Walt at Random

The second half of this post’s title really applies equally well to Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four (2012-13) and specific issues of Cites & Insights (or C&I in general), although in this case I’m posting about The Big Deal and the Damage Done:

If you think it’s worthwhile, spread the word.

Tell other people about it on your blog. Spread the word on appropriate lists (whether the lists use Listserv software or an alternative). Tweet about it. Comment at Facebook. Whatever.

I’m pretty good at analysis, synthesis, writing and layout. I’m pretty lousy at self-promotion, entrepreneurial activity, and drumbeating. I don’t feel it’s appropriate to keep touting my stuff more than once (per publication) on any given list, especially not one like PUBLIB. I really don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to join lists where I have no natural nexus just so that I can post ads for publications.

If you think it’s worthwhile, spread the word.

I’ve done my part. The books are priced very modestly by library-book standards and by most standards–$9.99 in both cases for the PDF ebook; under $20 for each paperback (the difference in price is based on length of the book and, thus, production costs).

As for C&I, it’s free–but if you think it’s worthwhile and find it valuable, you could join the half-dozen or so (this year) who’ve actually contributed to it. The Paypal donation link’s right there on the home page.

Of course, if you think the books are worthless trash or seriously flawed, you should probably say so–and maybe say what’s wrong, if it’s something fixable in a future edition.

If the flaw is that they’re not free, there’s not a lot I can do about that; if they need to be free to be “worthwhile,” then they’re not really worthwhile, are they?

Oh, and if you want one of my books to be available to students and others? The PDF versions never have DRM. They never did. (Lulu doesn’t even allow it any more, for which they deserve kudos.)

Want to put an e-copy on reserve? Be my guest.

Want to make it available on a one-at-a-time basis on your own ebook server? Be my guest.

Want to make it available on an unlimited basis within your own institution? I’ll ask you to behave fairly and ethically–and if that means buying four e-copies as an appropriate “price,” well, I’m not litigious in this area–not even close.

(One non-US institution asked about that; I provided an explicit permission to mount the ebook on an unlimited basis if they purchased four copies. I ask for a fair shake; obviously, if each major U.S. academic library purchased four e-copies, I’d be more than happy… On the other hand, if one person buys an e-copy, mounts it and says “Go ahead! Free for all!” that’s flat-out unethical. I’ll certainly object, even if I probably wouldn’t sue. You’re saying that my labor is explicitly worthless; I don’t appreciate that.)

I believe the new book raises important issues and provides important information in a way that hasn’t been done before. If you agree…well, you know the refrain.

I believe this is the final post–at least for the moment–in this brief series.

It’s probably not obvious, but those last three words have three separate links, not one long link. And, realistically, there’s a fourth post in that series, just without the name.

This is a project–or maybe it’s two projects–that I’ve been thinking about for a while, that I’ve even posted about once or twice. Or maybe even three times, indirectly.

It’s a project that could be published by a traditional publisher, which would make it slower, but would provide cachet–and provide the marketing and publicity that I’m so woefully bad at providing.

And, if done as two books, it’s actually a project that could be useful far outside of librarianship. If, that is, I had any plausible way of reaching people outside librarianship.

Here’s the new working title, for the general part if it’s two parts:

Mostly Numbers: Coping with Everyday Statistics

Here’s the current very rough outline of the project (both parts)–to be written in my most straightforward style with lots of examples and absolutely no equations.

Mostly Numbers: Coping with Everyday Statistics

1.       Introduction

Part 1. Tricky Numbers, Trickier Statistics

2.       Coping with Averages: The Four-Apple Approach

3.       Why Everyday Statistics are Mostly Numbers

Part 2. Problems with Statistics and Graphs

4         Misleading Graphs

5         Misleading Samples: When 30 is Not Enough

6         Exaggerated Exactness

7         When Normal Distribution Doesn’t Work

8         Doing it Right: Transparency and Ethics

9         Fair Presentations and Coping with Outliers

Part 3. The Basics of Real-World Number-Handling

10     The Terms You Need to Know

11     The Other Terms You’ll Encounter

12     The Tests You Can Probably Ignore

13     The Tools I’m Using for This Book

14     Mostly Numbers, Not Really Statistics

15     Beyond Numbers: When You Really Need Statistics

[Librarian’s Extension: Part 4. The Real Complexity of Library Numbers]

16     Public Libraries

17     Academic Libraries

[Librarian’s Extension: Part 5. How-To: Getting the Most out of Public Datasets]

18     Using Excel to Expand Your Public Library Awareness

19     Using Excel to Expand Your Academic Library Awareness

Backmatter

Intended length: <200 pages. If done as two parts, <150 pages for general part, <100 pages for librarian supplement.

