (more than 500 pages long) is likely to be somewhat less than a best-seller…as in, I might be lucky to even reach two-digit sales.

Since the PDF version and ePub version were going to be free anyway, here’s what I’m going to do:

• Here’s the full PDF version (still draft, ’cause no index). Because this is “Save as” rather than “Print to,” it does have a working outline tab. On the other hand, if you don’t have Arial on your reader, you may have problems with the mysterious presence of Arial characters in the document (there shouldn’t be any, but there apparently are), since the typeface is not embedded. (I don’t know of any way to embed it using “Save as”–it doesn’t seem to give me the same range of options as PDF printing, but PDF printing doesn’t build the headings outline.) Note: It’s a moderately large file–just under 3MB.

If you find the PDF version worthwhile, I cordially invite you to visit Cites & Insights and leave a donation. I’ll suggest at least $5, but that’s up to you.

You’re also free to copy the PDF elsewhere and redistribute it, as long as there’s attribution and you’re not charging for it. I’d rather you didn’t, only because I’d like to know how many copies are downloaded, but the CC license holds: You can, as long as it’s noncommercial.

If the indexing doesn’t work out and I don’t get appropriate feedback and/or indications that this book would actually go anywhere, it’s quite possible that “oaldraft.pdf” will be the final version of Open Access and Libraries (with one or more of the ePub versions also left up indefinitely).

You should be able to translate this file to something your non-PDF-supporting edevice can handle, using Calibre–after all, that’s what I did. If so, you’ll probably get the odd results I did, but maybe not.

That’s it: If you’re interested in the book, be my guest. We’ll see what happens from here.

If you recall EPub, First Attempt (three whole days ago), I had tried two free options for creating an ePub ebook file from a fully-formatted book in Word form–that is, either saving it as PDF and converting it via Calibre, or saving it as Word’s “filtered HTML” and converting it via Calibre.

I wasn’t thrilled with either method.

• The ePub-from-PDF version had great-looking type, but the page headers and footers were included within the stream and there were a number of other oddities, including a useless Contents band.
• The ePub-from-HTML version (surprisingly, much larger than the ePub-from-PDF version) had a working Contents band and no extraneous page headers and footers, but the onscreen type, while clearly a rendition of the actual type used in the book, was pretty awful.

I can see that a fair number of people have looked at or downloaded the two versions. So far, I’ve had no actual feedback on how they do or don’t work either on ereaders or on ereader simulations.

Meanwhile, I realized that there was a third option: RTF.

• Here’s an ePub-from-RTF version. It’s halfway in length between the other two–bigger than the from-PDF, smaller than the from-HTML. It clearly makes no attempt at all to provide the original typeface(s). The content panel is essentially unpopulated and useless. The contents within the book itself are odd.
• On the other hand: It looks pretty good…no extraneous footers or headers and the type looks good (depending on the typeface you choose, since it’s entirely your choice.)

Whadda you think?

So…being a sometimes-advocate of open and all that, and since Lulu now supports ePub, The Standard Ebook Format…

I thought I’d see whether using it makes any sense for the huge (513pp. 6×9, 191K words) collection of OA articles that may or may not emerge as Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights, 2001-2009.

The project itself is on the back burner for a few weeks while I see whether one possible way of getting an index pans out. Meanwhile, I could see what generating an ePub version was like.

The tools

Checking online and asking around, the only software I could find that matches the probable income from the ePub version–that is, $0–was Calibre, which is really an ebook organization (and viewing) program but also includes routines to convert to ePub from various input formats, including PDF and HTML.

The conversion routine is interesting, because it wants to know what reader the output will be used on. (There’s “default,” which may or may not be Kindle, but also a bunch of individual choices.)

• I had this silly idea that ePub is a device-independent standard. If that’s true, then I don’t get the question.
• More specifically, if I do an ePub version, it will most certainly be intended to be device-independent.

The trials

I decided to try this two ways, in both cases starting with a Word document that’s designed as a 6×9 book with good margins, using Berkeley Oldstyle Book for body text and Friz Quadrata for major headings, with “typical” page headers and footers (centered page # on first page of chapter, page # and book name in italics on other even-numbered pages, chapter name in italics and page # on other odd-numbered pages).

