Walt at Random

Maybe I need to learn something from mainstream merchants: That is, the value of constant, repetitive advertising. The total number of sales for all Cites & Insights Books in February 2010 was zero. (Fortunately, the total number of donations for C&I itself was slightly higher, although still in the very low single digits….well, one, actually. For which I’m grateful.)

Or maybe I’m pricing ‘em wrong! After all, Neal-Schuman’s bringing out ten very short books on narrow aspects library technology, each 125 6×9 pages (presumably around 30,000 words, maybe slightly more), each $55. With a big prepub push where you can “buy the whole set for a mere $385!” (And LITA’s the copublisher, a situation I’ve always found interesting…) These could be the best library tech books ever, for all I know (hey, friends & acquaintances wrote half of ‘em, so I’m not saying anything negative), but it makes the prices for my books seem sort of tawdry by comparison…

Anyway:

Great Bargains on Essential Books

Some of you may have missed this, but I reduced the prices of most Cites & Insights Books (which may be exactly the wrong thing to do, but):

• Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change is now $25 paperback, $16 PDF download. (And with a dozen more copies, I’ll reach my “success” criterion: 300 copies sold.)
• The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look is also now $25 paperback, $16 PDF download. (Sixty-two copies to date, but who’s counting?)
• I believe every library school should have print copies of Cites & Insights, and that’s easier than ever for the last four volumes–with great full-color photos thrown in for good measure. Volume 6, 2006; Volume 7, 2007; Volume 8, 2008; and Volume 9, 2009 are now just $35 paperback (and when you consider the sheer size of these volumes, “just” is the right word), $25 PDF download (of course, you can download the issues for free–but $20 of that $25 counts as a direct contribution to keep C&I going).

Essential Books

I believe Balanced Libraries is still an essential book–and, if you care about blogging, so are The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look and, particularly, my latest: But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009. That one goes for a mere $35 paperback, $25 PDF. (So far, it’s a very limited edition, with a baker’s dozen sold.)

Hmm: Maybe that’s the trick: Charge $395 for each book–what you typically pay for Studies, where “you” may not include any W.a.R. readers–or charge $75 and make each one a Limited Edition, taking them offsale after, say, 100 copies are sold.

(Note: The two library blog books weren’t taken offsale for “limited edition” reasons but out of a sense of futility–the sense that people really don’t want to hear anything but unicorns & rainbows regarding how library blogs actually pan out. That’s a topic for another post that I don’t plan to write.)

Supporting Cites & Insights

I had modest sponsorship for Cites & Insights from 2005 through 2009. I don’t now. I’d love to have a sponsor, but I’m admittedly not out beating the bushes of nonexistent contacts to raise one.

Meanwhile, if you find C&I valuable, you can help keep it going by contributing directly. You’ll find the information and the PayPal “Donate” button right there on the C&I home page, just below the contents list for the current issue.

I will note that, if I had $1 for every downloaded/opened copy of Library 2.0 and “Library 2.0,” that would cover sponsorship-equivalent for the next seven years But then, if wishes were horses, we’d be up to our ears in…well, never mind.

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

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

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

The tools

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

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

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

The trials

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

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

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

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

Conclusions?

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

Maybe I’m missing something.

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

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

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

When last I discussed the possibility of a book combining all 33 of the Open Access-related essays in Cites & Insights from 2001 through 2009 (plus one “disContent” column from EContent Magazine), the issue was whether it was worth doing an ePub version: Whether anybody would want it.

Now there’s a slightly different issue, one that may derail the effort entirely–and you’ll see what it is if you revisit the original post.

