Walt at Random

I have a growing list of topics I really should blog about (yes, blog about–I have a separate list of C&I topics, although one can lead to the other). I plan to get to some of those posts Any Day Now…but, frankly, have been absorbed in working on The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008. It’s a voyage of discovery, both in terms of seeing what’s happening and in learning or relearning things like the options for copying an Excel chart to Word (where I’d love to retain full editability–but I really don’t want the Word chart to change if I change the Excel values).

I’m setting the book aside for now (three chapters done, first draft at least; at least six to go, not including the “second half” of blog profiles) to focus on some essays for Cites & Insights and a title for a forthcoming talk–and maybe I’ll do some genuine, honest-to-WordPress blog posts (as opposed to reposting PLN Highlights posts, posting reviews for a disc’s worth of old movies, or announcing C&I).

Meanwhile, two items that may or may not be of interest:

Up to speed

I guess I’ve already covered that. Phase 1 of the book is complete, resulting in a very long chapter containing 607 brief blog profiles (which will be revised later on) and one fairly substantial Excel2007 workbook: A base sheet 607 rows deep and “S”–I guess that’s 19–columns wide; a derived sheet (references to some of those 19 columns, plus a bunch of derived numbers) also 607 rows deep but “AD”–I guess that’s 30–columns wide; and a “working” sheet that starts each little subphase as a values-plus-formats copy of the derived sheet, then gets manipulated to look at quintiles, build charts, create pivot charts, etc. Oh, and a separate results workbook to save off results that I know I’ll need separately–and because it’s just easier to have one workbook on one screen and the other on the other, in separate instances of Excel.

So far? It’s turning out to be quite interesting, but I’m not ready to start noting intermediate results. Here’s what I have so far, again in polished-draft form:

1. Introduction and overview

What this is all about, how I built the universe, some special notes (e.g., software used–and yes, there are still a few MovableType liblogs out there, although 18 doesn’t compare to the 230 WordPress and 222 Blogger liblogs), notes about authorship and affiliation, and some graphs related to age of liblogs.

2. How many posts?

Looking at the number of posts in each blog in the two study quarters (March-May 2007-2008), including quintiles for each year, quintiles for the change from 2007 to 2008, graphs as appropriate, a list of blogs in the first (most posts) quintile for 2008, and a few notes about “subsets” (e.g., blogs whose authors are affiliated with public libraries, blogs affiliated with medical institutions, etc.–I think there are six or seven subsets large enough to evaluate)

3. How long?

A similar analysis–but this time there are two sets of metrics: Overall blog length and words per post, in some ways a more interesting figure.

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And that’s where it stands as of today. If I make good progress in the afternoons and on weekends with C&I essays and other stuff (columns, LITA, etc.), I’ll start in slowly on the next chapters; otherwise, I’ll set them aside until I can focus. Lots of good stuff here–and I’m particularly looking forward to Chapter 7, a three-factor analysis that will actually show whether a significant proportion of liblogs have “fewer posts, longer posts, more comments per post” or whether that’s a false or skewed supposition. (Well, it should show a lot more than that–but there are 45 different models for the three factors, even assuming only three values per factor: Significant growth, significant reduction, about the same. Yep, 45: 3×3x3=27, plus 3×3=9 (posts and post length) for blogs without comments and 3×3=9 (posts and comments) for blogs where length couldn’t be measured. Fortunately, that should work out to three tables and a whole bunch of commentary…

Out of print

I may be a slow learner, but I can take a hint.

There have been no sales of either Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples since June–and exactly one sale of Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples since June.

Barring a significant increase in sales, I’ll accept that these books apparently didn’t serve a real need and remove them from sale–probably around the beginning of 2009. That may make the (so far) 34 copies of Academic Library Blogs collector’s items…or not. (OK: There haven’t been any sales of either year of Cites & Insights since January–but I really wasn’t expecting any.)

Oh, and just for fun…

Sponsorship opportunit(y|ies)

I’m still open to the idea of The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 having a sponsor, at the right price. Shoot me a line.

Or, you know, I’d be delighted to work with the right agency on a combination of writing, data analysis/research and editing. My PLN thing is distinctly part-time. If you’re interested–again, shoot me a line (waltcrawford at gmail.com).

NOTE: If this post is too long, please read this 169-word version.

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I’m finishing up Phase 1 of The Liblog Landscape, 2007-2008: A Lateral View (possibly not the final title). Phase 1 has two parts: Identifying liblogs that should be part of the study/survey, and doing the blog-level metrics for those blogs.

Right now, the list consists of 587 blogs. You can see the list here (yes, it’s in alphabetical order, leaving out initial articles and symbols), or click on the last of the “Pages” in the right column (which gets you to the same list).

The Request and Deadline

If you know of a blog or blogs that meet the criteria below and aren’t currently on the list, let me know–either by commenting here or by sending me email at waltcrawford, domain gmail.com. (Note: If you comment and include more than a couple of blog names and links, it’s possible your comment will be trapped as spam. That’s OK: I check spam before deleting it.) Please include the URL, although if you only have the blog’s name, chances are I can locate it.

Deadline: Friday, September 12, 2008.

On Saturday, September 13, the first thing I’ll do online is turn comments off for this post and delete the page with the current list (or at least hide it).

Then I’ll take any candidates received, double-check their qualifications, and add them to the spreadsheet. Starting September 14, I’ll proceed with Phase 2–overall metrics and analysis.

Criteria

A new blog must meet all of the following criteria to be included in this study:

• In English (or predominantly in English).
• Somehow related to libraries or librarianship
• Not a “library blog”–not an official blog of a library.
• Started prior to January 2008: There must be at least one post from 2007 or before.
• Active in March-May 2008: There must be at least one post dated March 2008, April 2008, or May 2008.
• Open for reading: I must be able to reach the blog without passwords or special procedures.
• At least vaguely visible–and this one’s the toughest to define. See below:

Visibility: I don’t want to include “close friends & family” liblogs on the assumption that such bloggers probably don’t want larger audiences–that they’d prefer to stay “under the radar.” Unfortunately, it’s getting harder and harder to measure base visibility–particularly now that pop.urio.us seems to consistently return “0″ for Bloglines subscription count. (The measure I had been using was that my logarithmic “visibility” measure had to be at least 1.0–which meant, in practice, that the sum of Bloglines subscriptions and Technorati “authority” had to be at least 9.)

So for now, I’m going to use external visibility–the extent to which blogs are mentioned in other blogs–again with a very low cutoff. To wit, the Technorati authority needs to be seven or higher, or, for blogs that haven’t been “claimed” for Technorati, there must be at least seven different blogs in Technorati’s reaction results.

If you know of a liblog that meets all those criteria and isn’t already on the list, let me know!

Broadly representative, not universal

I know the study isn’t going to include “every visible English-language liblog meeting these criteria.” That’s just not plausible, and I won’t ever make the claim that it does.

I will claim that the list is already broadly representative, and I suspect it represents the overwhelming majority of what’s out there (with these criteria). I’ve already gone through the LISWiki blog list (twice), the Library Zen source list, Meredith Farkas’ wonderful “favorite blogs” results, and some other sources. I’ve done some second-level retrieval, going through blogrolls in blogs already on the list–but after going through 240 and finding only 14 usable new blogs (and none at all in the last 70 I checked), I can’t see taking the time to go through the other 340+. So I’ll certainly miss a few. Thus, this request.

