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Standouts and Standards (But Still They Blog, 6)

Posted in C&I Books, Liblogs, Writing and blogging on December 9th, 2009

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…

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    Conversations (But Still They Blog, 5)

    Posted in C&I Books, Liblogs, Writing and blogging on December 8th, 2009

    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.

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    Changes in frequency (But Still They Blog, 3)

    Posted in C&I Books, Liblogs, Writing and blogging on December 6th, 2009

    To nobody’s surprise, this post is about Chapter 3 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.

    Changes in Frequency

    It’s clear from Chapter 2 that, on the whole, visible liblogs had considerably fewer posts in 2009 than in 2007, with fewer liblogs having any posts and fewer posts per blog.

    But blogs don’t all change in the same way. This chapter considers changes in posting frequency on a blog-by-blog basis…

    Quite a few libloggers did significantly more blogging in 2008 than in 2007—all of [the top 20%] and part of [the next 20%] The median blog in Quintile 1 [the top 20%] had 75% more posts. The next year, the median increase was only 50% and, while the entire first quintile included more posts, the change ranged down to barely noticeable (8%). Over the two-year period, the top quintile includes a number of blogs with slightly fewer posts in 2009 than in 2007. Still, as listed later in this chapter, there were dozens of blogs with more posts in each successive year.

    The second quintile, representing blogs with somewhat better year-to-year records than average, almost exactly matches my “relatively unchanged” definition (+20% to -20%) for 2007-2008, but ranges from tiny increases to losing a quarter of posts for 2008-2009—and, for the two-year period, includes blogs dropping four out of ten posts over two years.

    There is, of course, much more in the book itself, including a list of blogs with more posts in 2009 than in 2007 and other ways to view changes in frequency.

    Growth Blog Profiles

    These blogs–one with more posts in 2009 than in 2007 that hadn’t already been profiled–have profiles in Chapter 3.

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    Rivers, streams and rivulets (But Still They Blog 2)

    Posted in C&I Books, Liblogs, Writing and blogging on December 5th, 2009

    I’m not going to do the little pop quizzes I did last year (and started in “Looking at the landscape“). Instead, I’ll introduce this post by saying it’s about Chapter 2 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.

    Chapter 2: Rivers, Streams and Rivulets: Posting Frequency

    Some blogs are rivers of posts—and if you subscribe to several, you may come to think of them as firehoses. Others, including most liblogs, are streams or rivulets: Writers and groups of writers letting you know when they have something to say that works best as a blog post.

    How often do posts appear on a blog?

    Until feeds and aggregators became common, that was an important question. If you didn’t provide a reasonably steady stream of posts, people wouldn’t have reason to come back to your blog or bookmark it. Few posts, few readers. Some people advised trying to do at least one post a day. Others offered less strenuous advice.

    These days, when most readers see posts indirectly, a steady stream of posts is only important for certain kinds of blogs. Indeed, too many posts can work against readership, particularly if posts appear to be for the sake of posting.

    This chapter considers frequency of posts among the 521 liblogs for 2007, 2008 and 2009—and changes in the overall picture. The next chapter considers changes on a blog-by-blog basis, a somewhat different consideration.

    In all, 449 blogs had countable posts in March-May 2007, ranging from one post to 1,161, with a median of 25 posts (roughly two per week). 486 blogs had countable posts in March-May 2008, ranging from one post to 919, with a median of 20 posts. 434 blogs had countable posts in March-May 2009, ranging from one post to 909–with a median of 13, exactly one per week.

    There’s lots more in the chapter, of course.

    Liblogs profiled in Chapter 2

    These are prolific blogs (for 2009) that weren’t already profiled.

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    But Still They Blog: Now available

    Posted in C&I Books, Liblogs on November 29th, 2009
    But Still They Blog

    But Still They Blog

    But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009 is now available–at a special early-bird price through the end of the ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting (January 19, 2010 or thereabouts).

    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.

    What’s Here

    The liblogs included here (you’ll find the whole list in the sidebar) appear because:

    • They’re in English.
    • They began in December 2008 or earlier.
    • They have at least some relevance to libraries and librarianship, although that point gets stretched in a few cases.
    • They had at least three posts during March-May 2007, March-May 2008, or March-May 2009.
    • They were available on the web in the summer of 2009 (even if they’d ceased).
    • They were known to me–either because they were listed in the LISWiki list of blogs or the LISZen list of blogs or because they showed up in one of a hundred or so blogrolls that I checked.
    • They were “visible”–in this case, having a Google Page Rank of at least 4 in either early fall 2008 or early summer 2009.