To wit:

• It appears that I can’t really use Word2007’s built-in indexing feature, at least not with “Mark All.” I figured I could generate an index in 5-10 hours through that method–and, indeed, it takes about an hour to go through 50-60 pages.
• Unfortunately, when I save the results after 50-60 pages and reopen the file, it’s unusable: The 519-page book has become 1200+ pages, with the bottom half of each page made up of a multiline, uneditable, page footer that seems to comprise several different page headers. (Hey, at least the first time this happened, it gave me another chance to see that my weekly incremental backups actually work–I could restore last week’s pre-indexed version neatly enough. Call that lemonade.)
• As far as I can tell, it would take at least 50-60 hours for me to do an index separately. I can’t justify that “for the good of the community,” so that’s not going to happen.
• So here’s where it stands: Depending on feedback between now and February 7, I’ll either:

1. Make Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights 2001-2009 available as a free PDF and probably free ePub (unless that conversion turns out to be a hassle), and as a 6×9 paperback for $5 more than the cost of production (yielding $4 a copy for me)–but without an index.
2. Scrap the whole project because it’s so awful to produce a nonfiction book without an index.

Just skimming through the vastness of the book (really: 191,000 words–it’s big), I find the chronological arrangement interesting and slightly useful. And, what the heck, if anybody out there cared, preparing an index would be a great project–I’d certainly mount it on my website if somebody did it.

Do it or dump it?

That’s what it boils down to. The Word version’s in place. All I need is a cover (not difficult) and to do the ePub conversion (and redo the PDF conversion) and upload to Lulu.

Thoughts?

---

Status Update, February 2, 2009:

Two developments:

1. An acquaintance with some indexing experience offered to try to index the thing–which requires working from a 2.8MB PDF (to retain pagination). Not sure that will work out: It’s a BIG effort for a wholly unpaid gig that may not be read by that many people… But I’m going to give him a few weeks and see what happens. I have no doubt whatsoever that he’s capable of doing a good job…
2. I think I have a clue what’s causing Word to go berserk (but am not sure): Namely, I was using “Mark All” for terms that appear in one chapter’s running page head, and that may confuse Word beyond redemption. If #1 doesn’t work out, I might try again, avoiding that particular situation. Or I might not. As noted in the comments, there’s also the possibility of post-pub “crowdsourcing” an index.

In sum: The book isn’t going to appear in the next week or two, and probably not until March. I probably will make it available in ePub form (if Calibre does a good conversion), at the same $0 price if Lulu supports that. Meanwhile, off to other stuff!

But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009 is no longer available at the special earlybird price.

The price is now $35 hardcopy, $25 PDF.

Thanks to those who took advantage of the early-bird pricing (more than a dozen, lessfewer than a score)!

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PS: If anyone finds it hard to believe that I was able to get out a new issue of C&I so soon after returning from ALA Midwinter…well, the issue was actually complete (and uploaded) on the day I left for Midwinter, January 14; all I did yesterday was modify the C&I website and publicize the issue. And, to be sure, delete Cites ON A Plane 2010, of which more possibly later.

The ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting is almost upon us. If weather doesn’t preclude it, I’ll be in Boston a bit less than a week from now (that is, next Friday, but several hours earlier than this post).

Sometimes people forget that, at its heart, the Midwinter Meeting is a meeting–or, rather, about 3,000 of them, all in one spot. It’s explicitly not a conference: There are very few exceptions to the “No Formal Programs” rule.

Some of us who’ve been around ALA too long remember when Midwinter really was little more than a set of meetings, with a relatively small cast (on the order of 2,000-3,000 people). I have early memories of Midwinter in Washington, DC, when it was held in two hotels near the zoo and when you quite literally could spend a few hours in the Sheraton’s lobby bar–at the time, a big, circular, “lobby bar” right in the middle of the lobby–and you’d see almost everybody you knew in the field. (OK, at the time, I didn’t know that many people–but then as now, Midwinter was a great place to meet new ones.)

Even then, topical discussions without planned speakers were a large part of what made Midwinter different. They still are, for all the discussion groups and for those interest groups who don’t just spend Midwinter planning Annual programs. Those discussions were and are a great way to share information and ideas (I won’t say “like an unconference,” but with much of a good unconference’s equality, participation and spontaneity).