The PDF used for input was prepared using “Save as PDF,” which yields bookmarks and is really great for use on a PDF-supporting viewer. (Unfortunately, it appears to carry a phantom “Arial” that’s not embedded, which means it may not be possible to upload it to Lulu–which requires that all typefaces be embedded. If I “print to PDF” instead, I can set the PDF properties to embed everything, even Arial, but you don’t get bookmarks in that case. Irrelevant for a printed book, relevant for a PDF-download version.)

The HTML was prepared using Word “Save as filtered HTML,” which is the advice given by another service that does ePub conversion (but only to make the ePubs available through that service…not what I need).

• PDF-to-ePub results (as opened in Calibre’s ebook viewer): The type looks great. There’s an optional contents band, but it doesn’t really work. Ebook page breaks are peculiar, and text breaks even more so. The page headers and footers show up in the stream (which becomes something like 1,200 pages from the original 519 including prefatory material).
• HTML-to-ePub results (as opened in Calibre’s ebook viewer): Uggh… The type looks awful, very nearly unreadable, for reasons that escape me. There are no margins. (I think that’s true with the PDF-to-ePub as well.)  On the other hand, the table of contents pane (optional) works just fine–even if there’s an odd pagebreak before the first level-2 heading in each chapter. No extraneous running page headers or footers, and the Friz Quadrata headings are absolutely crisp. The 513-page book turns into 1,800-odd pages (or whatever).

Conclusions?

At this point, I’d be a good deal more embarrassed to offer either variety of ePub than I already am by the semi-clunky HTML versions of Cites & Insights essays…which have odd margins but at least have clean typography and proper flow.

Maybe I’m missing something.

If there are readers who want to try out the (draft, temporary, not final) ePub versions on their own ebook readers, be my guest–and please send me your notes. Note that neither of these is final, by any means.

• The ePub-from-HTML version (oaldrafthtml.epub), 900K
• The ePub-from-PDF version (oaldraftpdf.epub), 556K.

Suggestions that I use some higher-end ePub conversion system will be cheerfully considered as long as they’re accompanied by pointers to legal, free Windows downloads for the system. Suggestions that I spend a few hundred dollars for a higher-end publishing system will be cheerfully ignored.

Two semi-related brief topics:

The Question

I asked a similar question of Peter Suber and another person who shall remain nameless, and got a positive response from Suber, no response from the other. So I’ll broaden it a bit:

Do you think it would be worthwhile to have all the scholarly-access-related articles from Cites & Insights collected into a single document, in chronological order?

If I finish this process, the result would be a substantial book–right now (copyfitted but lacking indexing), it’s 511 6×9 pages containing 191,000 words in 34 essays.

The book would be available in (at least) two forms:

• As a free PDF download (from Lulu), carrying a Creative Commons BY-NC license, with no DRM or other disabling issues.
• As a (thick!) trade paperback, priced at $5 more than Lulu’s actual production cost, yielding $4 per copy to me (basically to provide a little payback for the indexing and putting the whole thing together).

Note the word free. While Lulu now charges $1.45 plus 20% of set price for PDF downloads, Lulu continues to waive that $1.45 if the set price is $0.

The book would not have updates or corrections (other than a few corrected typos). The index would probably be fairly minimal; there’s no way I’m going to spend the time to do proper indexing for 191,000 words, given that I suspect almost all “sales” will be of the PDF variety.

UPDATE, February 1, 2010: If this book appears at all, it will be without an index. I don’t know if it’s a Word2007 bug or just the complexity and sheer length of the book, but when I try to index using Word’s indexing tools, and do more than about 50 pages of the 519 (using “Mark All” as appropriate), the saved version of the file comes back as garbage–expanded to more than 1,200 pages thanks to very long, meaningless, unchangeable pagefooters. I can’t justify taking the time (I’d guess 60+ hours, minimum) to prepare an index manually–so, although I understand that it’s abhorrent to do an unindexed nonfiction book, that’s the only way this can happen.

NOTE: I am not asking for commitments–and in any case I’d have no way of knowing who downloads or buys the book. I’m only asking for expressions of support for the idea or, if you think it’s a terrible idea, expressions of non-support. Leave a comment or send me email (waltcrawford at gmail dot com). Say within the next week; the copyfitting’s done, and I’ll do indexing after writing the first essay for the March C&I, unless I decide to abandon it.

