Walt at Random

One of many tweets from ALA Midwinter said something like this, apparently quoting a speaker:

We need more techies with “library values” to give libraries the data we need.

That’s a paraphrase, taken out of context. I found myself thinking about it–and deciding it was worth commenting on even if my assumed context is entirely wrong. (Which it might be. Don’t point me at streaming video for the program: That’s really not the point.)

My basic thought:

There’s no shortage of library data, and there’s no shortage of people with both technical skills and library values to massage that data. What there may be a shortage of: Libraries/librarians ready to use that data–and decide what data they actually need or can/will use.

That’s a wildly overbroad statement, and I may be dead wrong. I’m basing the statement on my own experience, what I know from a couple of colleagues, and what I see or don’t see in the library conversations and literature. (Well, I don’t see much of the library literature these days, at least not the literature that’s behind paywalls.)

The data

There’s plenty of data. IMLS does a first-rate job of gathering and reporting fairly detailed figures on some 9,000 public libraries on an annual basis. IMLS does its own reports based on that data–but it also makes the datasets freely available.

Pro tip: If you want to massage IMLS data and don’t have or know Access, download and unzip the Access version anyway: Excel can open the Access database once you tell it to do so–that is, once you use the Open file pull-down menu and select “Access databases” from the list–and once you convert the whole thing to a table, it works nicely as a humongous spreadsheet. Then you can select the columns you actually need, making it a lot more workable. Do read the documentation. Unless you’re much cleverer than I am, I wouldn’t mess with the flat file: Access-via-Excel is a lot easier. If you’re an Access guru, of course, you can ignore that.

NCES does the same for more than 3,000 academic libraries, although only once every two years. Same pro tip applies. NCES even allows you to do some “compare library X with comparable institutions” on the fly. (If the columns and documentation for the NCES academic library tables and the IMLS public library tables have some vague similarities…NCES used to do the public library tables as well.

There are other sources, to be sure, but these are the biggest. (A couple of ALA divisions produce sets of numbers for partial sets of libraries…for a price. I haven’t looked at those: See “for a price.”)

Does your library work with those numbers at all–other than to report your own stats, that is?

The data you need

There’s the rub. NCES and IMLS provide impressive, readily-operable sources of raw data. But it’s probably not the data you need.

What is the data you need? More to the point, what data will you pay attention to, use, pay for (that is: pay to have massaged into the form you want and written up so you find it meaningful)?

I’d love to have answers to that question, and I suspect those answers differ by type of library and subtypes within types. (For that matter, defining a subtype is tricky…)

I’ve done some work with both data sources, partly out of curiosity, partly out of contrarian stubbornness, partly pursuing ideas I thought could be broadly useful. For example:

• I was convinced that the “public libraries are closing all over the place” meme, at least for the United States, was not only harmful as a self-fulfilling prophecy (“if everybody else is giving up on them, why should our town keep funding ours?”) but was probably false. It was and is. I proved that in the April 2012 and May 2012 Cites & Insights (with a 2010 update in September 2012). As far as I can tell, that proof has had very little impact in the profession. (A couple of blogs linked to it.)
• I prepared the book Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four (2012-13), based on the IMLS database and designed to help public libraries–specifically smaller libraries without their own research departments or big consulting contracts–prepare their cost-benefit story to help gain or at least retain budgets. I deliberately priced it modestly–it’s currently $9.99 for Kindle or PDF e-version and much cheaper than most library books in paperback or hardcover versions–so that even the smallest libraries could afford it. I made it as easy as possible for libraries to get their relevant data points from me if they didn’t have them handy. While the book hasn’t been an utter failure, it also hasn’t been the kind of success–so far–that would encourage doing a new, leaner, more graphic version next year: To date, 67 copies have sold. Of those, 6 libraries have asked for their data. (But that’s OK: Maybe every library keeps those figures handy.) It’s quite possible–even probable–that I just haven’t figured out how to make this data meaningful; unfortunately, there’s been little feedback to help.
• To see how graphs could improve the story, I did Graphing Public Library Benefits, e-only, originally $9.99, now $4.00. Care to guess how many copies of that I’ve sold? Zero.
• A colleague has an outstanding track record in working with library data and making it accessible. He has a PhD. He’s now working in other library areas because he couldn’t find a paying job working with library data. I would quote him on library interest in longitudinal data–time series, showing how things change–but that would just be depressing.
• For years, Tom Hennen produced HAPLR, Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings, and offered very inexpensive “group comparison” reports for individual public libraries. For whatever reason, HAPLR seems to have ceased–the most recent report is either two or three years old.