    That final criterion was used deliberately to narrow this study’s focus slightly from the 2007-2008 study (which continues to be available, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look.). I’d hoped to get down to 400-450 blogs, making analysis easier and the book shorter. I didn’t manage to do quite that well, although the list of 607 blogs from the earlier study did come down to 480 (there are 41 new blogs).

    If you’re wondering: Only 50 liblogs were eliminated because of their low visibility. The others were either non-English [19], defunct (that is, no longer viewable in August 2009 and with no clear trail to a new URL or blogname) [15, plus three that now require passwords], or didn’t have at least three posts in March-May 2007 or March-May 2008 [37]…or, in three cases, really didn’t have any posts that had anything at all to do with libraries.

    What’s Discussed

    I’ll be doing a series of posts and articles over the next few (many?) months noting some of the metrics and offering some of the content, but here’s the gist:

    • The first chapter discusses the age of liblogs, blogging platform used, and currency as of September 30, 2009 (how long it had been since the most recent post).
    • The second and third chapters discuss posting frequency and changes in frequency.
    • Chapter 4 considers the length of blogs–and, more interesting, the average length of posts in blogs (and the changes in both of those metrics).
    • Chapter 5 deals with conversations: Number of comments per blog and per post and changes in conversational intensity (number of comments per post).
    • Chapter 6 considers standouts and standards–blogs that score consistently across multiple metrics or multiple years.
    • Chapters 7 and 8 consider patterns of change across three key metrics (frequency, average post length, average comments per post) for 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 respectively.
    • Chapter 9 considers correlations and averages, including averages for a very large subset of the liblog universe that might be considered “typical.”
    • Chapter 10 considers why people blog and how blogs change.
    • Chapter 11 discusses stopping and pausing.
    • Unlike last year’s study, this book distributes blog profiles throughout the chapters, typically including a profile when the blog shows up as noteworthy in one particular dimension. The final chapter includes profiles for “the rest of the liblogs”–50-odd blogs, some of which are indeed noteworthy for content but don’t happen to stand out in metrics.
    • There’s an index of blogs (with all mentions) and bloggers (only when they’re actually named). The page on which the blog is profiled appears in boldface in the index.

    Special Pricing

    From now until the end of the ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting (roughly January 19, 2010), But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009 will be available for a special introductory price:

    • The 6×9 trade paperback costs $29.50. (Lulu Media Mail shipping is now a flat $3.99 for all paperbacks, at least in the U.S.)
    • The book is also available as a downloadable PDF for $20.00

    Those prices will go up $5.50 and $5 respectively after Midwinter.

    Reduced Prices on C&I Books

    Prices on all other Cites & Insights Books have also been reduced, effective immediately:

    2 Comments »

    Tracking Andersonomics

    Posted in Books and publishing, C&I Books, Writing and blogging on June 1st, 2009

    Since it’s a new month, I thought I’d summarize the magnificent sales results of making the primary portions of The Liblog Landscape, Public Library Blogs and Academic Library Blogs free, free, free! And, since March-May is probably the season in which new copies of the actual books were most likely to sell, these are probably indicative results.

    • Academic Library Blogs and Public Library Blogs: Each book had one sale on CreateSpace/Amazon in March 2009 and one sale in Febr*uary 2009; Public Library Blogs had one Lulu sale in February, none in March. Neither book sold any copies in early April, before April 14, when C&I 9:6 (May 2009) provided the first portion of each book (everything except individual blog profiles) for free. Since then, sales have jumped to zero. (If there are no sales in June, both books will go permanently out of print–I’ll remove them from both sources. Additionally, that issue has underperformed–258 downloads to date, an unusually low number for the first 6 weeks of an issue. (The two essays add another 230 and 261 views respectively for public and academic library blogs. Thus, it appears that more than 500 people have seen each book section: more than ten times as many as purchased Academic Library Blogs and more than six times as many as purchased Public Library Blogs.) Consequences: Continuation of either project, at least by me, is dead. If a library school or person who believes they can do a better job would like to acquire the spreadsheets used for the books, let me know; we might be able to work something out.
    • The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: This book sold three copies on Amazon/CreateSpace in March and none in February, five on Lulu in February and none in March. No copies sold from April 1 through May 6, when all but the last chapter appeared as C&I 9:7 (June 2007). Since May 6, sales have held steady at zero. To date, there have been 600 downloads for the issue, which neither bad nor wonderful for the first three weeks.
    • By the way, I’m not differentiating between PDF versions (Lulu only) and paperbacks…

    Can I say absolutely that, in my case, “free” does not sell books? Not necessarily–but that’s one way to interpret all this. (The other direct experiment in reader support, making annual versions of C&I available in both paperback and PDF form, the latter being pure sponsorship, has yielded the same revenue as April-May book sales.)