To be made available as an ebook (at least PDF, probably Kindle, maybe EPUB) and print book; prices set at $8 above costs.

Important, useful, used, interesting?

I suppose I’m asking for more feedback. Now that I’m learning more about crowdsourcing models, I don’t know that I’m likely to make such a suggestion (and I’ll probably have “on the other hand” posts related to some previous ones soon).

I think the book would be (mildly) important.

I’m 100% certain it would be useful.

I’m 99% certain I can make it interesting.

And I have not an idea in the world whether the potential market–that is, whether it would be used–is:

• Half a dozen (basically those who’ve already said “what a great idea!”)
• Sixty (assuming those who’ve already responded are about 10% of the market.
• Six hundred (see above but 1%)
• Six thousand (yeah, right).

I suspect the right number–for me, as a self-publisher using Lulu and with my so-called network of professional acquaintances, is somewhere between the second and third bullets. If it’s closer to the second bullet, it’s not worth doing–to do it right will involve a fair amount of effort. If it’s very close to (or below) the third bullet, it may be worth self-publishing (but probably wouldn’t be worthwhile for a “real” publisher).

So: I haven’t entirely given up on the idea. I also haven’t actually started writing it.

Meanwhile, I’m pondering those other situations. And coming to some tentative conclusions. Maybe.

Comments, as always, welcome.

 

 

Continuing this brief series…

Here’s a difficult case–one where I believe the work is useful and possibly important, where I found it interesting enough to do the first time around, and where I have no way of knowing whether it’s likely to be used enough to make a second go-round (improved in several ways) worthwhile:

Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four (2012-13).

That’s the $9.99 Lulu ebook. You can also get it in paperback for $19.99 from Lulu or–the snazzy and durable version–in casewrap hardcover for $28.99.

Or, for that matter, if you need an ISBN or find it easier to buy from Amazon than from Lulu, there’s a Kindle version for $9.99 (which you can borrow free if you’re a Kindle Prime member) and a CreateSpace paperback edition (different cover), ISBN 978-1481279161, for $21.95 at Amazon.

Here’s the CreateSpace cover…

And here’s the problem…

It’s not that nobody’s purchased it. Actually, more than 80 and fewer than 100 copies have been sold so far (almost all of them via Lulu).

I did a special Oregon/Washington edition in conjunction with a talk I gave at the two library associations’ joint conference a couple of weeks ago.

(You might want to look at the free PDF version of that special report, in case you’re part of an organization that might want a similar report done. It also gives some hints as to how I would change a new edition of the overall book.)

The problem is that I don’t know how useful the book actually is, how to get it to the people who I think could use it most, and how much it’s likely to be used. And, perhaps equally to the point, whether the concept is useful enough, to enough libraries, that it would be worth doing a revised, improved (graphs included!) 2014 edition when the 2011 IMLS public library data becomes available.

I’ve said before that if 150 copies of the book (in all forms) sell by the time the 2011 data emerges, I’ll probably do another edition–and if 300 copies sell, I’ll definitely do another one. And, of course, I’ll continue to invite feedback on how it could be done better.

Flesh, blood and bones

The book attempts to provide numeric evidence (“statistical,” but not so much, and that’s another installment…) to help public libraries tell their stories to funding agencies.

I would fully agree with anybody who says that the numbers–at least those gathered for the IMLS reports–don’t really tell the story of a public library’s value to its community. That story is made up of other stories: The children learning to read and love books, the unemployed using library computers to find work and library resources to improve themselves, etc., etc.

I think of those stories as the flesh and blood of a library’s essential value to its community.

But a library also needs the bones–and that’s where the numbers come in, especially for the more hardnosed city councils, county supervisors and other funding agencies.

Does my book help provide the bones? I hope so; I can’t be sure without feedback.

Funding methods and reality

I could mount a Kickstarter campaign to underwrite the 2011 version–possibly with the ebook edition being free for the taking.