The data you need, redux

Most national reports deal with averages over time–and while the “over time” part is vital, averages vastly oversimplify the library picture. Sometimes, I believe averages are actually harmful; mostly, I believe they’re not very useful.

That will be the underlying theme of an upcoming article in Cites & Insights, I think–one that was planned for the March issue, until I became contrarily interested in another meme, the “fact” that academic library circulation (as opposed to e-usage) has been dropping all over the place and continue to fall in all or nearly all academic libraries.

I already knew “all” was nonsense. I assumed “nearly all” was right, but began to wonder what “nearly” actually meant. Did 1% of academic libraries have steady or increasing circulation? Five percent? Ten percent–as unlikely as that seems?

So I set aside the “trouble with averages in public library data” article–which I hadn’t actually started writing yet–and spent some time looking at academic library circulation and circulation per capita, first comparing FY2008 and FY2010 (the most recent available), then going back ty FY2006.

The results will make up most of the March 2013 Cites & Insights, when I publish that issue, and without offering too many spoilers let’s just say that ten percent is wrong–but not the way you might expect.

I could rush that issue out, as early as the end of this week or early next week, if I thought it would be received well and used broadly. At this point, I have no reason to believe that’s true.

What would, I think, be interesting is to see whether there are reasonable predictors of continued healthy circulation in academic libraries–what other factors appear to correlate well with, let’s say, traditional library use. But that’s a significant project. Even at my “pretty much retired, enjoy doing this, so can charge much lower fees than any proper consultant” rates, it would almost certainly be a four-digit job.

Similarly, I’d love to do some time-based analyses of public library performance within groups: Not averages, but percentages and correlations. Not to find “stars” (LJ has that down pat) but to help libraries see where they are and where they could be. And to help tell the complex story, not of The Average Academic Library or The Average Public Library but of the thousands of real, varied, diverse, actual libraries.

Here’s the thing: I don’t know whether I’m asking the right questions. I don’t know whether there is analysis that would be worth doing. I don’t know whether I can find the ways to make those facts meaningful and useful to librarians.

And I don’t know whether librarians are willing to deal with data at all–to work with the results, to go beyond the level of analysis I can do and make it effective for local use.

I wonder how many public and academic librarians really get, say, the difference between overall averages (e.g., circulation per capita for the U.S. public libraries), institutional averages (e.g., the average library circulation per capita–that is not the same figure) and median figures (e.g., the point at which half of libraries circulate more per capita and half less). I wonder how many understand at a gut level that many (maybe most) real-world statistics don’t follow the neat bell shape curve or the not-so-neat power-law curve–and why that matters.

Do LIS students get some training in real-world statistics (“statistics” may be too fancy a word; this is mostly pretty low-level stuff)? Is there a good book for them to use once they’re out in the real world? Would there be a real market for such a book if it existed? (Say a title like The Mythical Average Library: Dealing with Library Statistics)

Wish I knew the answers. Wish I knew whether I had a useful and possibly mildly remunerative role to play in providing answers. (There are certainly agencies that do yeoman work here–Colorado’s Library Research Service for one. I’m not faulting those agencies.)

Feedback invited. Please. Here or as email to waltcrawford@gmail.com

Modified later on January 29 to reduce the whininess and try to make it less about needing to be paid and more about whether this stuff’s worthwhile in general. Which may or may not help.

Relevance to greater issues: None. But other folks do these and I find them mildly interesting, and in late 2010 I started keeping a spreadsheet of books read–mostly so I wouldn’t accidentally take out the same book a second time (it’s happened).