If you’re relatively new to Midwinter, don’t be taken aback by the lack of a large formal program. That’s for summer. Midwinter’s a time to get the association’s business done (and, admittedly, a lot more of that really should take place virtually, with due respect to ALA’s sunshine laws), a place to plan for summer, a place for a more focused approach to a slightly smaller set of exhibits–and a place to renew professional acquaintances, make new ones, and share insights and ideas both in groups and in the various lobbies. Let’s hope Boston’s weather is at least tolerable…and that those who need or want to be there are able to make it.

That said, there are a few items I should perhaps repeat prior to Midwinter:

Want to get together? Let me know!

My so-called schedule is still very loose, and will probably stay that way. If you want to get together for some reason, let me know–beforehand, since I won’t have internet access during Midwinter (unless the internet room happens to be less busy than usual!)

But Still They Blog early-bird prices

You can still buy But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009 for $20 PDF, $29.50 paper, from now through the end of ALA Midwinter. (If you’re wondering, the difference in my net proceeds for the two versions is enormous: $0.02–I get two cents more for the print version than for the download. So, y’know, buy whichever one suits your needs!)

By the way, I’d still need four people to indicate a possible willingness to buy an ePub version, before I go to the work of producing one. (I have no way of knowing who actually buys Lulu books, by the way.)

Cites ON a Plane 2010

This special non-issue, prepared for your traveling pleasure (or not), will be available from now until I return from ALA Midwinter. Or, better yet, buy the PDF version of But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009!

I’d like to call your attention to this post by Jennifer Macaulay on Just Another Day (you may know Macaulay from her previous blog, Life as I Know It).

I would quote excerpts, but it’s a nicely compact post (unlike certain blabbermouths like Walt Crawford, Jennifer Macaulay knows how to write tersely and well), so here’s the whole thing:

I find the topic of library blogs and blogging fascinating. As such, I always look forward to Walt Crawford’s commentaries about the topic. In this vein, I did buy a copy (pdf version) of his latest book, But Still They Blog. I admit that the statistical analysis made my head spin a bit (I get lost whenever quintiles come up), but the book was certainly worth a read for anyone who is interested in the seeming decline in blogging intensity within the library sphere.

After reading But Still They Blog, it is clear that people blog – and stop blogging – for a variety of reasons. People have wildly different ideas about the impact of tools like Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. on blogging – and on the worth of blogging. Ultimately, blogging isn’t dead, but it isn’t the same as it was several years ago. Crawford tells us all this through statistical analysis and through quotes from the blogs that he profiles. It is the story told through these glimpses at the various blogs which is my favorite part of the book (and is often my favorite part of many of his articles in Cites and Insights).

I am, of course, delighted by this review. (I think quintiles are the best way to model certain data, but I admit they can be daunting. Sorry about that.) Thanks, Jennifer!

Reminder

But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009 is still on sale for a special early-bird price until the end of ALA Midwinter–that is, about 18 days from now.

And a word about formats: Lulu will handle ePub now, but it’s up to me to do the conversion. If I have indications from, say, three people that they would buy an ePub version (and won’t buy the PDF or print version), that might make it worth the trouble…assuming that freely-available software does the job properly.

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

With, of course, no actual numbers.

Thought experiment

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

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

Equally valid and impressive story

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

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

And the numbers

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

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

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

The reality

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

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

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

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

But the real story here–

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

isn’t a particularly interesting or novel story.

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

The curse of a cleverly-written press release.

This post is about Chapter 12–the last chapter–of But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, now available at the special introductory price of $29.50 paperback, $20 PDF.

This 319-page trade paperback provides a sweeping look at liblogs (blogs created by library people but, generally, not blogs that are official library publications), with trends, facts, figures, graphs, and profiles for each of 521 liblogs. It continues the most comprehensive detailed look at liblogs (or any category of blogs) that I know of, showing measurable characteristics and how they’re changing over the years.

The Rest of the Liblogs

Here’s the full text of the chapter–except for the profiles!

This is the point in the book at which I should find profound meaning from these metrics. It’s the perfect opportunity for sweeping conclusions—if there were any.