That makes no sense unless there’s obvious evidence that the book (as revised) would be both useful and used. (Not that it’s at all clear I could succeed with a Kickstarter campaign…)

I’m acutely aware that, in thousands of cases where I believe the book could be most valuable–libraries too small to have their own numbers experts or marketing groups–it’s not only unlikely that the librarian (or perhaps the Friends group, if there is one) would hear about the book, it’s not even clear they’d ever have time to read it, even if it was free. (“Thousands” is never hyperbole where public libraries are concerned…)

So that’s the quandary. I don’t have answers. There’s another tough case where I could actually have more options (in the case of Give Us a Dollar, I think the timelag of using a traditional publisher pretty much rules out that option). Maybe in the next installment, whenever that happens…

As always, feedback welcome. And in case you missed it and you’re an academic librarian (or library school faculty member or…), yesterday’s post (“It Didn’t Work for Phil Ochs, It Doesn’t Work for Jeffrey Beall“) is partly about the possible crowdsourcing of a free ebook edition of The Big Deal and the Damage Done, and requests feedback on the possibility (using unglue.it) and what sorts of premiums would make crowdsourcing appealing.

I could really use feedback on those issues!

I had read a few items recently attempting to argue that the serials crisis was over, thanks to the Big Deal and other publisher “discounts” from the early late 20th and early 21st centuries. Indeed, reading those items (or in one case an apparently-accurate comment on an article behind a paywall) was part of what convinced me to do something outrageous:

Look at the facts

Looking at the facts–actual academic library serials expenditures and the apparent effects on library book budgets and everything else academic libraries need to spend money on–was a lot more sobering than I expected.

Thus the book, The Big Deal and the Damage Done. (Read more about that here, download the ebook for a mere $9.99 here, or buy the paperback for a modest $16.50 here.)

I wasn’t planning a sales pitch, and this really isn’t one, but very recent events encouraged this brief post.

To wit:

• Jeffrey Beall’s absurd pronouncement that “The Serials Crisis is Over” and his even more absurd suggestion that the only reason for OA is the serials crisis, and thus that OA should go away. (At this point, naming Beall’s blog “Scholarly Open Access” is, I guess, a kind of joke. Not a very good joke, to be sure.)
• His absurd and offensive response to Karen Coyle’s note on my book (thanks, Karen!), where he said “He should have read the sources I cite first.” As I noted, I had read most of the sources–but I didn’t take their publisher-oriented claims as The Word, when I also had facts available.
• Mike Taylor’s post at SV-POW (I’ve typed out the full name WAY too often already), “Of course the serials crisis is not over, what the heck are you talking about?”
• And, perhaps tangential but not entirely unrelated, some suggestions at LSW-FF that I might consider trying to unglue.it the ebook version of this book, so that library school students and every academic librarian might have ready access to it. (It’s off to a plausible start, but that start still doesn’t represent much more than 0.5% of American academic libraries, especially since several of the sales have been to Canada and the UK.)

Phil Ochs?

The first line of the chorus of his song “The War is Over”–”I declare the war is over.” It wasn’t; he knew that; but it was a valiant attempt at showing the power of song.

Beall’s post, on the other hand, appears to be a valiant attempt at showing the power of nonsense.

I declare that the serials crisis, the event that gave birth to the open-access movement, is over.

That’s the first sentence of the post, and the only portion of it that squares with the facts is that Beall is making a declaration.

Fact: The serials crisis did not give birth to the OA movement, or at least it certainly wasn’t the only causative factor. There are several important reasons to support OA, only one of which is the serials crisis. (Solving the affordability crises for academic libraries–if that had happened, which it clearly has not–does NOTHING to provide access to all of us unaffiliated types: independent scholars, patients, everybody else, just to name one issue.)

Fact: The serials crisis is not over in any real-world sense. Even Harvard can’t afford the serials it wants–and other academic libraries can’t afford to keep being libraries and keep up with serials prices.

Of course, my book isn’t part of the “scholarly literature.” It’s entirely fact-based, the facts are entirely reproducible, I was entirely transparent about my methodology, and I believe it’s in the best traditions of scholarship (except that there’s no literature review and I didn’t actually begin with a hypothesis)…but I’m not a scholar and didn’t submit it to a refereed journal.

Crowdsourcing?

Now comes the tough part (for me, at least): It’s been suggested that it would be nice if everybody could have access to my study–which is book-length, although it’s a relatively short book–at no charge.