    Consequences of the general failure of The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008? I’m not sure. It depends on how rapidly we finish the “settling in” process (a slow, very slow, extremely slow process, sometimes involving rethinking decisions…), how rapidly energy returns after that, what else might come along, etc. I do know that, absent up-front sponsorship (and “absent” seems likely to be the word), doing a new version can only make sense as a labor of stupidity love or fascination.

    Oh, as to the first experiment in PoD publishing: it’s up to 280 copies now and continues to sell at least one or two copies a month. It may yet reach the “magic number” (300, an arbitrary figure) of semi-success.

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    Our house is a very very very…

    Posted in C&I Books, Cites & Insights, Stuff on May 9th, 2009

    …fine house, although the two cats are both inside cats so won’t be in the yard. Nor can I honestly say that life used to be so hard…

    I can’t honestly say that I need to explain the absence of posts hereabout, since (one way or another) there’ve been more than my two-posts-a-week goal. I already explained the absence of new content for C&I three weeks ago, but gave y’all two chock-full issues of research results instead–and even that post follows up an earlier one.

    Notes along the way

    So this is just a progress report, with luck progressing toward a return to new articles of some minor merit.

    We now own a 45-year-old house, in generally excellent condition (although the roof may be iffy), in a beautiful neighborhood in Livermore, California. We’ll start trundling stuff over there on Monday, and expect to begin sleeping there on Thursday, 5/14–and to be entirely out of our old house on Monday, 5/18.

    For two or three hours yesterday, technically, we didn’t own a house. That’s the period between the recording of the sale of our 55-year-old house (in excellent condition, but in need of some remoding) in a beautiful neighborhood in Mountain View, California, and the recording of the purchase of the Livermore house. (We’re “renters” here for the next 9 days or so, part of the purchase agreement.)

    That’s the good news. The bad news, which was making both of us crazier than usual on Wednesday, Thursday and particularly Friday morning until about 1 p.m., is that we were supposed to be non-homeowners for two full days. That is, Mountain View was supposed to close escrow on May 5, with Livermore closing on May 8. And with sellers in Livermore waiting for the funds so they could in turn purchase another house…

    Apparently, the bank lending funds to the buyer of our old house left something out of the stuff they needed from those buyers… Given the stories we’ve heard about deals falling through at the last minute, we were, how you say, stressed. All the more so when 10 a.m. Friday came and went and the funds still hadn’t been wired… (After everyone else gets a chance to delay, it’s up to the county to actually time-stamp the grant deed as being recorded: The title insurance company won’t wire the funds from the sale until that happens.)

    So yesterday, until about 4:30 p.m. (when *our* purchase, rush-delivered, was time-stamped, thus closing escrow), we were really up in the air, with phone calls and email going back and forth among several real estate agents, three title companies, us, and probably others we don’t know about.

    It shouldn’t be this hard. There should be–there are–checklists of what needs to be done.

    Oh, and don’t get me started on the “paperless revolution” as it applies to California real estate deals. I don’t even want to measure all the papers we’ve had to deal with; I’m pretty sure we’ve signed or initialed at least a hundred documents in all. I know we’ll be getting CDs from both agents with copies of all the papers…and, to be sure, my Gmail account probably has 200+ megabytes of PDFs related to the move, including the PDFs-from-fax we received, printed out, signed, then scanned back in as PDF and attached back to email. That saves time, but still generates paper… (I say “California” because, at least in Santa Clara County, the disclosure documents are so extensive and there are so many other documents. I’m guessing some states and counties aren’t quite so cautious.)

    In the long run…

    It will all be worth it. Ask me in about two weeks… (A week to move, a week to settle in and unpack most of the boxes.) We just finished tagging all the packed boxes with the rooms they’re going to…and realized just how much we really have already packed. (60-70 boxes, maybe?) There’s still a fair amount to go…

    Meanwhile, I am so far thoroughly impressed by my second experiment in Andersonomics:

    • Ratio of people who’ve seen the first half of The Liblog Landscape via C&I to those who’d purchased copies: Roughly 10:1–and that ratio will certainly increase.
    • Number of additional copies sold, now that people can read (most of it) for free and are thus encouraged to pay for the real book: Identical to the figure for Academic Library Blogs and Public Library Blogs combined! That is…zero, so far. (But it’s early yet. That number could easily double or triple in the future.)