You’ve seen smaller conclusions throughout the chapters. Yes, a fair number of bloggers have stopped (when has that not been true?). Yes, there seem to be a lot fewer new fairly-high-profile liblogs in 2008 than in previous years. Yes, most bloggers are blogging somewhat less (and very slightly longer).

And yes, some of that can probably be traced to FaceBook, Twitter and FriendFeed, along with the usual reasons—fatigue, changes in life and work, balance, boredom.

Underlying all that, however, liblogs still offer a broad, varied landscape of people with interesting and worthwhile things to say. Blogging may be dead (if you believe some pundits)…but still they blog.

The remaining liblogs—those that didn’t turn up in a previous chapter—aren’t “leftovers” by any means. A few of these are among my personal favorites, one or two are among those I choose not to comment on so as to avoid snark, several have gone by the wayside—and many just don’t have quite enough frequency, long enough posts or enough comments to stand out in a metric (or had metrics problems).

Again: metrics only measure quantity, not quality. You need to judge quality for yourself.

The Profiles

In this case (and this case only), the profiles are in alphabetical order, since I couldn’t come up with any better scheme.

• Arnold Digital
• BeanWorks
• Designing Better Libraries
• DigInit
• digitalcommons
• Disruptive Library Technology Jester
• Feel-good Librarian
• Fiddling Librarian 3.0
• Frequently Answered Questions
• Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services
• The History Librarian
• Impromptu Librarian
• informationatrix
• Informationoverlord
• InfoTangle
• The Inspired Library School Student
• The Itinerant Poetry Librarian
• Jason the Content Librarian
• Jennie Law
• Laurie the Librarian
• Letters from the Library
• Librarians Helping Canadian Genealogists Climb Family Trees
• Library Games
• Library Geek Woes
• Library Pariah
• library riot
• Library Tourguide to Technology
• Library Trainer
• LibraryStream
• LibTalk Blog
• Lifelong Access Libraries Blog
• Linux Librarian
• the log of a librarian
• mapz: a gis librarian
• maura and the library
• Metalogue
• misc.joy
• Musings of a Medical Librarian Maven
• myliblog
• The Notebook
• On Libraries & Other Stuff
• Pimp My Library
• quiddle
• Radical Reference
• Readers’ Advisory Knapsack
• Robotic Librarian
• Solvitur ambulando
• A Splash Quite Unnoticed
• Subject/Object
• Talking Books Librarian
• Vancouver Law Librarian Blog
• Wanderings of an online librarian
• the wee librarian
• WoW! Wouter on the Web
• Z666.7.L364 (www.jenniferlang.net)

Like Chapter 10, Chapter 11 is entirely new to But Still They Blog.

Why does a blogger pause (which I’ll define as not blogging for at least four months) or stop altogether? I’m certain the most common reason is premature blogging, that is, starting a blog before you really know whether you have much to say. I suspect other reasons are all over the map, with the second largest probably running out of steam or losing interest (or, these days, finding that saying what you have to say is easier and faster on Twitter, FaceBook or FriendFeed).

A fair number of libloggers stopped between mid-2007 and mid-2008, or at least paused for so long that they don’t have any posts—at least 13% of those with enough impact to make it into But Still They Blog and probably more than that among the broader liblog population. Some returned; many didn’t.

What follows is a sampling of posts on why people have stopped or paused blogging—or, in some cases, the fateful final posts that don’t appear intended to be final. Included are some “haven’t been blogging much lately” posts.

In Case It’s Not Obvious…

This post is about Chapter 11 of But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, now available at the special introductory price of $29.50 paperback, $20 PDF.

This 319-page trade paperback provides a sweeping look at liblogs (blogs created by library people but, generally, not blogs that are official library publications), with trends, facts, figures, graphs, and profiles for each of 521 liblogs. It continues the most comprehensive detailed look at liblogs (or any category of blogs) that I know of, showing measurable characteristics and how they’re changing over the years.

After the introductory section above, this chapter consists of quotes from blogs and comments on those quotes. Portions, in somewhat different form, may appear in the January 2010 Cites & Insights.