So…

Books read in 2012

Fortynine. [49]

Ahead of my low bar (3 books in each 28-day period, or 39 in all), behind my unstated goal (a book a week, or 52 in all).

Way behind 2011, when I read 64.

Actually, the real number should be books completed in 2012–and that’s only 45, since I abandoned four books.

If you’re interested, the four books I abandoned–all from the library–were:Bozo Sapiens by Kaplan & Kaplan, Imagining Atlantis by Richard Ellis, Autumn of the Moguls by Michael Wolff and English Music by Peter Ackroyd

I should have abandoned a fifth one: The Hunt for Zero Point by Nick Cook.

Books most enjoyed (not in any order)

Runners-up

Those are books I rated as “A” or “A-.” Sixteen more books rated “B+” or “B”–ones I enjoyed, but not quite as much.

That’s a pretty good year. One book rated a “B-,” six rated “C+,” four rated “C”–and one, which I might also have been better off giving up on–rated a “C-”: The Information by James Gleick.

By the way, while I’m obviously a fan of facile writing, I’m not necessarily a pushover for Scalzi: The God Engines only got a C. But that’s me.

Curiosity of genre assignment: I usually get three books at a time–one nonfiction, one “mainstream” fiction, and one genre, the last alternating between science fiction/fantasy and mystery. Kathy Reichs’ books, the basis for Bones, are shelved at Livermore Public in mainstream fiction, not mysteries.

The other curiosity here: There’s one book that, it turned out, I had read previously–a decade ago, when it was serialized in Analog. That was Hominids by Robert J Sawyer, and I recognized it about 50 pages in (yes, the copyright page notes the prior publication)–but I read it again because I decided I wanted to read the trilogy it begins–the Neanderthal Parallax–and it made sense to freshen up on the start. Currently being read: Humans, second in the trilogy.

A short item to call your attention to Joe Kraus’s post reviewing my book on Open Access and Peter Suber’s more recent book on the same topic. The post is worth reading (as are, I believe, both books).

Yes, I’m late to the party: I just finished reading Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves–eight years after the first American printing.

One reason I took so long was that I picked up the book at a publisher’s booth at ALA, probably in 2004 or 2005, and, leafing through it, saw this in the preface (on page xxiv, as part of the explanation for the American printing not being an American edition):

They are unlikely to spot that American usage interestingly places all terminal punctuation inside closing quotation marks, while British usage sometimes “picks and chooses”.

[British punctuation preserved.]

To which I said...BUT THAT’S WRONG! American practice places commas and periods inside closing quotation marks. Colons and semicolons follow closing quotation marks. Question marks and exclamation points go inside or outside depending on whether or not they’re part of the quotation.

And said, basically, “if she gets that so wrong, how can I trust the rest of a supposedly ‘zero tolerance” guide?” And didn’t read it.

But, choosing my usual semi-random nonfiction book last time I was at Livermore Public Library, I picked it up and thought, “Hey, that was the preface, maybe the book’s just fine.” And checked it out.

The book is at times amusing. I don’t believe it will improve my erratic use of dashes, colons and semicolons (I found her guidance as erratic as my usage). And, well, there’s this on page 152-153:

…and American grammarians insisting that, if a sentence ends with a phrase in inverted commas, all the terminal punctuation for the sentence must come tidily inside the speech marks, even when this doesn’t seem to make sense.

So she’s blatantly, proudly ignorant wrong in the heart of the book as well as in the preface. And apparently cowed her editors and copy editors so much that they let the flatly incorrect statement stand (or are professional editors in Britain actually that ignorant of American usage?).

I don’t think of this as an American grammatical rule; I think of it as an American typographical rule–I call it the “flyspeck rule.” Namely, a period or a comma following a close quote looks like a flyspeck, some dirt that just happened to settle on the page. That’s not true for question marks and exclamation points, which go where they belong syntactically. (If it’s the end of a sentence, it can’t be a colon or semicolon, so we won’t go there.)