What will and won’t be said about blogs in the survey

Note that I am not offering anyone the chance to “opt out” of this survey–and I think the following should allay any fears you might have.

The heart of the book will be overall metrics and analysis, and particularly lateral changes and any useful correlations I can find in those changes. I’ll also probably do some metrics and analysis for subsets of the blogs–e.g., by affiliation of blogger (e.g., academic, public, school, law…). I’ll almost certainly do some three-year analysis for the 220+ blogs that were in the 2006 survey, since I can track some (not all) of the objective metrics for the same quarter of 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Yes, each blog will have its own section (and those chapters might make up more than half the pages in the book), but the text on each blog will be entirely objective and will not include visibility in any way, shape or form. (I may do some visibility correlation and analysis for the first 573 blogs in the survey, but not at a blog-by-blog level.)

Included:

• Name of blog (typically as expressed in web page title)
• First portion of blog tagline/motto, unless it’s a quotation from someone else
• Author (if evident) or “group blog” as appropriate, if not already in blog name or tagline
• Affiliation of blogger (if evident) - type of library or, in a few cases, focus of library (law, medical, science)
• Starting date for the blog, based on internal evidence–and once in a while noting name changes.
• The three most frequently-used categories or tags or labels, in descending order, other than the equivalent of “general” or “uncategorized,” if it’s easy for me to figure that out.
• A metrics table for 2007, 2008, and changes from one year to the next, for those blogs with any posts in March-May 2008. Metrics include number of posts during the quarter, total length of posts, length per post, total comments, comments per post, total figures, figures per post. Quite a few blogs will be missing some lines, either because they don’t allow comments (or there weren’t any) or they don’t use figures or, sigh, because the nature of the blog doesn’t allow me to calculate total length of posts without way too much effort. Metrics will include quintiles for 2008 and year-to-year changes, as appropriate.
• A metrics paragraph, offering (as appropriate) a textual version of some of the quntiles and a textual version of the posting frequency and changes, based on a “per week” or “per day” measure. And, for blogs with no 2008 posts, either a note on the final post or the March-May 2007 figures, or both.

Not included (noting that most of these were actually in the draft chapters as I was doing metrics, but are all gone now for what I regard as good reasons, length certainly being one of them):

• Visibility measures of any sort. Period. An earlier chapter will explain why, in some detail.
• URL for the blog. I’ll probably mount a spreadsheet or web page with the names and URLs of all blogs in the survey–but in a print book or PDF, that’s mostly useless info, and blog URLs change.
• Software and typography. I’ll have some summary notes on use of the major programs and typographic choice, but this is both changeable and not significant at a blog-by-blog level. (I reluctantly removed the notes on the handful of blogs that use color combinations that challenge the reader. With feeds, they don’t much matter anyway, and they’re apparently oh so hip. I won’t even have summary notes there.)
• Descriptive or judgmental notes. At least not in the book. My snarkiness was turned off while preparing this in any case–I’d already adopted the grandmother rule (”If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything”), but found that I was “not saying anything” for quite a few blogs that I considerably admire, because there wasn’t anything concise and useful to say. So I ripped them all out.
• Portions of posts: I had only included a few of those anyway–maybe 20 particularly intriguing items in the first 200 blogs–before I realized it just wasn’t practical. They’re all gone.

Summing up

Got blogs? Let me know–if they meet the criteria above.

Deadline: Friday, September 12, 2008.

In previous episodes:

• An old friend reminded me of what I should already have known–that I need to follow my passion (do what I care about) when considering what projects to carry out or whether to carry out any at all.
• I blathered on for more than 2,000 words about The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008, the new projects I almost certainly will complete.
• I ruminated on the general lack of success–and lack of coverage by others–of the two Library Blog books; that’s the major part of the “rejects” side of this series. By the way, if you go back to that post, be sure to read Dorothea Salo’s comment–it’s useful public criticism and helps convince me that those projects were “failures to learn from.”

Now the story continues with:

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Part the Fourth: In which the nature of the apparent failures is detailed on a month-by-month basis.

So just how badly have the two Library Blog books actually done?

Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples

This book came out in August 2007. It got heavy publicity here and in Cites & Insights–and I also sent email to as many of the public libraries in the book as I could find email addresses for.

• It got off to a decent start: Ten copies in August 2007, 13 in September 2007, 15 in October 2007.
• Then it started to slow down: Seven in November 2007, eight in December 2007,  six in January 2008.
• And kept sliding: Four in February 2008,  one in March 2008, three in April 2008.
• Next quarter: Two in May 2008, two in June 2008. Zero in July 2008–and, so far, none in August 2008.

That’s 71 copies to date. For it to be a non-failure by my informal standards, it would need to sell at least 100 copies in the first year–and it’s 29 copies short with about a week to go.

Still…71 copies is better than nothing. For the time spent on it, the net return is not minimum wage, to be sure, but it’s considerably better than what I’d have earned from doing it “the right way” (and I think Dorothea Salo is right in this regard)–that is, putting it up as a website, which would have required significant additional work, might have required more money, and would have yielded $0.

But that’s the middling case…

Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples

This one came out in January 2008, and you could reasonably say that it’s really too early to call it a failure yet.

Still…

• January 2008: Nine copies. February 2008: Six copies. March 2008: Five copies
• April 2008: Seven copies.
• May 2008: Three copies. June 2008: Three copies.
• Zero in July 2008. So far, zero in August 2008. (Oops: One apparently sold yesterday. So there is hope.)

Sure, there could be a sudden upswing this fall–it could sell another 67 copies between now and January 2009. But I’m not holding my breath.

This post won’t help. I’m aware of that.

And, as I say, I find Dorothea Salo’s comment cogent and convincing.

So what’s going to happen with those books? I can keep them on Lulu indefinitely at no charge. I think CreateSpace now wants a small annual fee (or I can get even lower yields).

Realistically, I don’t think I’ll do that. Unless something surprising happens, I think I’ll take them down, probably in or around January 2009. If I thought it would work at all, I might redo them as a single book that’s mostly analysis and commentary with brief little entries on each blog–but that probably won’t happen. (Actually, if I was going to do that, I’d wait and do a 2007-2009 lateral comparison, as I discussed in Part 3.)

On the other hand…

Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change

This one’s doing OK. I can’t/won’t provide similar month-by-month figures, but it’s still selling (oddly enough, it’s now sold as many copies in August as in July–and more than in May, the low point for this book), and it’s more than two-thirds of the way to being what I’d consider an actual success.

(Oh: The two trade paperback editions of C&I? I wasn’t anticipating any sales at all, so I’m delighted with the four combined sales, other than my own, and I must say the paperback’s both prettier and easier to handle than the Velobound back copies are!)

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So that’s it for Part Four. If there is a Part Five–and there might not be–it will consider some possible changes for Cites & Insights. (And, grumpator, I really was kidding: The September issue won’t be out for at least another 10 days, and more likely two weeks.)

It’s been more than a month since I said, in this post, “Anaheim did have the desired positive affect, I think.” Which relates back to this post, where I noted that–despite a first-rate two-week vacation–I was short of energy for writing and, more important, inspiration to do anything major. “I’m hoping ALA Annual 2008 will mark a turning point, that I’ll emerge with more inspiration and recovered energy.