Profiled Blogs

The chapter includes profiles for these liblogs, mentioned in Chapter 11 and not previously profiled.

• See Also…
• explodedlibrary bunker
• Bigenarian Librarian
• The Brewin’ Librarian
• Wireless Libraries
• Virtual librariesinteract.info
• Shelved in the W’s
• Library Marketing-Thinking Outside the Book
• SD Librarian
• digital.brarian
• omg tuna is kewl
• 101 Tips for School Librarians
• Game On: Games in Libraries
• LibraryChange
• Library 2.0: An Academic’s Perspective
• Library Talk
• Library Zen
• Second Life Research Journal
• booktruck.org
• washtublibrarian
• Travels with the State Librarian
• Texadata
• Slow Library
• Christopher Kupec’s Weblog
• The Horseless Library
• Data Obsessed
• InfoPill

This post is about Chapter 10 of But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, now available at the special introductory price of $29.50 paperback, $20 PDF.

This 319-page trade paperback provides a sweeping look at liblogs (blogs created by library people but, generally, not blogs that are official library publications), with trends, facts, figures, graphs, and profiles for each of 521 liblogs. It continues the most comprehensive detailed look at liblogs (or any category of blogs) that I know of, showing measurable characteristics and how they’re changing over the years.

Why People Blog–and How Blogs Change

This study includes 521 blogs. What they have in common is that each involves one or more “library people” as defined very loosely—people who have some connection to the library field and write, at least part of the time, about library-related issues.

How do these people blog, and how is that changing? That’s largely what this book is about, on an objective, quantifiable basis. I discuss qualitative areas in Cites & Insights from time to time.

Why do these people blog—and how is that changing? There are many reasons for blogging, some more sensible than others. Here’s my quick take on plausible and implausible reasons for starting and maintaining liblogs, followed by some comments from bloggers themselves.

The chapter begins with some reasons I believe people blog–just a few of the many–and continues with material from the July 2009 Cites & Insights, followed by new material (some of which will probably appear, in different form, in the January 2010 Cites & Insights).

I believe it’s an interesting and worthwhile discussion, which is why it stayed in the book (there’s nothing similar in The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008) even as it became clear that this book was on the long side…

Profiles

The following blogs, mentioned in Chapter 10 and not previously profiled, are profiled in Chapter 10.

• Blisspix.net
• Daveman’s Blog
• Eagle Dawg Blog
• Family Man Librarian
• From the Inside Out
• Ian Snowley’s Library Managment blog

This post is about Chapter 9 of But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, now available at the special introductory price of $29.50 paperback, $20 PDF.

Ordered your copy yet? I won’t claim it’s a great holiday present (unless you’re stuck for a gift for library people who write blogs), but if you buy it now at the bargain introductory price, you’ll have it in time for Midwinter–just the thing for that long plane flight. (And I’ll be happy to autograph it, as is true with any of my books…)

This 319-page trade paperback provides a sweeping look at liblogs (blogs created by library people but, generally, not blogs that are official library publications), with trends, facts, figures, graphs, and profiles for each of 521 liblogs. It continues the most comprehensive detailed look at liblogs (or any category of blogs) that I know of, showing measurable characteristics and how they’re changing over the years.

Correlations and Averages

A short chapter, and I can’t claim to have found anything startling. It’s much less graphically interesting than the corresponding chapter in the earlier book, as I chose not to prepare scatterplots (they’re fun to do, but I didn’t find them meaningful in these cases).

Profiles

None–which isn’t surprising, because no individual blogs are named in Chapter 9; it’s all about overall patterns, such as they are.

That’s also why this post is “doubled up” rather than appearing a day after the post on Chapter 8.

Here comes another verse, not quite the same as the other verse…

This post is about Chapter 8 of But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, now available at the special introductory price of $29.50 paperback, $20 PDF.

This 319-page trade paperback provides a sweeping look at liblogs (blogs created by library people but, generally, not blogs that are official library publications), with trends, facts, figures, graphs, and profiles for each of 521 liblogs. It continues the most comprehensive detailed look at liblogs (or any category of blogs) that I know of, showing measurable characteristics and how they’re changing over the years.