So then I went to Frank McCourt’s foreword. Which I must assume was written for the American edition–as it has seven quoted phrases, in all seven cases with a period or comma inside the close quote. Five of the seven are wrong British practice, as far as I can tell. All seven, of course, are correct American practice.

Did I enjoy the book? By and large, yes. Do I regard Lynne Truss as a trussworthy–oh, sorry, trustworthy–guide to punctuation usage? Nope. And my dashes (in particular), colons and semicolons may still be less consistent than they should be.

You already know the rest of the line, and it doesn’t really apply.

But.

I would love to have any further comments on the desirability or advisability of doing the vastly-revised Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four, based on FY2010 data.

This post is your best bet for background.

I’d particularly like to hear from you (strange as this may seem) if you think there’s a reason I should not do this–that it in some way could harm public libraries.

Why now?

Because the uncertainty as to when IMLS would release the FY2010 data has been resolved: It just did. I’ve downloaded the data and documentation, but haven’t yet started looking at it.

There are some other things I need to attend to first, but I’m guessing I could turn my attention to this in another week or so–and that, interspersed with other requirements in August, I could have the book done in six to eight weeks.

So: If this is a bad idea, I should really hear why. Now.

Thanks.

[Will there be another huge gap in C&I as a result of this project? Probably not.]

I got into a discussion today over at FriendFeed that began with a statement I just didn’t get…and evolved into a situation where, if I’m not mistaken, people (or at least one person) read something that I didn’t write. I thought I’d bring it over to a post for explication, rather than cluttering up a thread.

I’ll skip most of the stuff having to do with fetishizing “reading/books”–and while I can see that some people might make fetishes of particular print books or print books in general, fetishizing reading strikes me as incredibly improbable except for an early reader–”Look, Ma, I’m only 3 and I’m reading Shakespeare!”

Anyway, here’s part of the place where I think I was badly misread, leaving out the personal identification:

I didn’t do the “reading/books” bit, but I will damn well assert that reading is the principal way of overcoming ignorance. (And are you saying ebooks aren’t books? I don’t say that.)

A bit later on, Steve Lawson talked about a class on the history and future of books that he’d taught and a final exam question he did not actually give:

Here is a final exam question I wish I had given, but did not. I think the last sentence is pertinent: “For a college book-collecting contest, a student wanted to submit a collection of electronic books. Would you allow such a submission? In supporting your answer consider some of the following: What are good criteria for judging a collection of tangible, physical books? Is it possible to evaluate a collection of electronic books the same way, or would you propose different criteria? Is it possible or useful to compare collections of paper books and electronic books? How do concepts of “individuality,” “ownership,” and “scarcity” affect your answer? Is book collecting of any kind merely a bourgeois exercise in Pokemon-esque conspicuous consumption, narcissism, elitism, and crypto-fetishism by an anal-retentive phallocracy of bibliobores?”

I responded:

Wow. Interesting final question. I guess I’d distinguish between a book collection as an act of curation (real curation) and a book collection as a neato set of objects. In the former case, it strikes me that a collection of ebooks would be entirely appropriate. As to the last sentence, I’m almost inclined to say “Probably. Is something wrong with that?” but I’m afraid my tongue would puncture my cheek.

(Lawson says an essay version of that answer might have scored well.) A little later, I got a remark that appeared to me (perhaps wrongly) to suggest that I was equating ebooks and print books–saying “there’s no difference.”

And that’s just plain wrong, at least for me. (I’d say it’s just plain wrong, period–but read on for a key distinction.)

The simple truths

I do believe this statement and regard it as a general truth (one that everybody should believe, much like evolution and human-induced climate change):

An ebook is a book.

Which, to me, means that it’s perfectly reasonable to have (curated) collections of ebooks–collections that have clear merit and reasonable organizational axes. Authors, topics, publishers, prose styles, lots of other possibilities. For PDF ebooks, even typography and layout (and I just don’t know enough about EPUB and .MOBI, but my sense is that these “true” ebook formats don’t allow for much author/designer/publisher control over typography and layout; I could be wrong). So:

You can as readily curate collections of ebooks as you can collections of any other kind of book.