    2 Comments »

    4. Libraries and Publish on Demand

    Posted in Books and publishing, C&I Books on February 28th, 2009

    The basic idea here is that Lulu (and CreateSpace) makes it feasible for even the smallest public libraries to either publish books (community histories, etc.) that might only reach a few dozen people, to provide publication assistance for patrons to prepare books that might literally never sell a copy except to the author (genealogy is the immediate and obvious case, but there are others). And to do so with little or no monetary investment, including no upfront investment for the books themselves.

    Needed:

    • Full-fledged lesson plan/speaking notes, ideally in two forms (one-hour in person/online, three-hour in-person?)
    • Word2007 template for 6×9 book, with sample .docx using that template and explaining elements
    • Ideally, a Mac-friendly version and/or a Word2003 version
    • Even more ideally, an OpenOffice version (if that’s feasible–if OO has the chops for this)
    • A PoD book setting forth the whole scenario and serving as an example, very high priced on its own with a substantial discount for workshop attendees (or bulk purchases)
    • Does this need a color book as well?

    Book coverage:

    • Describing each element of the template
    • A typography overview, with notes on changing the template and lots of examples
    • A page and book layout overview, with notes on elements (and chapter changes)
    • Notes on copyfitting and typographic elegance
    • Notes on photos and charts, and the Excel trick
    • Notes on front matter and back matter
    • PDF issues
    • Notes on cover alternatives
    • Quick notes on alternative tools
    • When does the PoD option make sense?
    • Maybe notes on pricing, etc.–and the difference between PoD and vanity publishing.
    • Possibly other elements below

    Workshop coverage:

    Part 1: 30-45 minutes?

    • Possible uses [expand on this!]
    • Thinking about production options
    • What you don’t get with Lulu et al (copy editing, layout help, marketing, promotion)
    • What to do about those missing elements
    • Example pricing & release scenarios
    • The toolkit–basics and extensions
    • The nature of the template(s)

    Part 2: 60-90 minutes?

    • Thinking about a book project
    • Working with the templates
    • Step-by-step through the elements of a book
    • Content and organization
    • Refinement levels
    • When is 6×9 wrong? When do you need color?
    • The hazards of dense photo management in Word2007
    • Details and trickery: Copyfitting etc.

    Part 3: 45-60 minutes

    • Putting it all together
    • Cover refinement for wraparound covers
    • Checking the test copy
    • Thinking about sales & promotion
    • Discussion and other issues

    What else? Is this a reasonable workshop?

    Notes

    On one hand, I bring a fair amount of value to this one, given amateur typographic and layout experience (good enough that I produced the camera-ready copy for two ALA Editions books and several earlier G.K. Hall/Knowledge Industry books), my own experiences with Lulu, my copyfitting experience with C&I. There should be thousands of libraries that could use the information.

    On the other–I did a LITA regional workshop on desktop publishing in 1994 (I still have a copy of the workbook, including a magnificently and deliberately atrocious “do what I say” chapter). It seemed promising at the time. It happened twice, and was pretty much a disaster (partly because I wasn’t a great workshop presenter, mostly because very few people ever signed up).

    Quick evaluation

    • Medium-scale effort (all new material), except that adding Macintosh and OpenOffice templates might be difficult.
    • Medium value added: Experience with PoD, some layout/typographic experience, some copyfitting experience.
    • Upfront: No money as such, but book preparation
    • Value to the field: Potentially high
    • Monetary rewards: Unclear, and might involve travel
    • Personal rewards: Moderate–I’d like to see more libraries doing this.

    Comments?

    In the interests of a silly but amusing experiment, I am obliged to note that this post has nothing whatsoever to do with Kindle 2, Amazon, text-to-speech, 23 things or Authors Guild. It also has no specific references to Kansas or Nebraska.

    How did I get all four of these up so rapidly? I remembered Word2007′s “new post” feature. Since I already had the four discussions in a Word document, it was just a matter of cut, copy and post…

    11 Comments »

    1. Balanced Libraries, Second Edition

    Posted in C&I Books on February 28th, 2009

    A new edition that:

  • Incorporates Library 2.0 and “Library 2.0″ as one section, with indexing
  • Rewrites what’s there to remove redundancy and to update
  • Brings the discussion up to date.

    • Notes

    Balanced Libraries continues to sell, albeit slowly (three copies in February, 272 total to date). While the C&I special issue is history, albeit recent history, it continues to be downloaded/viewed at a brisk rate (>1,000 so far this year, >39,000 to date)—indeed. Would a book version have any legs at all?

    Quick evaluation

  • Relatively low effort—2/3 existing text, so mostly lots of layout, indexing and updating.
  • Value-added: Existing text and “independent” status
  • Upfront risk: None.
  • Value to the field: Relatively low, unless LIS schools bite—”the argument’s died down” although L2&L2 continues to be downloaded frequently.
  • Monetary rewards: Nothing to moderate, depending on response
  • Personal rewards: Relatively low.