Excerpts

There’s one peculiarity for 2008-2009 that wasn’t present in 2007-2008: Half a dozen blogs that went from no posts to some posts—and are included because they also had posts in 2007. Since moving from nothing to something is an infinite increase, these show up as having significantly more and longer posts with significantly more conversational intensity…

If patterns of change across the landscape were completely random, each of the fully-indented rows (combinations of three metrics changes) would have roughly 56 blogs and 1,660 posts and show 13% in each percentage column.

None of the eight patterns is close to those figures.

Three outliers are interesting:

• The most common pattern by far is the “discouraged” pattern: Fewer, shorter posts with less conversation. That pattern represents 125 blogs (28%) but only 11% of the posts.
• The next most common patterns are two with fewer posts and more conversation—77 blogs with longer posts and 71 with shorter posts. Combined, those represent a third of the blogs and 28% of the posts.
• The pattern with fewest blogs is the same as for 2007-2008: More posts, but shorter and less conversational. That has 20 of the blogs (4%) and 564 posts (4%).
• It’s interesting that two-thirds of blogs had (slightly) longer posts—and that a solid majority had more conversation.

The chapter also goes through the “better model” of triplets. You’d need to read it and study the tables to gather much meaning.

Profiles

These liblogs are mentioned in this chapter and hadn’t already been profiled–and by this time, most blogs had already been profiled.

• Aaron the Librarian
• All Things Amy
• Distracted Truffle Pig
• The Uncommon Commons
• The Letter Z
• Going Green @your library
• A LIBRARIAN AT THE KITCHEN TABLE
• Alone in the Archives
• Carolyne’s pages of interest
• A Wandering Eyre
• OA Librarian
• Hectic Pace
• Semantic Library
• Deepening the Conversation
• LIS :: Michael Habib

This post is about Chapter 7 of But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, now available at the special introductory price of $29.50 paperback, $20 PDF.

This 319-page trade paperback provides a sweeping look at liblogs (blogs created by library people but, generally, not blogs that are official library publications), with trends, facts, figures, graphs, and profiles for each of 521 liblogs. It continues the most comprehensive detailed look at liblogs (or any category of blogs) that I know of, showing measurable characteristics and how they’re changing over the years.

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So far, the book looked at one metric at a time (except for chapter 6) but a blog is more than its individual metrics. This chapter and the next look at patterns—patterns of change from one year to the next. Three elements make up the change pattern for a blog:

• Change in number of posts: Were there more posts in 2008 than in 2007, fewer, or about the same number?
• Change in post length: Was the average post in a given blog longer in 2008 than in 2007, shorter, or about the same length?
• Changes in comments per post: Was the blog more conversational in 2008 than in 2007 (that is, did the average post have more comments), less conversational, or about the same?

Table 7.1 offers a simplified view of these three changes—“simplified” because it breaks blogs down into “More” or “Less” (where no change at all is counted as “More”)—and that overstates the significance of small changes.

For those who read last year’s study, note that there’s one significant change this time around, for both the simplified table and the triplets: I’m leaving out blogs that lack length metrics in either of the two years being compared. That’s never more than 10% of the blogs, and it means the tables can be considerably shorter (24 lines rather than 36 in the case of Tables 7.1 and 8.1) and easier to understand. Since every blog with a length metric has a valid comment metric (even if the comment count is zero), that further simplifies the process. Blogs are omitted if they have no posts in 2007 as usual—but not if they have posts and no comments. (Note that a blog with zero posts in both years would be counted as having “more” conversational intensity in the second year—an example of the problems with straight up-down comparisons.)

That’s the start of the chapter. Most of the chapter deals with triplets–blogs that have increased or decreased more than 20%, and those that haven’t changed all that much. It’s a rich measure; I won’t attempt to provide a summary here.

Profiles

These liblogs are mentioned in Chapter 7 and weren’t previously profiled.