But that does not imply…

The next level:

There’s no difference between ebooks and print books.

I do not believe that, and I think it’s a silly statement. There are differences between kinds of print books–a hardcover or trade paperback is a very different kind of book from a mass-market paperback, for example. And print books are different creatures than ebooks. But they’re both books.

I think that’s a reasonably universal truth. Here’s a more local one:

Only the text matters: Everything else is irrelevant.

That’s the true “A book is a book is a book…” assumption, and I think it may be true for some people. It’s not true for me. If it’s true for you, I won’t argue the case: If the typeface, layout, and physical characteristics of a book are simply irrelevant to you, that’s your choice.

Here’s an example. I’ve read most of Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, and loved them. Other than new ones and some of the offshoots, I have eight more left to read, eight from the middle of the series.

I first encountered Discworld from the library of a cruise ship (and yes, those are libraries), in the best possible form (for me): A handsomely-produced hardback. I think I managed to read the first four in that manner.

Later, I read close to a dozen of the novels in what may be the worst form: Second-hand mass-market paperbacks, with their yellowing paper and small type.

Since then, I’ve read some of the earlier and all of the most recent either on cruise ships (in hardback) or from my public library (in hardback).

The eight that remain? (Jingo through Monstrous Regiment, if you’re curious.) They’re new mass-market paperbacks that I picked up to read while traveling, but I haven’t been doing as much traveling. Now, since I don’t foresee too many more emerging, I’ll admit that I’m saving these…but Jingo is 12 years old already, which for the crap paper used in mass-market paperbacks suggests I really should get to them some day soon…

Anyway: These are different kinds of books. Yes, the text is the same in the hardcover and mass-market paperbacks, but the hardcovers are considerably more pleasant to read. I suspect a really good ebook edition on a really good ereader would be somewhere in between–not as pleasant as the hardcover (but I could be wrong) but more pleasant than the cramped-margin, small-type, yellowing-paper mass-market paperback.

Similarities and distinctions

In any case: What I wrote was that ebooks are books. What I neither wrote nor said was that ebooks are the same as print books.

They’re not.

For some people for some texts under some conditions, they may be superior. (As I’ve said frequently: If I was still traveling 6 times a year, I’d either have an ereader or a netbook or, sigh, maybe even a tablet.) For some people for some texts under some conditions, they’re probably inferior.

But then, a mass-market paperback is pretty clearly an inferior reading experience to a trade paperback or hardcover, all else being equal.

All else rarely is equal.

None of this is rocket science; indeed, none of this is really new.

And, who knows, maybe nobody really misunderstood me. That happens too.

If you were just about to write something in response to yesterday’s “Which one if either? A Kickstarter trilemma,” I think it’s now down to a dilemma (and have modified the post to say that).

Namely, given the digital publication of “Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2011-2012,” the American Libraries Summer 2012 Digital Supplement, I don’t believe Project One is plausible in terms of possible Kickstarter support.

I’m suspicious of some social networking numbers in the digital supplement (70% of American libraries being on social networks is an awfully big jump from the 54% or so of libraries in 38 states that I found last fall), but that’s neither here nor there. The added value I could provide almost certainly isn’t worth the time it would take, barring some other (miraculous) form of funding.

Still interested in responses to the dilemma–that is, whether there’s enough “there” there in Project Two to be worth pursuing. And as noted there, silence is a legitimate response: A negative one.

Regular readers (if such an animal exists) will know that I’ve been enthusiastic about two research projects, both related to public libraries, either of which involves money issues and either of which could potentially be funded via Kickstarter.

[There's also The Librarian's Guide to Micropublishing, which could leader to speaking invitations, and Open Access: What You Need to Know Now. And, for that matter, Successful Social Networking in Public Libraries, which will emerge from ALA Editions later this year. That last is directly related to the first of these two projects.]