Those who have suggested it do recognize that I put a fair amount of work into it, and that nobody is sponsoring my work (nor is it something I do in my “spare” time after an actual paid job). What they’re suggesting is crowdsourcing a reasonable payment to make the ebook version free (and maybe get it into EPUB rather than only the current non-DRM PDF form). That means unglue.it (or some other crowdsourcing system, but unglue.it seems most appropriate here).

I’m thinking about it. I’m not much of a promoter, and I shudder at the thought of creating a little video on the book, but…well…

Here’s how you can help (other than buying the book, which encourages me to keep going):

• What sorts of premiums–preferably ones that don’t involve actual cash, since that sort of undoes the purpose of the crowdsourcing–would you find worthwhile?
• Do you think this is a good idea?

I can think of some possibilities (e.g., custom analyses for single campuses or groups of campuses) but would be interested in your ideas.

One note about this: If I do it, there will be three goals–

1. A minimal level at which I’d agree to make the ebook freely available (and maybe provide an epub version)
2. A higher level at which I’d guarantee to do a new edition when the 2012 NCES data is available
3. An even higher level at which I’d guarantee to do the 2012 edition–and would make the ebook version of that open access and available for free.

Comments? Suggestions? Either as comments or to waltcrawford@gmail.com

(Of course, if somebody wanted to underwrite the whole project, get in touch, but I won’t hold my breath. I can tell you the price in that case would be in the medium four digits.)

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The eagle-eyed may note a slight change in the text. As of 7 p.m. PDT, sales hit 20 copies, which is–technically-just over 0.5% (that is, one-half of one percent) of U.S. academic libraries. On the other hand, the 20th sale, along with several others, is Canadian…

This is the first of what may be several introspective posts that others may or may not find too introspective to be worthwhile. Consider yourself warned.

Write What You Want

A colleague–one of the many LSW-FF folks who I’ve learned from, argued with and generally counted on to keep me from turning into a complete hermit–said a while back that I should just take on those projects that really interest me, ‘cuz (and I’m paraphrasing here) there was no plausible way to anticipate whether anybody else would find them worth doing or the results worth paying for.

It was good advice. I sometimes remember to take it. That and other advice convinced me to drop the Liblog and library blog series as just not being worth the effort.

The last two books in the Liblog series are still available–The Liblog Landscape 2007-2010 and But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009–and, for that matter, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 is still available on Amazon (the CreateSpace edition).

You could say that I ran the Liblog series into the ground. I probably wouldn’t argue the point. I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a tenth-anniversary look (my first, very partial, examination of liblogs was in 2005, so that would be next year, 2014, although I could also wait until 2016 or 2017 and use 2007 as a starting point), but it’s really unlikely that I’ll do it. Blogs are old hat (still useful, but part of the background) and it would be a lot more work than it’s worth.

That’s partly a digression (something I specialize in, especially in blog posts) but it also suggests that there’s a little more to the equation than just “write what I want.”

Important, useful, used, interesting, fun

Thus the formulation in the post title–and I’ve added a fifth element: fun.

As I’m looking back at what I’ve been doing and consider what I might do, assuming that nobody comes swooping in with an offer that makes guaranteed dollars a significant part of the equation, I think it boils down to these five elements to answer two questions:

1. Is X worth [investigating or writing about]?
2. If the answer to X is yes, how should the results appear?

#2 could be stated as a multiple-choice test: Should the results appear as…

• One or more Friendfeed or LSW-Friendfeed items?
• One or more blog posts?
• A single or multipart essay in Cites & Insights?
• A self-published book?
• A commercially-published book?
• Some combination of the above

When it comes to the third, fourth and fifth possibilities, another set of questions–much less easy to answer than the first two–come into play:

• Will it be well-read?
• If it’s self-published, will it draw enough sales to make it worth the trouble?
• If the intent is for it to be commercially published, will a publisher find it salable–and will they be right?

Recasting

I may get back into the “self-published vs. commercially-published” issue in a later post–it’s complicated, as it also involves my lack of marketing expertise and the status of self-published books.

(I was reminded again of the special role of self-publishing in Christopher Harris’ column **see below** today at The Digital Shift in which he basically writes off all self-published books as worthless, especially since there are so many traditionally-published books. Yes, he’s talking about school libraries, but it’s still a pretty sneering look at anything other than Big Traditional Publishers, especially as he explicitly equates “so-called independent publishers” with self-publishing. Oh, and seems to say that “adult fiction” is automatically erotica, and that’s what “so-called independent publishers” are all about. He may be talking about K12 but he explicitly generalizes his lesson to all libraries: “I just can’t believe that self-publishing is ever going to be the next big thing for libraries. Not when there are so many other great books still waiting to be read from the expert and established publishers with whom we already work.” Thanks a lot, Christopher.)