The Status Report

On January 1, I noted the first review of But Still They Blog and also noted that Lulu could now handle ePub, the apparent “universal standard” for ebooks. I looked for “indications from, say, three people that they would buy an ePub version” before going to the trouble of locating software to do the conversion, testing the conversion, and uploading an ePub version.

I received one response–from a colleague who’s already purchased the print version but offered to test the ePub version.

Based on that level of interest, it’s hard to generate any enthusiasm for going to the trouble of doing an ePub version of this possible new book–particularly since I’d probably give that one away.

So: Anybody out there who would be more interested in the OA-related book if it was available in ePub? Not asking for a commitment, just for legitimate interest.

After all, if a universal standard is met by universal ennui, there’s little point in adopting it.

I see a whole lot of attention being paid to an Amazon press release saying that Kindle ebooks outsold print books…on Christmas Day.

With, of course, no actual numbers.

Thought experiment

1. How many people do you think spend Christmas day ordering books online, to be delivered several days later?
2. How many people, having just received a new Kindle, are likely to add a book or two to it immediately, as part of the “trying out the new gift” process?

It seems wildly probable that 2>1 in this case–that a lot more people would add books to their gift Kindles than would go online to order print books on Christmas Day itself.

Equally valid and impressive story

Here’s an absolutely true story: From December 13 through December 21, 2009, But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009 sold more copies in ebook format (OK, PDF download, but it’s still an ebook) than in print-book format!

Wow! Not only are ebooks now “mainstream” (whatever that means), but they’re dominating print books! This is proof!

And the numbers

But, unlike Amazon, I’ll actually provide the numbers behind this astonishing development.

• PDF download copies sold: Three
• Print copies sold: Two.

Hey, three is more than two, isn’t it? (Note the tightly-delimited time period; on 12/22, another print copy sold, making it even; overall, print copies slightly dominate.)

The reality

Yes, the Kindle2 and KindleDX and Sony Reader and Nook all combine to bring ebooks into the “mainstream,” although it’s not quite clear what that means (a situation not aided by Amazon’s consistent secrecy about numbers as opposed to comparisons).

But that “ebooks outsold pbooks” could mean any of the following:

• Amazon sold 100 ebooks on Christmas day–but only 50 print books (wildly unlikely)
• Amazon sold 1,000 ebooks on Christmas day. (Also unlikely)
• Amazon sold 10,000, or 100,000, or (also unlikely) one million ebooks on Christmas day.

I won’t even venture a guess as to the order of magnitude, much less actual sales. (If it was a million, I would bet that Amazon would say so.)

But the real story here–

People spend more time on Christmas day getting acquainted with/playing with their new devices and toys than they do shopping for other stuff they don’t immediately need (and can’t even immediately have)

isn’t a particularly interesting or novel story.

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Arrggh (12/29 update)… And now, a generally-thoughtful library-related blogger, who should know better, has reported this one-day phenomenon in a way that leads you to believe that Kindle ebooks outsold pbooks on Amazon for the entire year. [Updated 3 p.m.: See comments below: This was almost certainly an inadvertent error--which makes my final sentence below more significant:]

The curse of a cleverly-written press release.

Just a quick note, because it came up in the long comment thread attached to this post at Whatever, John Scalzi’s blog:

Self publishing and vanity publishing via vanity presses are not the same thing. Lulu and CreateSpace might (or might not) be a third thing.

I’m pleased to say that most commenters who chose to address the issue do make a distinction, unlike a number of people I’ve seen in the past (who regard anything other than traditional “New York publisher” publishing as vanity publishing).

The basic difference:

• Vanity Publisher: The author pays a fairly substantial sum, based on the idea that the book will then be “published”–that is, edited, printed, promoted, sold in bookstores–as part of the imprint of the vanity publisher. Typically, that sum is in the thousands of dollars. The author “gets royalties”–if anybody other than the author ever buys anything.
• Self Publishing: The author is the publisher–and uses other agencies to handle some of the chores involved with publishing. Generally, the author understands that nobody else is going to edit, promote, place in bookstores, whatever, unless the author pays them for those specific tasks. The author controls the book, sets prices, gets all net proceeds, etc.

Traditionally–and self publishing has been around for centuries–a self-publisher has a run of books printed and bound, then sets about selling them. There’s still a considerable up-front cost, but the author goes in with eyes wide open, not some questionable promises.