There are still other possible routes through which I could get enough funding to maintain some level of research (and keep my hand in librarianship, including attending at least one conference a year most years), but there’s no real progress on those routes.

So I’m at a decision point of sorts–a trilemma: Do I try for a Kickstarter project on the first project, the second project or neither?

Here’s how I see the situation right now. Your advice & suggestions are very much invited. You might find this post to be useful overall background, although it preceded the preliminary example of the second project.

Update, Tuesday, June 19, 2012: Given the new American Libraries Summer 2012 Digital Supplement, “Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2011-2012,” and given responses to this post to date (none), I now believe that Project One is off the table. The study doesn’t cover quite as many libraries, and I’m not sure I believe the 70%-social-networking figure (that represents enormous growth in the past eight months, or maybe the other 12 states have 100% participation to balance the just slightly over half of libraries in 38 sates), but I just can’t see people contributing to an expensive survey that slightly extends a freebie. The 38-state study formed the basis of what I believe will be a good book; barring miracles, I’ll leave it like that. So the question really is:

Is it plausible to attempt a Kickstarter project for #2, or isn’t it?

Silence constitutes a perfectly reasonable answer: It isn’t.

Project One: Social Networking Survey

Background: Primarily this prospectus, with additional notes here and here.

Short version: The first year of a possible ongoing external survey of all public libraries in the U.S. (systems and standalone, not branches) and their social networking activity, specifically looking at Facebook, Twitter and Google+, including (for the first year) changes over time for libraries in 38 states. Also, as part of the first-year project, gathering “library mottoes” that appear on library websites toward a little “A library is…” book.

Size: The Kickstarter project would need to be for $18,000 to make sense, given the overhead of Kickstarter itself and the incentives needed; the idea would be to net $15,000.

Results: A booklength study of the results, plus an available spreadsheet. The spreadsheet would be CC 0 (it’s data in any case, even though it springs from hundreds of hours of labor); the PDF of the book would be free or nominally priced, while the print version (or EPUB version if done) would be priced so as to yield some revenue for a second year’s study. Also, the “A library is…” book.

Incentives: Probably a free PDF version of “A library is…” for sub-$100 levels, probably a print version for $250, a signed print version (or a hardcover version) for $500, and a signed print version and $500 discount on a future speaking engagement (if desired) for $1,000 or more. Alternatively, print versions of the study itself could be offered.

Pluses: The output would carry forward and enhance what I believe will be a worthwhile book (based on the 38-state 2011 study); this would be interesting and possibly worthwhile documentation on how (and the extent to which) public libraries are using social networks and how that’s changing over time, which should be useful to public libraries; the “A library is…” would, I think, be charming and fun, although perhaps not deeply meaningful.

Minuses: It’s a huge amount of work–data gathering alone would involve several hundred hours of the kind of work you can’t keep doing without lots of breaks. And, frankly, it’s never been clear how many public libraries are interested in studies of change over time or of having actual objective evidence of their use of social networks.

Project Two: Give Us a Dollar…

Background: The best background is the preliminary edition of the book itself, Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four. But there’s also a four-part post (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), the fourth part of which suggests an alternate vision for the next time around. (Note: These links do work–the Tuesday one was mangled in Part 3 and Part 4, and those have also been fixed.)

Short version: This study would happen after IMLS releases the 2010 public library database. I’d massage the data, creating a benefit ratio and several derivative measures, and prepare a book-length study that should allow libraries to help prepare their cases for better funding (or at least to avoid funding cuts), by showing that they’re good stewards of public funds, how they compare with “similar” libraries and where they could provide even better value through added funding.

Size: If I used Kickstarter, it would be to create an ebook (yes, I’d get it into EPUB format) that was available at nominal prices (the least Lulu would allow for distribution purposes, and free as a PDF from Lulu itself) and a print book (priced to yield about $1.50 net per copy). I’d say $8,500: Basically, a dollar for each library fully included in the study (assuming that about 700 libraries fall out in 2010 as they did in 2009). Note that this price includes my promise to email data lines for libraries on request; I don’t want to mount the whole database because I’m not interested in making it easy to do invidious comparisons.