It did–as I also noted in this post. Since that post, I’ve turned out the August 2008 Cites & Insights–a good solid issue if I do say so myself–and gotten off to a good start on the project I plan to pursue. There’s a hint of that project in this post.

So…I thought I should expand on matters a little. (This group of posts will probably appear in somewhat different form in the September C&I. Or not.)

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Part the First: In which an old friend reminds me of what I should have known.

Yes, Anaheim helped–not the city, to be sure, but ALA Annual itself. I listened to enough people and talked to enough people to gain back some inspiration and energy.

One particular conversation helped a lot–and, unfortunately, I don’t remember who the conversation was with. It might have been Fred Gertler before ALA. It might have been Tom Wilson during ALA. It might have been someone else entirely… and, come to think of it, it could very well have been Joan Frye Williams.

After a brief discussion of the situation–several possible projects, very little inspiration, and really discouraging sales and lack of feedback on the library blogs books–this old friend made a key comment, which I’ll paraphrase as

What do you really care about? Do that.

Good advice–along with the counterpart:

What are you still doing that you no longer care about? Stop doing that.

I’d been trying to do a somewhat impersonal calculus, which could be summarized as:

Where do I provide real added value, in areas that librarians should care about, and where there’s a reasonable chance what I do will be read (and, if in book form, paid for)?

That turns out to be too complicated. The simpler formulation–which a good Left Coaster like me might translate as “Follow your bliss”–is a whole bunch simpler.

I’m using two informal analyses based on this proposition, one for projects too big for Cites & Insights, one for Cites & Insights itself.

1. Am I interested enough in the results of a big project to make it more worthwhile than, say, working on music or reading, even if book sales might never amount to minimum-wage compensation for the time spent?
2. Should I be writing about this–even if I’ve written about it in the past?

In the first case, the answer turns out to be Yes for one project, which I’ll tentatively describe in Projects and rejects 2, and No for another project unless something changes fairly drastically in the next few months–and I’ll discuss that issue in Projects and rejects 3.

In the second case, I should be doing this at least once a year: Looking at the areas I’ve been covering and saying, for each one,

Do I still care enough–and add enough value–to bother with this?

For Cites & Insights as a whole, the answer is clearly Yes–particularly if I slough off the areas for which the answer is now No.

That discussion is, if all goes well, the basis for the final post in this series…assuming I get that far. In the meantime, I’ll admit that I’m probably dropping one area entirely (where I’d slowed down anyway). Last weekend, I reviewed the contents of the Censorware folder…and, after thinking about it, recycled all the paper, stripped the folder label, and returned the folder to my stock of blank folders. (Yes, I do use real third-cut folders–even if I’ve reduced printouts to the first page, that level of print organization and retention is still essential for my working methods.)

Why? I could provide several reasons, and maybe I will in that final post (”final” only in this cluster), but it boils down to just not caring enough about the value I can add.

Wrapping up this post, it all probably boils down to conserving energy to retain inspiration. By reducing the overall set of possibilities, I believe I can do a better job on the ones that remain–and avoid bogging down in overall disenchantment and the resulting ennui.

That’s Part 1. Part 2? Maybe tomorrow, maybe Wednesday. For now, I’m off to work on The Project, currently somewhere in that vast array of “liblogs beginning with L.”

Back on April 30, 2008, I wrote a speculative post: When will Gmail hit seven gigabytes?

As in, when will the space allotted to each Gmail account reach 7,000,000,000 characters (yes, I know that’s not really seven gigabytes, and I explore that in the post).

Here’s what I predicted:

The Fourth of July, give or take a week.

Actually, if they’re adding space at a steady rate–which is a huge “if”–then it should be either July 4 or July 5, 2008.

I also promised that, if I was wrong, I would double my monthly contribution to Gmail.

I was wrong. And, as a result, I’ll send Google $0, which is twice the usual $0 that I’d send them.

“Give or take a week” ain’t going to do it. Right now, the magic number is at something over 6,893 megabytes. It might (or might not) reach 6.9 gigabytes (let’s just use “disk gigabytes” as our measure, shall we?) within a week.

The lesson here? Google’s magic number doesn’t grow at a constant rate. It’s been growing more slowly over the last nine weeks than it was during the period I observed it. It could start growing more rapidly. Since my insider’s knowledge of the Gmail magic number is precisely the same as my insider’s knowledge of anything else at Google–that is,

Just because I live in Mountain View (where the Googleverse is located) doesn’t mean I know anything about Google’s inner workings.

Oh, and as for Google somehow duping librarians…sorry, but I don’t buy it.

Sure, Google’s librarian-outreach project stalled pretty rapidly–but I still don’t see that Google duped Michigan, UC, Harvard, or anyone else. I still see Google Book Search as increasing demand for library books by providing expanded search capabilities…and I wish Open Content Alliance (by which I mean the Internet Archive) would get their act together on providing a suitable complement, particularly now that Microsoft’s dropped Live Books (which I thought was a superior product to Google Book Search, at least in terms of usability of the public-domain results).

And with that, enjoy the long weekend. Oh, and if you’re one of my two readers anxiously following the “will he or won’t he?” story…more about that later, but the short answer is “Probably.” And a couple of thoughtful remarks at Anaheim have a lot to do with that short answer.

I said previously:

It’s partly, to be honest, thinking about impact and reality–wondering whether the work is still worth it, and particularly whether any ambitious ideas are good ideas or just plain stupidity. This is a complicated area, one I might (or might not) write about between now and ALA.

The ambitious ideas? At the moment, the most obvious ones are two possible longitudinal studies of actual blogging behavior–one for liblogs (blogs by library-related people), one for library blogs (public and academic).

I wrote about the first of those possibilities here, and noted the second possibility here.

Of course, this whole situation didn’t help matters a lot–but did encourage me to think about the models that seem plausible today. (Hey, I shouldn’t complain–in addition to an essay in the current Cites & Insights, that bit of nonsense indirectly resulted in a forthcoming “disContent” column for EContent–and, of course, I do get paid for those columns.)

So here’s my thinking:

1. I know that I’d find either or both projects interesting to do–but also that each one would take a couple of hundred hours (where “couple” means anywhere from 1.5 to 5).
2. I believe I bring a certain rigor and objectivity to such studies, but I could be fooling myself.
3. Based on existing book sales and near-total lack of interest, I can’t really project any significant number of sales–and, if the “if it’s digital, it SHOULD be free” crapola is spreading, it could get even worse.
4. I could take two other courses:

• Do the shorter numbers-only portion of followup studies and publish the results as issues of Cites & Insights–or, if possible, base some submitted articles or paid columns on them.
• Say the hell with it and spend that time either writing freelance articles (where my past record suggests I’d sell at least half of the articles, which doesn’t yield Big Bucks but does yield some income) or just becoming more retired, reading, listening to music, telling kids to get offa my lawn…

This all raises, to some extent, the ways independent niche researcher/writers can get enough yield from their work so that they’re not literally better off greeting people at Wal-Mart. If Andersonomics (”Free!”) really is the wave of the future, I see three possibilities…

1. Advance sponsorship. If someone (some agency) wanted to sponsor either or both studies, or–retroactively–the work represented in the two library blog books–I’d be delighted. And, for the right sum, the downloadable results would indeed be free, and the print book could be priced at cost of production. The question is: Is there any group likely to sponsor that sort of thing? I think I know the answer…but I could be wrong.
2. The 1,000 True Fans model. This supposes that there’s a significant number of folks who find my stuff so valuable that they’d go out of their way to pay for it. I suppose the way to test that would be to do a $50 Lulu item that consists of nothing more than a full-color cover and the text “Thanks for being a fan.” Given sales of the Cites & Insights trade paperbacks, my rough estimate is that “1,000 true fans” in my case is off by at least two orders of magnitude…and it’s not worth annoying those ten (or fewer) folks.
3. “Freemium” models. The base line is free, but there are special super-duper options that come for a price. Well, again, that’s part of what the two Cites & Insights trade paperbacks are–and total sales there are four of one, two of the other (in both cases, more than expected). I already do something slightly along these lines, but not involving money: Namely, the My Back Pages section of most Cites & Insights is a premium for those who download the PDF (my preference) rather than HTML sections. Here again, I’m not sure what I would do for a “freemium” model.