Anyway: One way to recast the set of questions that I probably should explicitly ask myself is this. I’ll offer this, then–for the sake of (hah!) brevity–just give one example. Later, if I’m inspired, I’ll come back to some other cases and the questions that arise.

As with most of my blog posts, this one isn’t even getting the level of self-editing that C&I and my Lulu books get. It’s stream-of-blather, which is like stream of consciousness but following a really good lunch.

• If X is fun but not very important, and not fun enough to attract paying readers, it belongs in C&I (and doesn’t deserve a lot of time).
• If X is interesting but not something people will find directly useful, it probably belongs in C&I. (I have explicit examples of that.)
• If X is clearly useful and really too long or Big for C&I, it probably belongs as a book–but “useful” doesn’t guarantee “used” (and purchased).
• When something seems important but it’s not clear how directly useful my treatment can be–then the questions are really difficult.

As noted, future posts may deal with examples of several of these and other permutations. For now, I’ll look at the current case–one that I’m 100% certain is important, 90% certain is useful, much less certain will be widely purchased and read, and that is too big for C&I.

Case #1

Namely, The Big Deal and the Damage Done. [That's the $16.50 paperback. Here's a link to the $9.99 PDF ebook, having the same no-DRM policy my PDFs have always had.]

Important? Absolutely. (For more info, read the post introducing it–it really has been out only five days since I announced it!]

Interesting? I think so, or I wouldn’t have done it.

Useful? That’s up to readers; I believe that knowing the details of the situation is useful.

Used/read? We’ll see. It’s off to a plausible start–a couple of sales a day, mostly ebooks, which is fine with me (in some ways, the PDF is a superior version, since it has color in the graphs).

Would it have made sense for a traditional publisher? I honestly don’t see how, especially given timing issues. Nor would I be willing to try to convince a publisher that they could sell, say, 600-800 copies at $45 a shot.

Which then leads to a question that came up this weekend: What would it take to make the book freely available (in ebook form)–that is, downloadable for $0.00 rather than $9.99?

If I was doing sponsored research–being paid up-front–the question might not arise: I’d be delighted to see it made freely available. My best guess, trying to estimate the time I spent on the report, is that about $4,000 worth of work (at a relatively cheap consulting/contractor rate) was involved.

If some group offered me $4,000 to make the book available for free in PDF form, I’d probably take it. And, significantly (especially if there was another guaranteed sum), I’d almost certainly do the 2012 followup that may or may not be more depressing and even more important.

But that’s just the latest example–one where I’m nearly certain the publication is important and should be read by quite a few people, but can’t show how it would be directly useful to their everyday life.

Was it fun to do? Well, it was interesting…and there’s another project still very much up in the air, which, if I do it, would benefit from the experience of doing this one.

Anyway, that’s the end of the musing for today. More later. Maybe tomorrow, maybe later this week, maybe weeks or months from now…

1,258 words. A really good editor could turn this into a nice crisp 200 words, I suspect. Hooray for good editing!

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**Re the Harris column, on rereading it for a third time: Yes, he’s primarily talking about K12 libraries, and yes, they have different problems, but he still throws in some unwarranted generalizations and, in his final paragraph, certainly seems to be referring to all libraries. I’ll certainly be warned against ever trying to do anything that addresses school library issues, if Harris’ attitude is typical–but I wasn’t likely to do that anyway.

I’d normally say something like this about my new study of the apparent effects of serials prices over the first decade of the millennium on academic library book budgets and “remainder” budgets (what’s left after paying for current serials and other acquisitions):

I’m delighted to announce that The Big Deal and the Damage Done is now available as a $9.99 PDF ebook or a $16.50 paperback, both at Lulu.com (follow the links, go to the bottom of this page or just go to lulu.com and search for big deal damage).

But I’m not entirely delighted–because the results are much worse than I’d hoped or expected.