Here’s where Lulu and, to some extent, similar services are a little different: The service agency only prints and binds books when they’re ordered, but the service agency can also act as the “bookstore”–taking and fulfilling the orders. In Lulu’s case, that can mean $0 upfront investment. (Of course, if you want to peddle your books to local bookstores or sell them yourself, there is an upfront investment: You have to pay Lulu’s production charges, which are considerably higher per copy than traditional publishing–but considerably less than the minimum price for a traditional print run, when you only need a few dozen copies.)

(It gets muddled. Lulu also has all sorts of optional services, which they pointedly do not push at you, in which you pay for things like cover design, manuscript editing, ISBN and Amazon distribution, Ingram distribution and Books in Print listing, publicity packages… I’ve never used any of those services, so I can’t speak to them.)

Interestingly, Scalzi–a successful science fiction writer–uses Lulu to process his manuscripts, for his own use, so he has nice printed-and-bound versions of what he’s working on, at very low cost. To some extent, that’s what I’m doing with the annual volumes of Cites & Insights: If nobody else buys a copy, I’ve acquired the bound copy I need, with better quality than I could do locally, for a very reasonable price. (My wife’s doing two genealogical volumes for her family; she decided to do the first “published” copy so she could do a final editing pass more easily than on screen…and we’ll upload a revised version later, before acquiring the copies she’s giving away and making it available to others.)

I don’t think most Lulu projects (over a million to date, I believe) are traditional self-publishing, because I don’t think the creators have any expectation of selling more than a handful of copies. They’re family calendars, photo collections done as gifts, very short-run publications, what have you. I believe some open access journals are using Lulu to make an annual hardcopy version available for the libraries that might wish to purchase one–and, to be sure, the price is likely to be reasonable. Some Lulu authors have probably done quite well, and a few Lulu titles have gone on to become traditional books (the author always owns the copyright and maintains total control; the Lulu edition is not exclusive)…but that’s not usually the point.

Cites & Insights 9 (2009) is now available as a 434-page, 8.5×11, trade paperback, exclusively from Lulu.

The volume includes all 13 issues, exactly as published (typos and all), except that the two book covers in the January issue are in grayscale, not color.

It also includes a contents list showing the articles and pages in each issue, and a volume index.

The price is $50, for either the paperback or a PDF download; a portion of that price goes to support the ongoing publication of Cites & Insights.

The book is printed on bright-white 50lb. paper (my copy looks great!).

As to the cover (a wraparound color photo–you’re only seeing the front part here):

Taken by my wife on Molokai, years ago, on the Kaluakakoi golf course running alongside our room at what was then, I believe, a Sheraton at the Ke Nani Kai resort on Molokai’s isolated west coast. (The hotel’s been closed for some time…tourism on Molokai is an iffy thing.) The only manipulation done to the picture (scanned from a 3×4 print) was to flip it horizontally, so most of the tree would be on the front cover rather than the back. Crappy type position is entirely my responsibility.

I’ll do a proper post with a cover shot tomorrow, but in case you’re interested:

The trade paperback version of Cites & Insights 9: 2009 is now available.

It costs $50, and represents direct support (to the tune of about $27) for C&I–and if you don’t want the print book and want to support C&I even more (around $38), you can buy the downloadable PDF for the same $50.

Naturally, all individual issues of C&I continue to be freely available. (But you can only get the wraparound cover shot, taken on Molokai, with the book…)

A longer version tomorrow, if all goes well.

Another pebble on the road to But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009…

Status

On October 14, I said I was pausing for breath–stepping back from the project, after finishing the first draft of the first five chapters, to write some essays for the next Cites & Insights and to take a fresh look at what the statistics say about the state of liblogs, at least for the portion written so far.

I wrote an essay–and since it’s more than 22,000 words long and there’s the second half of 50 Movie Comedy Classics to report on, that’s probably it for the December 2009 issue. (Probably out next week. Possibly a little later.)

I also reviewed the chapters, came up with a small number of additional insights, and edited them to 2nd draft status.

And, since then, I’ve prepared chapters 6-9:

• Chapter 6: Standouts and standards–blogs showing the most consistency in key metrics either across metrics or across years.
• Chapter 7: Patterns of change, 2007-2008.
• Chapter 8: Patterns of change, 2008-2009.
• Chapter 9: Correlations (which turns out to be very short and not terribly interesting).