At present, Cites & Insights is (modestly) sponsored. My two columns are paid. One of the three books has yielded enough revenue to be so-so. The two library blog books are both relatively recent; neither one has sold enough to justify the work on any plausible basis. Of course, both were interesting to do…

So, tossing this out into the void between the intertubes, I wonder:

• Whether I’m being ambitious–or just stupid?
• Whether there are compensation models I haven’t thought about?
• Whether I should leave the research stuff to people who either have appropriate institutional sponsorship or are working on theses?

Some time after ALA, I’ll have to make decisions. Thoughts welcome.

Yes, the post title is an overstatement–but the situation described below struck me as peculiar enough to deserve a little hyperbole. It relates to Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change and three posts (and related comments) on two liblogs. The posts and comments all happened in late May, while I was incommunicado (on vacation and only checking work-related email once every couple of days at fairly high shipboard internet prices).

Before getting to the posts and comments, I want to be very clear about one thing: This is not about rejecting negative criticism.

To drive that point home, I was doing some ego-Googling (which I rarely do, although not for lack of ego) and encountered a terse review of Balanced Libraries that I hadn’t seen earlier. The review appeared on Goodreads and was written by Jack (I think you have to join Goodreads to find out who Jack is). Here’s the review, in full:

“Generally just classic Crawford: long-winded, rambling, reactionary rhetoric. “

My comment? That’s an honest opinion stated clearly and presumably after reading the book. I have no problem with it.

But this other combination is something else–not a negative review of the book (which I’d link to or quote) but, well, something else.

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It begins with “Where Are Blogs Bred? In the Heart Or In the Head?,” posted by Keith Kisser on May 27, 2008 at The Invisible Library (http://sanchezkisser.com/blog/). Kisser recently published a science fiction novel, The Machine of the World, on Lulu, and was searching Amazon to see whether it showed up yet. It hadn’t (and still hasn’t, which is odd); instead, he found Balanced Libraries,where I’d quoted from one of his blog posts. (The post favored Netflix-style library service and included a charming statement ending in “time to wait for the dinosaurs to die off.” You’ll find it in Kisser’s archive on December 8, 2006.)

Kisser doesn’t comment on the book itself or the context for the quotation, since he hadn’t read it. But he does have opinions about having a blog post show up in a book. Some of what he says:

But one thing I am, is uncertain about how I feel about being cited in this or any other book. At first go, it’s a little flattering to have my opinions taken into consideration, even if, as I gather from the few pages I’ve read online, …Walt Crawford is criticizing me. That’s fine. Healthy debate is great and I’m a big boy and can handle it. But what remains uncertain at this point (because again, I haven’t read the whole book yet) is the context…

The thing is, my blog is a rough draft of ideas that are constantly changing and evolving. Some library blogs are more academic (i.e. judiciously worded) and take topics at a more in-depth, analytical perspective. I do that sometimes but I’m not above tossing off a half baked idea, contradicting myself later, or criticizing reactionary librarians or critics of libraries with impertinent language. It’s my blog and I’ll rant if I want to. And anyone is free to read, link or cite my words as they see fit. It’s a wide and woolly Internet and I neither hide my identity nor suffer the delusion that a blog is somehow a private forum. If you can read it on the Internet, it isn’t private or secret.

But just how public and in what capacity a blog, any blog is, has yet to be defined…. [Notes that his blog ranges widely...] You see the problem here? In which context was my post cited? Is it Academic Librarian Keith being cited or Geek Keith? Maybe it’s Slightly Sleepy and a Little Cranky with a Side of Silly Keith?…

Blogs are still too new to have a defined space in the academic world…. How do you treat blogs? As Journals or diaries? Thy can be both and at the same time. It’s nutty. And confusing, And wonderful. But mostly confusing.

I’d challenge some of the last two paragraphs

• I think we’re long past the point where “how public…a blog is” has yet to be defined. An open blog–one anybody can reach (as opposed to some LiveJournal blogs and other protected blog) is a series of publications. It’s public. Each post is a publication. People have been quoting from blog posts in articles and books almost since there have been blogs. For that matter, it’s fair to assume that a lot more people will read Kisser’s post as quoted here or in Cites & Insights than will read it as quoted in Balanced Libraries, since it’s wildly unlikely that I’ll ever sell 1,500 to 2,500 copies of the book (roughly the average daily readership here and typical first-two-months readership for C&I).
• I provided date and address for the post, as I did for all quoted posts. That allows any reader to find the context–typically a lot more easily than they could find the context for a quotation from print, where the reader might or might not have access to the original. I quoted Keith Kisser talking about library services; it’s not up to me to guess “which Keith Kisser” was writing the post. I’m prone to changing opinions and issuing rough drafts here as well–but I know that, once posted, they’re published statements suitable for citation.
• “Academic world” is a red herring, since Balanced Libraries isn’t an academic work and I’m not an academic.

Actually, I was a little astonished that, in 2008, someone would be questioning the appropriateness of quoting from a blog post in more formal literature. That train left the station a long time ago, and I really don’t think there ever was a question. (People have been quoting elist posts in formal literature for many, many years, and that’s never been much of an issue either, as long as the elists are public.)

The first commenter, Jenny, thought it was great that Kisser was cited in a book. In part:

Does it really matter in what context you were cited? Someone took an idea you blogged about because it sparked an idea they had and ran with it. Isn’t that part of the point of a blog? To create wider discourse? And, even if Crawford did use your blog entry out of context at least you’ll always have something to rant about at dinner parties.

To which Kisser responded:

True. Though I’m less concerned about how he quoted me in particular and more interested in the idea of blogs being quoted in a scholarly paper as a general concept. I’ve also found out more about the circumstances of this citation in particular. I’ll have an update soon.

Somehow Balanced Libraries now shifted from being a book to being academic to being “a scholarly paper.” In any case, blog posts have showed up in formal refereed articles for years as well, so that general concept is also settled. Blog posts in non-pseudonymous blogs are signed publications.

I would have posted some of this as a comment–but, although comments do appear, Kisser later closed the post to comments, so that wasn’t possible. I might have left it at that, particularly since I really don’t think there’s any serious controversy about the public, citable, quotable status of public blog posts. (What part of “public” don’t you understand?)

But wait…there’s more!