Incentives: Not clear. If the $8,500 is to free the ebook, then what do I send people that doesn’t wind up chewing up the revenue?

Pluses: I think most public libraries could benefit from this, and for several thousand libraries, it’s a better deal than paying for a consultant or priced library data services. Also, since I’ve already done some of the prep work, it’s not an enormous project–maybe 50 to 100 hours of data analysis and a couple hundred hours to put the book in proper shape. Plus, to be sure, five minutes for each library that asks for a data line…

Minuses: I’m not sure that public libraries are interested. After an initial six sales of the preliminary edition on the first day, there have been exactly zero since, even though the price was as low as $24 for a while–and two open calls to request free PDF review copies have, to date, received exactly one request. If 10% of American public libraries thought this was worthwhile, no Kickstarter or other funding would be required. If 1% (90) were interested enough to try the preliminary edition and provide feedback, I’d probably proceed in any case (if the feedback says I should). On the other hand, if less than 0.1% are interested, well, there’s really no point. Oh, and I’m really not sure what to offer as incentives (other than thank-you notes).

Third Option: Neither

When I was thinking about Kickstarter for the first project, I was also reading Jason Scott’s notes about successful use of Kickstarter, including the absolutely mandatory nature of the “optional” video. That bothered me a little, ’cause I’m not a visual artist or videographer. Sure, I have the minimal equipment (my notebook has a camera and microphone), but…

Then, as I was ramping up to make a decision, I was pointed to this post on “How to Run a Successful Kickstarter Campaign.” Which sets the bar even higher than Scott did–and which seems to be pretty sensible.

Since I’ve been dealing with “four factors” a lot this past week (writing Part 2 of a Fair Use roundup, which will make up most of the July 2012 Cites & Insights), I’m tempted to look at each factor and see where I stand.

1. Back Other Projects Before You Launch. Fail. I haven’t.
2. Three Things One: Only a very small portion of your network will back your project on Kickstarter. The author says not to think like “if only half of those who read my blog each month contribute…” and I’ve pretty much learned that already. If only 10% of those who apparently read Cites & Insights kicked in $25 a year, I’d already have enough funding to attend one conference a year; as it is, I don’t have enough this year to cover my domain charges and hosting fees (which total less than $200). And while Walt at Random seems to have between 700 and 1200 readers, I’m not sure that it actually has more than a few dozen. Realistically, the FF LSW community is the closest thing I have to a large network, and that’s only about 700 people. This has always been a questionable aspect for me of Kickstarter–while thousands of library people “know my name,” they’re not really a network. (They’ve already done more for me than I could have ever expected, for which I’ll always be grateful.)
3. Three Things Two: People will tell you that your idea is stuipid or that you are the wrong person to bring the idea to life. That’s already happened, more or less, with the second project–but most feedback, such as it’s been, has been positive. So I think I’m OK on that one.
4. Three Things Three: [Paraphrased: Will I do it whether Kickstarter succeeds or not?] A good question. I don’t have a great answer, although for Project One the answer’s pretty clearly “without some form of backing, it’s way too much of a time sink.”
5. Make a kickass Kickstarter video. Fail, big time. If that’s the rule, and Scott also seems to suggest this, then I’m dead before I begin.
6. Money, Money, Money, Money. (You need to read the original post–but that’s true anyway!) Not sure what to say here.
7. Rewards Matter and They Take Time and Money to Fulfill. Understood, and more of an issue for Project Two. In my mind, the biggest Kickstarter funding to date was really a whole bunch of people paying for $100 watches in advance. I don’t have such enticing rewards. Not sure about this one.
8. Give People a Reason to Trust You. Within the library community, I believe I win on this one–if my reputation for honesty & transparency isn’t clear, it’s too late.
9. If You Build It They Won’t Just Come. This basically says to me that I need to be an extroverted social network champion to have a chance at this. That’s a big problem.

There are three more discussions, but I’ve probably let this run on too long as is. I see one reasonable win (#8), a couple of big hurdles (#9, #5, #2, maybe #1), and…well…I’m not sure.