Shortly, I’ll print out chapters 6-8 to review for better ways to describe what I found–much as I did for chapters 1-5.

But then there’s this, from the October 14 post:

Maybe it would make sense to look at a subset of the 521 blogs that might be called the “common blogs”–ones that have a significant number of posts in all three years, ones that have full metrics for all three years, ones that aren’t current awareness services in blog form–and see whether those blogs, possibly 200-300, show more distinct patterns than the overall set.

Common blogs or the core set

The more I thought about it, the more I thought his would be a neat idea–and added Chapter 10, Core blogs, to the outline.

And prepared a trimmed copy of the spreadsheet, as follows:

• Deleted blogs that didn’t have at least 3 posts in March-May 2007, March-May 2008 and March-May 2009.
• Deleted blogs that lacked length metrics (ones where it wasn’t feasible to determine the total length of posts).
• Deleted “a handful” (maybe 5?) of extremely prolific blogs that seem to function more as current awareness services than as ordinary blogs, and one blog that consists entirely of links.

That left me with 265 blogs. So I began Chapter 10, then started preparing quintiles and other analyses to see whether I’d find anything particularly interesting.

See the title of this post?

Oh, there will be a Chapter 10–but it will be one of two primarily narrative chapters about why people blog, how blogging changes and why/how blogs disappear. The Chapter 10 that I was working on doesn’t exist any longer, although one paragraph (much shorter than this post!) does appear, as part of Chapter 1.

Sure, there were changes in the patterns–but they were all changes that were essentially mandated by the way I trimmed blogs. There was nothing “interesting” at all.

Oh well, only a couple afternoons’ work; in the past, I’ve spent much longer periods on projects that I abandoned or found useless… (Up to and including the very first book-length manuscript I ever wrote, the only one I ever wrote on an electric typewriter, the research for which gave me a lasting hatred of microfilm readers…that was probably close to 1,000 hours of work, and I don’t even have the ms. to show for it.)

Come to think of it, this post isn’t very interesting either. Such is life. It’s Friday, and there’s a skeleton on our front porch with some creepy little spiders on it…

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A couple of weeks later: Not so quick, bucko. Note the comments on this post, which I started thinking about. To wit, maybe averages could be slightly meaningful for “ordinary” liblogs–that is, stripping out those that are current awareness services, sponsored, etc.

So I redid a trimmed set, not including the “significant number of posts” but requiring full metrics and removing a very small number of blogs that seemed to be special cases. And, instead of quintiles, I looked at changes in totals and averages from year to year…and came up with some mildly interesting data, which will be added to the Correlations chapter.

Thanks, John: But for your comment(s), I wouldn’t have thought about this a second time.

As already noted, I am doing another liblog investigation, this one covering 2007 through 2009 but not quite as broadly as The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 (which will continue to be available at Lulu and Amazon).

I’m not sure just what I’ll do with the results, but one possibility is another book–this one having review copies and all.

Brief status report

• I’ve established the universe being investigated (521 blogs in all, all of them visible as of September 2009).
• I’ve done almost all of the metrics for the blogs–measured frequency, length and comments for March-May 2007, 2008 and 2009 (as feasible), recorded starting date, prepared text section with blog name, tagline/subtitle/motto, author’s name, start date, metrics table and, new for this year, a sentence or two of personal commentary (although I omit that on some blogs). (What’s left? Maybe nothing; maybe a quick 10/1-10/2 scan for most recent post and for blog software.)
• I’ve prepared the 15 quintiles that feed back into the blog tables (frequency, words per post, comments per post, each for 2007, 2008, 2009, and the delta from 2008 to 2009 and 2007 to 2009). (There are other quintiles–total blog length, total number of comments–but they won’t be reported at the individual-blog level)
• I’m about halfway through updating the “blog chapter” by adding the quintiles to the text tables.

There’s a lot more to do, to be sure–all of the other analysis and narrative. But…

A few people, commenting on The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008, said they were sorry I decided not to include my comments on individual blogs–and at least one even said they’d pay for that book.

The question then becomes…

Would you?

That is, are there folks out there who really don’t care about the details of the overall liblog picture but would be interested in a book (PDF or paperback) consisting of the 521 liblog profiles, with an introductory chapter explaining how they were chosen, giving the quintiles (but no other metrics) and noting how they work–and with a blog author index?