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On May 28, 2008 (the next day), Kisser posted “Not-So-Balanced Libraries.” He begins by noting that he’d wondered aloud “about the context of such citations and the weird gray area inhabited by blogs in the academic world.” (Again: My book isn’t academic and the area isn’t all that gray…but never mind.) He “did a little more research” leading to my website and a link to the book at Lulu.com. (The Amazon record he originally found isn’t for the Lulu edition, it’s for the CreateSpace edition–but, again, never mind.) And here’s where it gets interesting. Since this is all about me and I’m commenting on it, I do believe that fair use applies, so I’m quoting the rest of the post in full:

This in no way invalidates his book, or thesis, but neither does it really inspire much confidence. Let’s be honest–and this is coming from a fellow Lulu author–self published academic work tends to have a certain… charm, shall we say. It’s good to know others are getting their work out there independently and for all I know, Walt Crawford is the unsung, Tom Paine of the library world. But seriously, Walt, $29.50 for a paperback is bad enough but $20 for the download? Downloads are free. I could understand maybe asking for donations. Charging a buck or two is acceptable, if you want to be a dick. But $20 for a PDF is madness. Like, RIAA suing tween music downloaders for their parent’s retirement fund level of madness. Cory Doctorow explains why. Bad form, Walt.

The only thing worse than not making an ebook available (especially when self publishing the book on Lulu, where that option is free and as easy as clicking a single button) is charging such a ridiculous price for it. This is one of those really easy web 2.0 ideas that often get ignored by library administrators because they either can’t or won’t change their minds about access and distribution models. If charging people for ebooks is part of your idea of creating a balanced library, I’m not impressed. And neither am I willing to spend $30 bucks for some out-to-lunch academic’s pet project.

Well now. First he says that publishing through Lulu doesn’t inspire much confidence–and, frankly, I agree. If I didn’t already have a reputation (for good or for bad) through 12 traditionally-published books and a few hundred traditionally-published articles and columns, and through Cites & Insights, I would never have attempted the Lulu trick for a nonfiction book. “Walt Crawford” is the only real brand here, for better or worse.

I’m hardly the “unsung Tom Paine of the library world.” Kisser’s never heard of me. No reason he should have. But a few thousand others have–well, tens of thousands in the case of the Library 2.0 special.

“$29.50 for a paperback is bad enough but $20 for the download? Downloads are free.” Sez who? Cory Doctorow? I haven’t adopted Doctorow as a guru. The $29.50 price is, to put it bluntly, cheap for a 247-page trade paperback on current technological issues in the library field. Every similar work that I’m aware of costs at least $35, with one going for more than $100. But that’s not really the issue. The issue is whether an author is obliged to give away his or her work for free, as long as it’s in downloadable form.

Kisser seems to think that they are–”Downloads are free.” He even says that charging a buck or two is only acceptable “if you want to be a dick” and seems to equate my $20 price with RIAA’s infringement suits.

In the final paragraph, Kisser once again calls me an academic–this time an “out-to-lunch academic.” And somehow my belief that authors can request some compensation for their work (done on their own time) is “part of [my] idea of creating a balanced library.” I’ll cop to that: I don’t believe that balanced libraries set out to make authorship worthless, even though they can, do, and should provide free (prepaid via taxes or tuition) access to written materials. (I assume that the few dozen libraries that purchased Balanced Libraries circulate it, and would certainly hope so!)

This is, to put it mildly, bullshit. Writing a book is hard work. To assert that an author is at best clueless and at worst “a dick” or worse because the author doesn’t give that work away is insulting and offensive…and devalues creative effort. If an author wants to follow Doctorow’s approach, more power to them. That doesn’t make it the only correct or honorable approach. In fact, the whole “give it away so your true fans will buy other stuff” meme works badly for writers and even worse for niche writers.

Again, I would have protested directly on the blog–but again, although there are comments, comments are closed. So I would have commented in an essay on copyright balance about the dystopian notion that you’re obliged to give it away if it can be distributed digitally.

Except for the linked post and the comments on that post…

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There’s really only one comment and a trackback, and the comment is from the person who wrote the blog post that’s tracked back: Aaron at SemiConscious Dot Org. (www.semiconscious.org). His May 29, 2008 post is entitled “Library 1.87” and is brief enough to quote in full:

OK, so I’ve been remarketing the three primary Cites & Insights Books books.

Some of you might also find one or both of the big paperback C& I annuals worth buying, but you can look into those on your own. They’re bargains at $29.50, to be sure, and I do provide added value in each case–both glorious full-color covers and something that you can’t get otherwise in each volume.

Cites & Insights Books continues to be an experiment. I’m pondering where (if anywhere) to take that experiment next. (If an experiment can’t fail, it’s not really an experiment…)

At the moment, given essentially total silence, I’m somewhat inclined to believe there’s a reluctance to deal with the facts of most library blogs–that people would rather talk theory and mention two or three hand-picked examples. I discussed an alternate theory here–but there are other books about library blogs and blogging, so that one’s a little hard to accept. It’s also quite possible that I’ve done a lousy job describing the books or that I did a lousy job of doing them. I know I’ve done a lousy job of marketing them…

So here’s the thing.

• I’m renewing the call for answers to the question posed here, and I won’t make any decisions until after ALA.
• Alternatively, I wonder whether it would make sense to turn the two library blogging books into a single follow-on book that looks at how blogs changed from March-May 2007 to March-May 2008–that is, a similar longitudinal book but focusing on library blogs rather than liblogs.
• Or I could say the hell with it and abandon the experiment for now…

Thoughts?

Oh: If there are readers who believe I’ve just been obsessing about book sales and futures for the last two weeks, be reassured: That’s not the case. I’m sure some of you (and a few LSW folks) will have figured out the reality:

My wife and I were in Alaska, along with a dear friend who’s also a librarian, during the last two weeks (we should get back shortly after this post appears). I wasn’t fretting about book sales. I also wasn’t blogging, although I was checking email (mostly work email) periodically–that is, I was if the ship’s internet cafe wasn’t too crowded.

These four posts used WordPress’ postdating capability so they’d appear during my absence.

Some semblance of normal posting–whatever that means for this blog–will resume the week of June 9, once I plow through email and paper mail and blog posts and work issues…

Looking for deep thoughts? Boy, have you come to the wrong place…

Disappointment: We watched The Bourne Ultimatum on Saturday night. We’d seen The Bourne Identity. Somehow, the second flick (these are flicks, not films) is way down on our Netflix list… Anyway: A little ways in, my wife noted that she didn’t remember the plot of the first flick. At the end, we agreed there was a reason: Neither of us would remember the plot of this one two weeks later, much less a few months later. Lots of action, lots of car crashes, no heart, no real plot… A flick many people would love, but it sort of felt like a waste of a couple of hours. (If you love the Bourne flicks or novels, more power to you. Just not really our thing.)