Advice? Feedback? Right now, the third option seems most plausible, but maybe I’m overreacting. Not that I would ever do that, of course…

That’s the title of the preliminary edition of my “benefits ratio” study of American public libraries, as discussed in earlier posts. (Those four links are in reverse chronological order; if you want to read the posts and comments from oldest to newest, start with “posts” and work back to “discussed.”)

The 193-page 6×9″ paperback is $49.50, but at least from now through the end of the ALA Annual Conference, it’s discounted 30% to $34.65. (If sales continue at the rate of five a week or more, I’ll retain the discount.)

If you prefer, you can buy a PDF version for $29.50 (and save shipping); that version will go up to $39.50 when the paperback discount goes away. (Lulu doesn’t offer a way to discount an ebook.)

I’m specifically looking for feedback–the book includes the URL for a page that links to a survey, and explicitly invites email feedback no matter how negative it might be. I believe this book–at least in later, refined versions–can be useful for public libraries, but I’m not a public librarian. If I’m wrong–if there’s general agreement that the book is either useless or damaging–it will go away. If people do find it valuable, at least as a concept, I’ll use feedback to produce a more refined version using 2010 data (after IMLS makes that data available).

The earlier posts describe the project fairly well, so I won’t repeat the description here.

Review Copies

I can make a limited number of review copies–PDF only, but since it’s a 6×9 book it should work well on most e-readers–available on request directly to me (waltcrawford at gmail.com) on the following basis:

1. If you ask for a review copy, you’re committing to writing an online review of some sort (on your own blog, on some other website, to a list) and either sending me a copy or a link. (I say “online” because this is a preliminary edition: It should be replaced or defunct before print reviews are likely.) At the very least, I’d expect you to complete the survey, send me direct feedback or both. [A review could be as brief as "What a waste of time" or could include pages of suggestions on how to make a possibly-good idea better.]

2. I do not care whether the review is positive, mixed, negative or slashingly negative. Period. If you’re a friend, what you say in the review will not damage that friendship. Period. I’m looking for honest feedback. I’m willing to believe that this just isn’t a good idea. (I’m absolutely certain that the preliminary version could use a lot of improvement!)

3. I reserve the right to stop sending out review copies at a certain point. Right now, I’m thinking half a dozen, but that could grow to a dozen.

Closing Notes

If you look at the preview, you’ll see that the cover is bland. I used one of Lulu’s canned cover designs (a bit less striking than the one for Library 2.0: A Cites & Insights Reader, also a canned design).

That’s because this is a preliminary edition. If there’s a “real” edition down the road, it will have a slightly nicer cover. Probably.

I’m also not adding this book to the C&I Books section at the foot of this blog page, again because this is a preliminary edition–one that may disappear as early as August 1, 2012, depending on feedback and sales.

From now through May 31, 2012, there’s a Mystery Sale on Cites & Insights Books (that is, Lulu’s having a Mystery Sale)–which makes it a great time to pick up one or more of my books, or, if you’re a library with a strong collection on Californiana, pioneer life, western migration, etc., a great time to buy Anna Julia Young’s Autobiography. (That’s the hardcover. Here’s the paperback.)

Or, for that matter, a good time to pick up the hardcover version of The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing.

I don’t know what the discount is, or whether it increases if you buy multiple books. Last time I actually ordered during one of Lulu’s odd mystery sales, it was somewhere between 10% and 20%, but I can’t guarantee anything.

The Lull in Posts

I’ve done enough tracking of and writing about blogs, and liblogs in particular, that I should have known better: I said I expected to be posting more…and lately, I’ve been posting less.

The reason’s simple enough.

I’m hard at work on Give Us A Buck and We’ll Give You Back Four (originally “Five” and it may yet change), the study of public library benefits that I discussed here and in prior posts.

My hope is to have it out sometime next week, or at worst the week after.

As for the June issue of Cites & Insights…that should appear a few days after the book does.

As for steady blogging…well, I never was very steady at this.