I’m thinking there might also be some folks who really don’t care about the individual liblogs, but are interested in the discussion of the liblog field as a whole.

If there is a market for “just the blogs,” it wouldn’t take a lot of work to do it–slapping together that introductory chapter, doing the index (fairly easy in this case), making a couple of global format changes in “the blog chapter” and breaking it into 27 chapters for convenience…and, to be sure, making a cover. I could probably have such a book available by mid-October.

If that book came out, then I’d see there being three versions of the investigation (plus whatever I publish in C&I or elsewhere):

1. Just the Blogs. Probably $20 PDF, $30 paperback. Probably around 200 pages. Probably out October 2009.
2. Just the Analysis. Probably the same price. Probably around 100-150 pages. Probably out December 2009-January 2010.
3. But Still They Post… The “real book,” the one I’d send out for review. I don’t think it will be divided into analysis followed by one big blog chapter, as was the case for the three previous blog studies. Instead, I think I’d interleave blog notes as appropriate within the narrative. This would also be a better bargain than the others: Probably $20 PDF, $35 paperback. Probably around 250-300 pages. (The text in “Just the Blogs” would be 11pt. where blog segments within the overall book would probably be 10pt.–and “Just the Blogs” would have a bunch of extra chapter breaks. And one chapter in “Just the Blogs”–as well as the index–would be redundant. Thus, 100-150 plus 200 really might total around 250-300.)

Reactions desired

It would be exceptionally dumb, even for me, to do #1 and #2 unless there’s some indication of demand. It might be exceptionally dumb anyway (maybe the whole project is!), but that’s another question.

Do note: There wouldn’t be “excess paper” if I do it this way–other than the single proof copy, that is, No more books will be printed than are sold, and if people want PDF, that’s fine with me.

So: Over to you. Is there any interest in #1 or #2? (Or #3 for that matter…)

And a final reminder

If you have a sudden belated urge to own a copy of Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples, you have a few more days to buy one (you can probably find that on Amazon as well). On or about October 1, 2009, it will go “out of print”–I’ll turn off both print-on-demand projects.

As promised, the book Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples is now officially out of print, both in its trade-paperback version (only available through CreateSpace/Amazon for the last month or two) and its downloadable PDF version (only available through Lulu).
The 80 purchasers now own a true limited edition…
Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples continues to be available, in print and download versions through the title link or in print at CreateSpace/Amazon. Unless there’s at least one sale this month, it will go out of print in early October–making the 45 copies currently extant a very limited edition!
The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look, to the best of my knowledge the most comprehensive study of blogs within a specialty, continues to be available and probably will be available for some time to come. I’m working on a project that will complement but may not directly replace it…but that’s another story.

1. Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples (that’s the CreateSpace link for the paperback version; you can buy the Lulu PDF download here) will go permanently out of print and off sale on or shortly after September 1, 2009.
2. I’m still pondering a continuation of liblog research, torn between the economics (“don’t do it!”) and the current history (“do it, chump!”). Unclear when I’ll make a decision–but if there’s no decision by, say, October, that becomes a negative decision.

OK, technically, yesterday–and if Charles W. Bailey hadn’t posted about it on DigitalKoans, I wouldn’t have noticed.
Namely, that The Public-Access Computer Systems Review was established on August 16, 1989.
PACS Review (as it was frequently called) wasn’t called an open access journal at the time, because that term didn’t exist. It certainly wasn’t called a “libre” open access journal–but that’s what it was. Authors retained their copyright, the journal was free for readers, there were provisions for noncommercial use. I’m not sure all permission barriers were removed, but most certainly were.
The first issue of PACS Review appeared in 1990. The last–42 issues later–appeared in 1998. (Bailey’s post has more detail.)
PACS Review wasn’t the first freely available peer-reviewed online-only journal. I believe it was the first within the library field.
PACS Review didn’t have author-side charges. Nor did it have subscription fees. All of the work was voluntary; the University of Houston covered server costs (and still does). In early years, each issue consisted of a series of plain ASCII files. In 1995 and beyond, you could get either ASCII or HTML.
There was also, after some discussion and mild controversy, an inexpensive after-the-fact print version of each PACS Review volume for the first five years. I know; I not only argued for providing such a version, I agreed to prepare the camera-ready copy for the trade paperback volums, marking up the ASCII and preparing the books in Ventura Publisher (back when it used GEM as a GUI environment, before Windows was a plausible choice). LITA actually published the annual volumes; I still have a set at home.