The Pearl Rule (if I have it right): When I picked up a few books at Mountain View Public Library last time around (three weeks ago–I’ll take them back later this week), one of them was George Carlin’s 2004 book. I seem to remember liking George Carlin as a comic–snarky, a little mean-spirited, but literate and funny–so expected th like the book. Five or six pages in, I realized that it wasn’t so much a book as a bunch of little observations slapped together in no apparent sequence–like a blook, but less coherent than most of those. OK by me…

Then, a few more pages in, I found that I was getting lots of dystopian views, an enormous amount of bitterness, and damn little humor. And, speaking of “damn,” a different four-letter word was being used to an extent that, frankly, comes off as a lack of a real vocabulary. That word can be effective used sparingly. When we start a movie where it’s used in every other line of dialog, we usually don’t bother–and here, it seemed to show up at least every couple of paragraphs. Sure, that reduces the shock value–but it also means the prose reads badly.

Well, OK, no problem: You’re not going to like every book you pick up, and apparently Carlin’s aged differently than I have. He’s turned into one of those who frowns upon any questionable pleasures that don’t happen to be his own while, of course, frowning even harder upon anyone who disagrees with him. And somewhere along the way, he seems to have lost his humor.

I made it to Page 38. Which is where the Nancy Pearl Rule comes in, if I remember it rightly.

That rule? Once you’ve decided to give a book a try, you should give it a fair try–which starts out as being “read the first 50 pages,” but as we age, we find that life is too short. Thus, the rule as I remember it: Read the first 100 pages minus your age–so, for me, the first 38 pages.

Over the last couple of months, I had the other half of the Nancy Pearl Rule, in both cases with Connie Willis novels. (I love Connie WIllis’ short stories, but hadn’t really been familiar with her novels.) To Say Nothing of the Dog was, for some reason, a little difficult–maybe because I was initially reading it in short spurts, which wasn’t the way to read it. But at Page 38, it was clear that I should give it a few more pages–and by Page 100, I was hooked. This month, I picked up her Doomsday Book–which is a big book (578 pages in the mass-market paperback my local library has) and “five years in the writing.” It also took a little getting into, because it is a big, serious book–but by Page 38, I knew I was going to read the whole thing. And loved it, of course.

Then there’s Donald E. Westlake and a newish Dortmunder novel, What’s So Funny? With Westlake, I don’t need 38 pages. On the other hand, his prose is of a sort where you go through 38 pages pretty quickly…and just keep turning those pages. Not big, serious books, but I do love ‘em.

Now to read that serious librarianship book I agreed to review…

Some of you (OK, 500+ of you who get posts via aggregators, maybe) will have seen the post that originally graced this space. It had to do with a third-rate PR firm, a “bestselling” author who writes like a…well, never mind…but who could sink several hundred thousand into self-publishing, and the vagaries of Amazon “#1″ ratings.

And, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was pointless. So I replaced it with this.

I get press releases sometimes–presumably because I write a column for EContent, maybe because I’ve started writing a column for ONLINE again. Most of them I simply delete. Those that plead with me to call for an interview with Mr. X, I respond to, noting that “disContent”–my EContent column–is based on my being an outsider, a “citizen,” thus having inside contacts would weaken my role.

And then there are others. What appears below in indented paragraphs is a press release I received yesterday. Names will be neutralized, for reasons that may be obvious…

Author A Discovers Cure For Information Overload With Help Of Proven Authoring And Business Development System

B, author and infopreneur guru, demonstrates to fast write a money-making book in less than 12 hours and build a business focused on multiple streams of income.

That’s an italicized small-type sentence under the large-type title. We’re talking about writing and reading a supposedly professional press release, so editorial nitpicking may be in order. Let’s see: no “how” between “demonstrates” and “to.” “fast write a money-making book in less than 12 hours“–well, this isn’t editorial, but I cringe instantly at the thought of a book written in less than 12 hours.

Not too long ago, when someone wanted information, she would have to drive to the library, use the card catalog, and search the stacks of books and magazine to find it. Then the Information Age arrived. Computers and the internet have brought information home to the average person. There is now too much of a good thing because of this fact.

Yep. There were no sources of information other than libraries before the information age–no newspapers, no telephones, no friends to call for advice, no experts. Never mind. It gets better.

Many people believe we are still in the Information Age. What they do not realize is that people are drowning in too much information to the point where they are easily overwhelmed. Anyone who wants to test this can look up almost any search term on Google to experience the feeling of information overload.

Isn’t that what happens with you every day? You look up something on Google and say, “Oh no! I’m overwhelmed! I can’t cope!” And, of course, being smart, you never use Google again. Information overload claims another victim!

Technoradi Inc. estimates that over 75 thousand new blogs are created each day. A recent University of Iowa study calculated the size of the worldwide web at more than 11.5 billion pages. Having too much information to sort through is counter productive.

I wonder how many blogs Technorati thinks are being built? I’ve never heard of this other outfit. And, of course, thinking the number of entities in a universe has anything to do with what you need to sort with is not so much counterproductive (one word) as it is, well, stupid. There are more than one hundred million books; somehow, that doesn’t prevent me from finding the ones I want in Worldcat.org or my local library.

What people are really looking for is not the information, but what results the information will give them. Someone who buys a drill is really buying the holes that the drill will make. One who buys a mattress is in search of a good night’s sleep. Information is a means to an end.

This paragraph’s OK.

Now people are looking for more than information. With too much of a good thing ready at hand, what they want is a trusted guide to go beyond facts and figures to provide a recommendation. They want advice, easy answers, and a shortcut to the answers they seek.

So when there was less information, people were satisfied to get the information? When (he asks) has there been a time that people were more interested in information than they were in results? And when has there been a time when people didn’t seek shortcuts. Like, for example, shortcuts to writing “books” so that they take less than 12 hours, instead of the several hundred hours that sloths like me require.

Society has moved from the Information Age to the Recommendation Age. The savvy author and entrepreneur who understands the Recommendation Age can become the industry leader in his or her area of expertise and build a business around a book even before the manuscript is complete.

Now we’re getting to the crux of the matter–and it’s clearly not about crafting superior books. “Recommendation Age” leaves me cold, but that’s personal.

A, author of C D, of C.com, currently offers the book as an electronic book or e-book. He is building a business around his system for E and getting feedback from readers as he prepares to publish the book in print. Jensen worked with B and his team at E.com to create the book and build a well-developed business model around it.

If you’re wondering C and D are both multiword phrases, one the title and the other the subtitle of the book; C is in italics, D isn’t. There’s no colon between them.

The ebook is available through Lulu.com. While Lulu won’t show me somebody else’s sales, it does show anybody what the sales rank for an item is. So how is A doing on feedback from readers of the ebook? Well…let’s just say that the item ranks somewhere below 60,000. The print version of Cites & Insights 2007 ranks somewhere around 31,000. It would be inappropriate of me to say what the actual sales are, I suppose–particularly since sales rank may not mean the same thing for ebooks as it does for print books. (I will say that C&I 2006 has sold fewer than one-half as many copies on Lulu than Academic Library Blogs, which is doing better on Amazon–and that book, in turn, has sold roughly 5% as many copies as Balanced Libraries at Lulu. I’ll also say that BL is nowhere near my previously announced “Success point.” Draw your own conclusions.)

B’s F Program teaches clients to write a money-making book in 12 hours of actual writing time. Clients who complete the program discover how to write a book that is “entrepreneurially sound.”