• The Running Librarian
• Loomware – Crafting New Libraries
• nirak.net – Musings of an LIS Student
• Into the Stacks
• The Un-Cool Librarian
• Dewey & Main
• Outgoing
• davidrothman.net
• Heretical Librarian
• Annoyed Librarian
• New Jack Librarian
• info NeoGnostic
• Meeting on the ledge
• Twilight Librarian
• School Libraryland
• BiblioTech Web
• library+instruction+technology
• @ the library [2] (“[2]” added to distinguish the second liblog with this name)
• ebyblog
• Senior Friendly Libraries
• Library Snark
• A Passion for ‘Puters
• pamryan.info
• Librarian Idol
• Loriene’s Blog
• Biblioblather
• Misadventures of the Monster Farmer-Librarian
• LACUNY Blog
• yes to know
• Alternative Teen Services
• Canuck Librarian
• clifflandis.net
• Hidden Peanuts
• michael e casey
• Quiescit anima libris
• checking out and checking in
• LibraryTechtonics
• Inquiring Librarian
• DigiCMB
• Right Wing Librarian
• Info Junkie
• Chronicles of the (almost) Bald Technology Trainer
• ONLINE Insider
• Prairie Librarian
• alliance virtual library
• copy this blog
• Library etc.
• REAL PUBLIC LIBRARIAN
• Librarian Ire
• Mary Ellen Bates – Info-Entrepreneur Tip of the Month
• Blog on the Side – Darlene Fichter
• Cataloging Futures
• Life as I Know It
• Continuing Education!
• The Gay Librarian

Another PS

Hmm. As I was completing the book, I came upon a situation that suggested that my methodology for controlling liblog profiles (deleting them from a master document as I moved them into chapters) failed on one occasion–that I had one more profile than I should. I now know where that happened, in this chapter, and probably won’t correct the trivial error.

Chapter Six is entirely new–a discussion with no parallel in The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008. Here are the first two paragraphs:

Before considering patterns of change (how blogs change across multiple metrics), let’s look at some standouts and standards: Blogs that are within the same quintile either across all three key metrics (frequency, post length and conversational intensity) or across all three years within a given metric, and are also within the top three quintiles for the metrics in which they show consistency.

This chapter is about consistency—falling into the same general population across several metrics. It’s not about quality, and no larger conclusions can be drawn. Think of this as a break in the narrative. You’ll discover early on that no blog is in the first quintile throughout—although two come close, with consistently top rankings in two of the three years.

In case it’s not obvious…

This post is about Chapter 6 of But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, now available at the special introductory price of $29.50 paperback, $20 PDF.

This 319-page trade paperback provides a sweeping look at liblogs (blogs created by library people but, generally, not blogs that are official library publications), with trends, facts, figures, graphs, and profiles for each of 521 liblogs. It continues the most comprehensive detailed look at liblogs (or any category of blogs) that I know of, showing measurable characteristics and how they’re changing over the years.

As I was saying…

Which two? The Blue Skunk Blog in 2007 and 2008; UK Web Focus in 2007 and 2009.

Beyond those, there are surprisingly few blogs that rank in the first quintile (or consistently in the second or third) across the three primary metrics even in a single year–e.g., four in the top quintile in 2007, two in 2008 and five in 2009.

Looking at single metrics across multiple years, it’s not surprising that there are more–e.g., 44 blogs are consistently among the most prolific in all three years, 26 have consistently long posts, and 45 have consistently high conversational intensity.

My overall conclusions for the chapter boil down to a single word with a one-sentence expansion:

Don’t. That is, don’t attempt to draw too many conclusions from these consistency notes—especially since some standout blogs in one or two years couldn’t be measured in other years.