As usual, I was taking the easy way out. I’d joined the editorial board some time after the journal was founded, but was never active in soliciting or reviewing manuscripts. I was using desktop publishing to produce the LITA Newsletter; preparing a book template and marking up the ASCII was easy.

Other than turning it into a print annual for five years, I had modest involvement with PACS Review. I wrote a column, “Public-Access Provocations,” that appeared in nine issues over the first four years; I also wrote five other articles and brief pieces for the journal.
Others, and particularly Charles W. Bailey, Jr., and other editors and co-editors, played much larger roles.
The journal was, I believe, significant for its time. Some of the articles still bear reading at this late date. (If anyone claims that some journal from the late 1990s, or even early 1990s, was the first free refereed ejournal, point them to PACS Review2:1, 1991, a special issue including more than half a dozen articles on true pioneers in early online access!)
Twenty years. It seems like only thirty or forty years ago…

The most recent post, announcing Cites & Insights 9:10, noted that I might have additional comments about some of the essays in this issue. This is one of those comments…discussing the two related Perspectives that make up about two-thirds of the issue, namely “Public Library Blogs: A Limited Update” and “Academic Library Blogs: A Limited Update.”

If I did Cites & Insights on a strictly rational basis, those two Perspectives would never have appeared. In the time required to do the research (such as it was) and prepare the articles, I could have written two other articles that would probably be more fun to write and attract more readers–and have time left over for pleasure reading and the like.

If I did Cites & Insights on a strictly rational basis, I wouldn’t do Cites & Insights–and particularly not when sponsorship goes away at the end of this year. I manage our checkbook and check our accounts on a strictly rational basis; otherwise, not so much.

Why not?

Well, let’s see:

• The book-length studies done in 2007 didn’t attract many paying readers. Between them, I’d say I probably earned out about $3 or $4 an hour for the time required to do them. That’s miserable return–matched by simply not reaching very far or attracting much attention.
• When I published the study portion of the two studies, in the May 2009 Cites & Insights, the results still didn’t reach all that many people. I track issue downloads and HTML pageviews every few months, maintaining a spreadsheet for long-term readership (at least since 2002). I know that, other than certain Hot Topics, issue and article readership starts out at a few hundred over the first week or two and grows over time; after four or five months, there’s usually some sense of whether an article or issue is hot or cold. Most full issues have at least 800 downloads after the first three months; most essays (adding HTML pageviews and PDF downloads for the issue) reach 1,100 or so at that point. But not these–so far, there are fewer than 397 issue downloads and the two essays show gross totals of 804 (academic) and 769 (public) respectively, lower than any other articles except the Bibs & Blather in the same issue (and the articles uploaded yesterday).
• OK, so 804 is a whole lot better than the 45 books sold, and 769 is a whole lot better than 85 books sold–in terms of reach, that is. But the latter figures, and the general lack of any inbound links suggests that nobody much cares about this stuff.
• Admittedly, I find official library blogs a whole lot less interesting than liblogs (blogs by library-related people), maybe because I’m not in a library. And I really didn’t have any grand hypotheses regarding changes in library blogs.

Curiosity…

I had the spreadsheets with the URLs. I knew that a simpler study–just looking at one month’s posts, not tracking post length, not looking for a wider array of blogs–wouldn’t take that much time.

Yes, I’ve posted about that already.

The issue’s out. I’ve satisfied my curiosity. There weren’t any grand hypotheses going into the lateral study, so perhaps it’s not surprising that there are no grand conclusions coming out of it. The spreadsheets, such as they are, are available for others to work with. I’m done. Really.

I would say “at least now I know,” but the extent to which library blogs reappear under new URLs makes me wonder just what I know. I’m fairly sure of the following:

• Some library blogs that were in good shape in 2007 are still in good shape in 2009.
• Depending on your definition of “in good shape” as regards post frequency, “some” means somewhere between 37% and 51% of public library blogs studied and somewhere between 42% and 60% of academic library blogs.
• Very few library blogs get lots of comments; most get none at all. That was true in 2007; it’s true in 2009. It shouldn’t surprise anybody.
• Nobody has solid metrics for what constitutes a “successful” library blog–much less external metrics. (I don’t know how many subscribers or pageviews a blog has, unless it’s one of mine–and even a library probably doesn’t know how many of those subscribers and pageviews come from the library’s own community.)