I went to E.com. Yep, it’s there in big type: “Write A 100 Page Money-Making Book In Less Than 12 Hours Of Actual Writing Time And Gain Instant Access To A New York Publisher.” Note That Every Word Is Capitalized, including articles and conjunctions. Yes, the string from the space before “12″ through “Publisher” is also underlined (interestingly, the underlined space is on the line before the rest: this page doesn’t for any of that new-age flowing text crap), but of course it’s not a link. There is a link a little further down. If you click on that one, you get the same text–but this time it’s all underlined. Further down, there’s the eloquent “Here you will see for yourself Why our program works and what sets us apart from others who make similar claims”–a random capital letter being one of the marks of successful book writing.

Here’s a warning for you: “WARNING: If You Are Not A Knowledge Broker In The Recommendation Age, You Are A Nobody!” All in big red type. (Look, B is a Former Vice Principal, so you better not doubt his word–you’ll get detention.)

Taking B’s program, A has discovered how to turn his expertise into a step-by-step system through which people that have X can achieve better physical and mental health. His consulting and speaking business is growing steadily. The feedback he is receiving as a result of working with individuals and speaking to groups allows him to develop his business to match the wants and needs of his target audience.

I wouldn’t be surprised if A actually had worthwhile expertise. I would be very surprised if A wrote that ebook (>250 pages) in less than 12 hours–and unless there are other editions hiding somewhere, A sure isn’t getting a big business based on ebook sales.

B has dozens of video testimonials of successful clients like A on his website and blog. He offers his case study driven H e-class, a $700 value, at no cost on his website F.com. B, a former Vice Principal with Two Post-Graduate Degrees, replaced his income and his wife’s income with a proven, breakthrough system he created. He now teaches his clients how to replicate his proprietary program. B is founder and President of G. B also provides keynotes, seminars, workshops, teleseminars, and [another trademarked term], as well as being known as an international speaker. In addition helping entrepreneurs with business authoring, he also teaches entrepreneurs and business owners how to successfully create a digital product and then build an online business that produces consistent, multiple streams of income. For additional media information about F or B please visit F.com.

Ah, more random capital letters–and a “$700 value” course offered “at no cost.” Would I be cynical if I suggested that there are costs, and big ones, somewhere down the road? Including, for example, the cost of thinking you’ve written a hot stuff book in less than 12 hours and that you’ll gain wealth and fame from the New York publisher you’ll be introduced to and the multistream income system that accompanies it.

B even throws in $300 worth of books or ebooks as part of the offer, speaking of setting sales records. Yes, B does have one book on Amazon; yes, it’s within the top 50,000 in sales. (Worldcat.org shows three copies in libraries.) People who buy it buy lots of other get-rich-quick books, particularly ones having to do with the fabulous wealth that can be yours from writing, even if you’re nearly illiterate.

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I know. This is sour grapes. If I’d taken this free course, I’d be rolling in dough from multiple income streams from the book(s) I’d have written–each in less than 12 hours time!–and whatever it is I got from that New York Publisher. After all, it’s a proven, breakthrough system.Or maybe I could do PR for outfits like this. Given the attention to checking firm names and grammar and to normal (dull) English rules of capitalization, that press release sure as heck took less than 12 hours to write–maybe less than 12 minutes.Sigh. Back to my plodding old slow writing. If only I could learn Authoring instead.

I wouldn’t have read this Wired article at all, except that Peter Suber quoted a chunk of it…including portions of these two paragraphs.

The most common of the economies built around free is the three-party system. Here a third party pays to participate in a market created by a free exchange between the first two parties. Sound complicated? You’re probably experiencing it right now. It’s the basis of virtually all media. [Emphasis added.]

In the traditional media model, a publisher provides a product free (or nearly free) to consumers, and advertisers pay to ride along. Radio is “free to air,” and so is much of television. Likewise, newspaper and magazine publishers don’t charge readers anything close to the actual cost of creating, printing, and distributing their products. They’re not selling papers and magazines to readers, they’re selling readers to advertisers. It’s a three-way market.

Virtually all media. Isn’t that interesting? So, just to make it clear:

• Media: Commercial broadcast TV and radio. Most magazines and newspapers. Portions of the web.
• Not media: Books. Sound recordings. DVDs. Movies in general. Premium cable (HBO, Showtime, etc.) Other portions of the web.

OK, so he said virtually all Hmm. Let’s see what the government figures are for 2002 (they’ve changed since then, to be sure–but not enough to throw the percentages off all that much):

• Broadcast TV and radio, magazines, newspapers: $134 billion.
• Books, motion pictures and sound recordings: $106 billion.

I’m not sure that I can come up with any usage of “virtually all” that would fit $134 out of $240. Maybe my command of the English language is lacking. Or maybe my command of absurd generalizations is insufficient for me ever to get a job with Wired. I can live with that.

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Update: For some reason, I missed the Statistical Abstract when I was at the Census Bureau’s website. StatAbs has more recent figures–for 2005.

• Newspapers, periodicals, broadcasting: $149 billion
• Books, motion pictures, sound recordings: $120 billion

The percentages haven’t changed significantly: just under 45% of “the media” are paid for.

I’m curious, and maybe just a little frustrated.

Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples has been available from Lulu since August 25, 2007, and from Amazon/CreateSpace since August 30, 2007. To date, it’s sold 62 copies–disappointing for 5.5 months, but not disastrous.

But I haven’t seen any review or commentary anywhere–on any blog or list that I’m aware of. That’s the frustrating part.

I’m not necessarily looking for praise. Maybe the blogging books were bad ideas; maybe they were badly done. How would I know? You spend a couple hundred hours on something that you believe to be worthwhile, to contribute to the community, and you’re likely to have a blind spot about it.

One reason I’m so happy with the four reviews of Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity & Change (not quite at the 200-copy mark yet, if you’re wondering) is that, while all four were positive, none was an unalloyed rave. Every reviewer had negative as well as positive things to say.

And the first real review of that book appeared just under a month after the book became available. (The first comments appeared even sooner.)

Now, Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples hasn’t quite been out for a month yet (here’s the Amazon/CreateSpace link). I wouldn’t expect much in the way of sales or comments yet, particularly since it appeared right after Midwinter.

Still, here’s an invitation and a promise that apply to both books:

You’re invited to review either or both–on your own blog, presumably–and let me know you’ve done that. Or, for that matter, to comment on either or both books in some way short of a full review: Even maybe “why I wouldn’t advise anyone, including myself, to spend $20 or $29.50 for this book.” ($20 is the Lulu download price, $29.50 the paperback price. Still no way of bundling the two for, say, $40.)

If you review or comment on either or both, I’ll link to the review or comment. That’s part of the invitation.

Here’s the promise: No matter how negative the review or comment is,

• I won’t hold it against you personally. If you’re a friend/acquaintance now (and I’d guess that most people who read this blog fall into those categories), you’ll be a friend/acquaintance no matter what you say about the books or the advisability of doing them.
• I won’t argue about what you say. The only response I might make to negative comments/reviews is if you say something factually wrong that’s also important–e.g., if you said “Crawford probably didn’t actually look at all of these blogs; he probably just made most of it up.” I can’t imagine anyone would come that close to slander, and I really can’t imagine what someone would say that was factually erroneous. “Crawford can’t write his way out of a paper bag” is opinion; I wouldn’t argue.

I’m pondering future projects. (I’m also pondering buying a very small number of review copies to send to traditional library media–but given my recent history with print reviews, as in the lack of them for First Have Something to Say, I’m not in any great hurry…) Some of those projects might be research projects involving a fair amount of work–like the blogging books. A reality check would be useful.