On one hand, I’m delighted that what started out as a whim (“just how badly have book budgets been hurt by continued expansion of serials prices?”) that I thought would take 5-10 hours to research and result in a nice little Cites & Insights article, and turned into a much bigger project (I’m not going to guess the total time involved, but let’s say that at $50/hour consulting rates, it would be a multi-thousand-dollar project)…is finally done. For now.

On that hand, I’m also delighted with the results–a 132-page (6×9″) non-DRM PDF ebook or trade paperback with 58 tables and 94 figures (all Excel graphs) that shows, in detail and adjusted for inflation, how academic library spending has changed between 2000 and 2010 for current serials (big deals and otherwise), “books” (which includes all acquisitions except current serials, including ebooks, av and back runs of serials), and “remainder budgets,” everything it takes to run a library except for acquisitions. The book looks at academic libraries in the U.S. overall, but mostly views them in three different breakdowns: By overall budget size, by sector (e.g., public, private, for-profit, non-profit, four-year, two-year), and by Carnegie classification.

The PDF uses three colors for many graphs. The paperback is black and white except for the cover, but the three colors are used with line segments (dots or dashes) so that the graphs are fully readable without color.

On the other hand…I was hoping I’d find modest damage, especially since the most recent NCES survey is for 2010 and I’ve heard more comments about disastrous cuts in book budgets since 2010.

The Process

There’s nothing in the book that you can’t find out for yourself, frankly, although I do add some commentary. But “find out for yourself” would take quite a while–downloading NCES data, creating derivative figures, deciding which subsets to work with, graphing the results.

I began with no real conception of what I’d find–this is honest, transparent analysis. I certainly didn’t come up with that title until I was well into the process and seeing some of the results. The first results didn’t seem too bad, because roughly two dozen very large academic libraries have done a pretty good job of maintaining acquisitions budgets for things other than current serials, a good enough job that it tends to mask what’s happening elsewhere. The deeper I dug, the worse it got…

The Product and Publicity

This isn’t a terribly wordy study–Word says it’s just under 20,000 words, or about two-thirds the length of the current Cites & Insights. The figures and tables take up much of the space, but also tell much of the story.

The analysis project was inspired in part by Wayne Bivens-Tatum’s January 18, 2013 post, “Politics, Economics, and Screwing the Humanities” and in part by the work I was doing to prepare a three-hour Open Access preconference for the joint 2013 conference of the Oregon and Washington Library Associations. I see true OA as one possible medium-term way of ameliorating the damage done–with a whole bunch of caveats.

If you’re an academic librarian or concerned about the future of academic libraries, I believe you’ll find this worthwhile, but that’s your call. If it’s well-received, I’ll probably do a second edition when the 2012 NCES survey results become available.

Here’s the thing: I don’t have good ways to publicize this book, other than on this blog, in Cites & Insights, and via a tweet or two and maybe updates at Facebook and Google+. There may be academic library lists that should know about it, but it’s generally considered bad practice for an author or publisher to join lists and tout their own new books.

On the other hand, it’s entirely appropriate for other people to mention the book if they think it’s worthwhile.

I’m going to point you to another Wayne Bivens-Tatum post at Academic Librarian, this one posted May 1, 2013: “Walt Crawford’s Big Deal and the Damage Done.” I thank him for the mention. I encourage you to take a look at the book (the first few pages are available as a preview and, you know, the ebook‘s less than $10–if you buy it today, May 2, and use the coupon code SILEO, either version is 20% off). If you think it’s worthwhile, you’ll do me–and the chances of a followup 2012 study–a big favor by passing the word along.

If you think it’s terrible, you should say that, to be sure. And if you have suggestions for improvement next time around–if there is a next time around–I’d be happy to hear them.

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Modified May 9, 2013: I’d forgotten to include the cover! And since it’s long past May 2, 2012, I’ve struck out the sale comment. Your best bet may always be to go to Lulu.com, look for a current sale (you never know…), then search for Walt Crawford or big deal damage

I was informed this morning that a couple of the links to Cites & Insights Books on my home page didn’t work.

(Thanks, Will!)

I had tested all of those links when I last updated the footer–which is supposed to be identical on the home page, at the foot of Cites & Insights, and at the foot of this blog. I would swear they worked then. But I tried to use shorter URLs (basically, lulu.com/ and product=xxxxx) rather than the much longer IDs that show up in Lulu searches.

I guess Lulu really doesn’t like that. Or maybe Lulu wants you to start at www.lulu.com in all cases (which does have the advantage that sales–such as the POURING code to get 15% off through Friday, April 19, 2013–will show up.