…and more curiosity

But what about the really big project, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008?

It covers a lot more ground: 607 blogs. It offers a lot more detail, since it already includes a lateral look (comparing March-May 2007 with March-May 2008). To me, at least, it’s inherently more interesting, as it’s dealing with a universe of gray publishing on library issues (and other stuff) by some of the best and most interesting writers in the field. The book is, I believe, far more intelligently designed.

So far, the book’s sold a little better than Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples–but not much. It hasn’t been out as long, and I haven’t given up yet, but…

On the other hand, the “freebie” version–Cites & Insights 9:7, June 2009, the longest issue of C&I produced to date–has pretty decent readership for a young issue, particularly given that it’s only available in PDF form (the graphs just didn’t translate to Word-provided HTML very well). I don’t doubt that, over the next year or two, it will reach a four-figure audience.

On the gripping hand, updating that project would be a lot more work. So far, I haven’t quite scoped out how I could do an update in a reasonable amount of time (“reasonable” given that I’ll assume little if any direct revenue resulting from the work).

But it’s a hard one to give up, especially given the amount of public discussion–on blogs, on FriendFeed, probably elsewhere–about changes in blogging (liblogging and otherwise) this year. Unfortunately, to inform that discussion, I can’t just do a quick’n'dirty update; I’d need to measure post length as well as frequency and comments, and would probably need to use a full quarter for comparison, not just a month.

The curiosity is there. The energy? I’m not sure. Right now, I’m just posting this…and, of course, encouraging you to go read the results of those mini-updates.

For the techies among you: This is also my first test of posting to this iteration of Walt at Random from Word2007’s “blog post” feature.

Cites & Insights 9:10 (September 2009) is now available.

This 28-page issue includes the results of two followup “research” projects and a certain amount of summer silliness. The issue is PDF. While three of the four essays are available in HTML form (as links from the essay titles below), I really don’t recommend viewing either of the research projects that way–they’re heavy on tables, and it’s fair to say that Word’s HTML converter was overzealous in its preparation of tables: They may or may not look very good, and they result in quarter-megabyte downloads. The PDF version is much easier to read…

Here’s what’s in the issue–and yes, some of the “regular” features may return soon:

Perspective: Public Library Blogs: A Limited Update

I looked at May 2009 posts and comments, and the most recent post prior to May 31, 2009, for all of the public library blogs in the book Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples (based on blog activity March-May 2007). This update considers currency, frequency, comments and conversational intensity and how those have changed from 2007 to 2009–and includes brief notes on pioneer blogs and some of the blogs I found particularly intriguing. (The HTML is large and may not look all that great.) With this update, my work on these blogs is complete–and the spreadsheet’s yours for the taking, if you’re so inclined.

Offtopic Perspective: Alfred Hitchcock: The Legend Begins

I didn’t buy this 4-disc, 20-movie (actually 18 movies, two TV episodes, and a great hour’s worth of trailers); I received it as a gift. The usual little reviews on a bunch of movies that you might find unusual if you only know the Hollywood Hitchcock.

Perspective: Academic Library Blogs: A Limited Update

Similar to the public library blogs update noted above, this looks at currency (prior to May 31, 2009), posting frequency, comments and conversational intensity for May 2009 of the same 231 academic library blogs included in Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples–or as many of those blogs as I could still easily find. The discussion includes brief notes on pioneers and some of the standout blogs in 2007–how they’re doing in 2009. Again, this ends my work in this area; the resulting spreadsheet is yours for the taking.

My Back Pages

As usual, this section is a “print bonus”–it’s only available in the full-issue PDF. That’s particularly relevant for one of the eight little essays in this section (discussing the typeface that spawned a worldwide movement to ban it). For those who’ve felt My Back Pages spent too much virtual ink on audio matters: Only the two shortest of these eight commentaries have anything to do with audio, and in one case that connection is a stretch.

That’s it for this issue–which, as Whole Issue 120, would have been the final issue of C&I’s first decade if I’d stuck to the original frequency.

Meanwhile, do note that Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples (currently available as a download from Lulu or a trade paperback from Amazon/CreateSpace) will go out of print and off sale on or about September 1, 2009. Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples will probably follow, a month later.