Profiles

Profiles for these blogs–mentioned in this chapter and not previously profiled–appear in Chapter 6:

Not So Distant Future

The Rock & Roll Librarian

infomusings

Zzzoot

snail

The FRBR Blog

It’s all good

Infoblog

Random Musings from the Desert

Tombrarian

Superpatron – Friends of the Library, for the net

T. Scott

Marcus’ World

One Big Library

Library Cloud

LibraryTavern

Chicago Librarian

uncaged librarian

librarytwopointzero

mélange

LibraryLaw Blog

Pop Goes the Library

RSS4Lib

CogSci Librarian

The Bunless Librarian

PS

I believe there have been, through Chapter 6, two cases where–because of their order on some specific metric–two liblog profiles appear in “alphabetic order,” that is, the same order in which they appear in the index. There is no prize for figuring out the two cases…

This post is about Chapter 5 of But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, now available at the special introductory price of $29.50 paperback, $20 PDF.

This 319-page trade paperback provides a sweeping look at liblogs (blogs created by library people but, generally, not blogs that are official library publications), with trends, facts, figures, graphs, and profiles for each of 521 liblogs. It continues the most comprehensive detailed look at liblogs (or any category of blogs) that I know of, showing measurable characteristics and how they’re changing over the years.

Conversations

Is blogging publication or conversation? Yes and sometimes. Blogging is always a form of publishing—but some posts on some blogs become conversations. The conversational function varies heavily from blog to blog, and newer tools—particularly FriendFeed and FaceBook—may have weakened blog conversations, with the odd result that some extended FriendFeed conversations are based on blog posts and might otherwise take place on the blogs.

Some blogs don’t have comments, either because the blogger doesn’t allow them or because the posts don’t attract comments. And, there are some blogs where I couldn’t determine the number of comments—although there are also blogs where I couldn’t track length but could count comments.

This chapter considers overall comments for each blog during the three-month study periods (March-May 2007, 2008, and 2009)–but also the more interesting metric: conversational intensity or average comments per post. There’s an anomalous change in the highest overall comments (dropping from 1,689 in 2007 and 1,219 in 2008 to 581 in 2009), almost certainly the result of one particular blog moving onto the inscrutable (or at least unmeasurable) LJ/SLJ blog platform–I’d call it “blowing a fuse,” but that would be a cheap joke. In fact, highest conversational intensity went up sharply in 2008 (from 28.9 to 53.0) and stayed up in 2009 (51.0), although the gap between the highest CI and the second highest CI was huge (second highest: 13.8 comments per post, with four others over 10).

The chapter also includes three-year patterns for changes in conversational intensity. It’s hard to draw any overall conclusions, since over the 2007-2009 period, roughly 40% of blogs increased significantly (more than 20%) in conversational intensity while another 40% decreased significantly!

Liblog Profiles

These blogs are profiled in Chapter 5 because they were either among those with the most overall comments in 2009, the highest conversational intensity in 2009 or at least 50% more conversational intensity in 2009 than in 2008–and they hadn’t already been profiled in Chapters 1-4.

• LibraryThing
• Library Lovers’ LiveJournal
• Confessions of a real librarian
• Ruminations
• blyberg.net
• @ the library
• Closed Stacks
• “Self-plagiarism is style”
• Thingology (LibraryThing’s ideas blog)
• Filipino Librarian
• info-mational
• Library Web Chic
• Gargoyles loose in the library
• HeyJude
• librariesinteract.info
• Library Revolution
• The Vampire Librarian
• Dewey’s Dartboard
• librarygrrrl.net
• Collections 2.0
• The Eeyore Librarian
• Miss Information
• Circ and Serve
• Foxylibrarian.com
• Larocque and Roll
• lis.dom
• the goblin in the library
• Chornomore
• Loose Cannon Librarian
• ADHD Librarian
• The Cataloguing Librarian
• California Dreamin’
• Librarians as Knowledge Managers
• InfoMatters
• Gemini Moon
• Library Technology in Texas
• Dynamic Librarian
• Innovate
• Quædam cuiusdam
• Libraries & Life
• Speak Quietly: Ramblings About Libraries, Writing, and Everything in Between
• commonplaces
• PomeRantz
• Spellbound Blog
• Remaining Relevant
• the disorganized librarian
• Panlibus
• Librarian Philosopher
• τεχνοσοφια