So…

I’ve now replaced all of the short links with the long, long URLs.

I’ve tested all of them.

As of right now (1:40 p.m. PDT, Thursday, April 18, 2013), they all work.

The footers are identical on the three pages.

I hope they continue to work, but when in doubt, go to lulu.com (with or without the www) and search for Walt Crawford; you’ll get all my books, including the hardcover Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing, and one other book for which I wrote a preface.

Sorry if dozens of you were inconvenienced, or if even one of you was.

 

 

If you’d like to have an autographed copy of the special hardbound edition of Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four: Oregon and Washington Library Benefits and Spending, you should probably order it in the next day or three: It typically takes a week and a half (or longer) for a hardbound version (the casewrap process seems to be the culprit). I’d be happy to sign your copy during the Oregon/Washington Library Associations conference–I’ll be there from Tuesday evening (April 23) through Friday morning (April 26).

Or, to be sure, you can download the free PDF version (did I mention free?)–and if you have a duplexing color printer (e.g., most cheapo multifunction printers) and a stapler with 4.5″ throat, you can produce your own booklet version. You’ll find instructions on that process here. Yes, I’d be happy to autograph those as well, but if you just download it to work with on an e-reader, I’d rather not deface ereaders…

I look forward to seeing y’all during the conference, possibly at the preconference on Open Access (with some last-minute research added) or at one or more of my other talks (one on micropublishing, one on Give Us a Dollar…). I also plan to be at part of the Meet & Greet, the Society Gaius session and the President’s Reception, and probably hanging around the Hilton for much of Wednesday and Thursday…

 

Thanks to whoever purchased Cites & Insights 2011, Cites & Insights 2012, and Give Us a Dollar… yesterday.

I’m assuming that’s one person or library, although it could be more. I do appreciate it. Sorry C&I 2011′s spine is a little…umm…bizarre; 2011 was a strange year (and almost the last year) for C&I.

I trust you used VERNUM to save 20%.

Note for others: VERNUM continues to work (one purchase per account, but any number of items per purchase, I think) through tomorrow, March 31, 2013.

 

A few weeks ago, I had “One quick question for librarians” and received a couple of positive responses.

This is the next step–offering a basic outline of the proposed book, in the hopes of getting more feedback, either positive or negative.

I anticipate a down-to-earth book, not intended to make readers statistical whizzes but intended to make them better able to recognize bullshit misleading statistics when they see them, maybe more familiar with the basics of “statistics” (really numbers more than anything fancy enough to be called statistics), and definitely able to gather their own comparative information from the big national databases without investing in new tools or needing to become statistical gurus.

[Part 4 would, for each of the two library categories, take a possible example of something your library might want as background and show, step by step, how to do it with the tools you probably already have.]

Worth doing? I’d like to think so, but unless I have reason to believe that at least one hundred and preferably a few hundred library folks also think so, it’s not economically feasible.

Feedback?

The Mythical Average Library: Coping with the Numbers–Outline

Part 1. Problems with Statistics and Graphs

1. Misleading Graphs
2. Misleading Samples: When 30 is Not Enough
3. Exaggerated Exactness
4. When Normal Distribution Doesn’t Work
5. Doing it Right: Transparency and Ethics
6. Fair Presentations and Coping with Outliers

Part 2. The Basics of Real-World Number-Handling

1. The Terms You Need to Know
2. The Other Terms You’ll Encounter
3. The Tests You Can Probably Ignore
4. The Tools I’m Using for This Book
5. Mostly Numbers, Not Really Statistics

Part 3. The Real Complexity of Library Numbers

1. Public Libraries
2. Academic Libraries

Part 4. How-To: Getting the Most out of Public Datasets

1. Using Excel to Expand Your Public Library Awareness (using IMLS)
2. Using Excel to Expand Your Academic Library Awareness (using NCES)

Part 5. Beyond Numbers

1. When You Need Actual Statistics

Backmatter

Notes

Intended length: <200 pages.

To be made available as an ebook (at least PDF, probably Kindle, maybe EPUB) and print book; prices set at $8 above costs. (Which would suggest $9.99 for ebooks, probably around $18 for trade paperback, $28 for hardback–but since the length and outline are both subject to change, so are the prices.)

Feedback of any sort, either as comments here or as email to waltcrawford@gmail.com, would be greatly appreciated.