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Update April 11, 2008: Library Technology in Texas mentioned both books (and the series of “quintile” posts) in a nice post. Thanks!

I probably won’t write as many posts about Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples as I did about Public Library Blogs. The full set of metrics represent part of the value of the book, and as for why I think the book is worthwhile, what I said here applies equally well to this book.

Rather than give you a list of zip and postal codes, here’s the list of institutions with blogs included in the book.

• Adrian College
• American School of Classical Studies at Athens
• Arizona State University
• Armstrong Atlantic State University
• Art Institute of Dallas
• Ashland University
• Auburn University
• Auraria Library
• Austin Community College
• Ball State University
• Binghamton University
• Bloomfield College
• Boise State University
• Bond University
• Bridgewater State College
• Buffalo State College
• Butler Community College
• Butler University
• Case Western Reserve University
• Central Piedmont Community College
• College of DuPage
• College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University
• College of William & Mary
• Colorado College
• Colorado State University
• Colorado State University-Pueblo
• Danville Area Community College
• Drexel University
• Duke University
• Dundalk Institute of Technology
• Eastern Kentucky University
• Eastern Oregon University
• Empire State College
• Georgia Perimeter College
• Georgia State University
• Grand Valley State University
• Green River Community College
• Guilford Technical Community College
• Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Centre (HOORC)
• Harvard University
• Heriot-Watt University
• Highline Community College
• Indiana University South Bend
• Institute for Astronomy
• IUPUI
• Kalamazoo College
• Kansas State University
• LaGuardia Community College
• Lawrence University
• Lewis & Clark College
• Lidcombe College of TAFE
• Louisiana State University
• LSU Health Sciences Center-Shreveport
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• McMaster University
• Medicine Hat College
• Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology
• Montgomery County Community College
• Moraine Valley Community College
• Mount Saint Vincent University
• Mount Sinai School of Medicine
• Muskingum College
• National Art School
• Naval Postgraduate School
• New York Institute of Technology
• North Carolina State University
• North Metro Technical College
• Northeastern State University
• Northern Virginia Community College
• Northwestern University
• Oberlin College
• Ohio University
• Olympic College
• Otterbein College
• Pacific NW College of Art
• Pasadena City College
• Pennsylvania State University
• Pennsylvania State University-Delaware County
• Pensacola Junior College
• Philadelphia University
• Pratt Institute
• Princeton University
• Purchase College
• Regent University
• Reid Kerr College
• Rio Hondo College
• Rollins College
• Royal College of Midwives
• Ryerson University
• Saint Mary’s University
• Seattle University
• Slippery Rock University
• Sonoma State University
• Southern Illinois University
• Springfield Technical Community College
• St. Bonaventure University
• St. Mary’s University
• St. Petersburg College
• SUNY Brockport
• SUNY Potsdam
• Temple University
• Tennessee Wesleyan College
• Texas State University-San Marcos
• Tufts University
• UConn Health Center
• Uiniversity of Wisconsin-Madison
• University at Albany, SUNY
• University College Dublin
• University of Alabama at Birmingham
• University of Alabama, Huntsville,
• University of Alberta
• University of Baltimore
• University of British Columbia
• University of Calgary
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Canterbury
• University of Colorado at Boulder
• University of Connecticut Stamford
• University of Evansville
• University of Georgia
• University of Glamorgan
• University of Houston
• University of Huddersfield, Oldham
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• University of Iowa
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• University of Michigan
• University of Minnesota
• University of Montana-Missoula
• University of Montevallo
• University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• University of Richmond
• University of San Francisco
• University of Saskatchewan
• University of South Alabama
• University of South Carolina
• University of Tennessee
• University of Texas Dallas
• University of Toledo Health Science Campus
• University of Victoria
• University of Waikato
• University of Windsor
• University of Winnipeg
• University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
• University of Wyoming
• Vanderbilt University
• Virginia Tech
• Waubonsee Community College
• West Virginia University
• Western Carolina University
• Western Kentucky University
• Western Michigan University
• Wheaton College
• Wheelock College
• Yale University

I was talking about my self-publishing experiences with a few people at Midwinter, and particularly the surprisingly poor sales for Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples, which I believe to be an extremely useful resource for any library considering a new blog (or extending existing ones). I think it’s up to 55 copies now, but that’s still pretty pathetic.

One or two people suggested that hip blog-creating types wouldn’t be caught dead buying a dead tree book about blogs–that they’d consider it anachronistic and, well, just wrong. And that this might even be true for Balanced Libraries (which is still short of the 200-copy mark): That potential readers don’t want old-fashioned print books.

I find this a little hard to fathom, to be entirely honest. Public Library Blogs and the new Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples are done as books because I believe they’re most useful that way–that being able to browse through the book rather than trying to get a sense of 200+ blogs is worth the price, quite apart from whatever added value I’ve provided with metrics and well-chosen sample posts. (The sample posts actually make the books worth reading cover-to-cover, in my not-at-all-humble opinion; that surprised me.)

But, hey, maybe there are hundreds (dozens?) of potential buyers out there who think my material is worthwhile but are fundamentally opposed to print books, particularly on digital matters. Improbable, but possible.

So…

You want ebooks? You got ebooks.

As of now, you can acquire Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change, Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples, and Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples as downloadable PDFs. Only from Lulu.com.

They’re even cheaper: $20 each, and no shipping/handling charges (as far as I know).

If you think they should be free–well, show me the grant or institutional funding that keeps me working on this stuff, and we can talk about it. The work’s done on my own time and with my own resources. If you feel I should be doing it for the greater glory or whatever, sorry, but that’s just nonsense.

I’m acting in good faith here. As far as I know, Lulu doesn’t add any sort of DRM to the PDF. If some “content should be free, creators should be independently wealthy” jackass buys one copy and posts it for everybody else to copy…well, lawsuits are expensive, so I’d probably just remove the download options and chalk one up to my overly optimistic view of human decency. I don’t believe that will happen–and, more to the point, I don’t believe that any would-be readers would be so sleazy as to take an illegal download over the real thing just to save $20.

I suspect you won’t get the great cover photos–which is a shame. I know that URLs within the PDF won’t be live and may not cut-and-paste properly: Since I was designing print publications, I felt perfectly free to add a space to a long URL so it would split between lines better. Oh, and there probably aren’t any bookmarks (chapters, etc.) in the PDF; again, I was designing for print, and bookmarks (etc.) make for a slower-to-generate and larger PDF.

You should probably go directly to Cites & Insights Books (my storefront) rather than the individual book links above. I know that the links for buying downloads are there on the storefront; I imagine they’ll eventually show up on the book pages, but don’t know when.

Full volumes of Cites & Insights will not be available from Lulu as PDF downloads. After all, other than the extras in each volume, you can already download all the issues for free. And PDFs aren’t available through CreateSpace; this is strictly a Lulu offer.

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A clarification: My comments about surprisingly low sales have to do with Public Library Blogs. Academic Library Blogs only became fully available yesterday (that is, January 17, 2008); no comments about sales or lack thereof make any sense for at least three months.

Otherwise..well, my comments in the comment stream may form part of an eventual post or article. They may not. And, you know, I’ve called C&I Books an experiment–and they call them “experiments” because they can fail…