    • Comments? Reactions?

    One previous comment already noted as, essentially, a no vote.

    In the interests of a silly but amusing experiment, I am obliged to note that this post has nothing whatsoever to do with Kindle 2, Amazon, text-to-speech, 23 things or Authors Guild. It also has no specific references to Kansas or Nebraska.

    2 Comments »

    2. Blogging for Libraries

    Posted in C&I Books, Writing and blogging on February 28th, 2009

    A single book that would:

  • Replace Public Library Blogs and Academic Library Blogs
  • Begin with a chapter or two on good practices and minimalist planning for library blogs biased toward success.
  • Focus on the 176 (or 110?) “active” academic blogs and 185 (or 129?) “active” public blogs, for a total of 361 or 239 blogs in total
  • Survey as many bloggers in that group as possible, to try to find out (a) apparent subscription and use levels (to be used anonymously), (b) “success stories,” (d) comments.
  • Bring the stats up to date (either doing 2008 and 2009, or just jumping from 2007 to 2009) and add “internal stats” as available, also using richer metrics.
  • Try to establish typologies of successful blogs
  • Use half-page profiles of all of these as success stories.

    • Notes

    There’s a trickle of sales for the two books (two of one, one of the other in February; still short of 80 copies for Public Library Blogs and 50 for Academic Library Blogs altogether).

    While the new book would be much richer, that might not translate into reasonable sales—this really may be one that can only be done with sponsorship.

    Quick evaluation

  • Level of effort: High, involving email, survey, handling return, and metrics for 239 to 361 blogs.
  • Value added: Existing database and sheer persistence.
  • Upfront risk: Only time—but doing the survey would pretty much oblige me to do the work.
  • Value to the field: Likely to be higher than for the current two books, but may not be perceived as high enough.
  • Personal rewards: Fairly low, frankly. I have this pessimistic sense that people aren’t really interested in knowing how library blogs are actually doing and would rather hear about how wonderfully they should be doing.

    • Comments?

    In the interests of a silly but amusing experiment, I am obliged to note that this post has nothing whatsoever to do with Kindle 2, Amazon, text-to-speech, 23 things or Authors Guild. It also has no specific references to Kansas or Nebraska.

    3 Comments »

    Five alternatives: Seeking group wisdom, advice

    Posted in Books and publishing, C&I Books, Writing and blogging on February 28th, 2009

    I’m going to post four posts this weekend (if time allows), describing four possible research/writing projects. I think I could do one of these (or one per year) while still doing my best with PLN, C&I, “disContent,” “Crawford at Large” (in ONLINE), and leaving enough spare time to enjoy life…

    But I’m really up in the air as to which one.

    For each one, I have an informal score matrix, not very well filled out. I’m hoping that your feedback and superior wisdom (the hive mind? riggghht…) will help me make decisions.

    The matrix:

    • Level of effort (although all are in the 100 to 500 hour range, I think)
    • Value added (what I more-or-less uniquely bring to the project)
    • Upfront risk (money needed to bring the project to fruition)
    • Value to the field (how much it’s likely to be worth to the library field as a whole)
    • Monetary returns (how much, in filthy lucre, I’m likely to earn from it–including indirect earnings, e.g. particularly interesting speeches)
    • Personal returns (how much I’d enjoy doing it).

    Obviously none of you can speak to that last…

    Each post will provide more details on one possibility; feedback is invited as comments on any post, comments here, email back to me, FriendFeed comments…

    Here’s the list, in alphabetic order for want of any better:

    1. Balanced Libraries, Second Edition (incorporating Library 2.0 & “Library 2.0″)
    2. Blogging for Libraries – A replacement for Public Library Blogs and Academic Library Blogs but done in a very different way.
    3. The Liblog Landscape Revisited - Some differences in approach, but largely an one- or two-year update.
    4. Library as short-run publisher – A workshop and book on no-cost print-on-demand publishing for public (and academic) libraries, for their own purposes and to aid patrons (e.g., genealogists and others).

    The fifth choice, of course, is “None of the above”–treat semi-retirement more seriously.

    Once I’ve written the other posts, I’ll loop back and add links to the four items above.Done.

    In the interests of a silly but amusing experiment, I am obliged to note that this post has nothing whatsoever to do with Kindle 2, Amazon, text-to-speech, 23 things or Authors Guild. It also has no specific references to Kansas or Nebraska.

    2 Comments »

    Dollhouse, checkpoints and sales

    Posted in Books and publishing, C&I Books, Movies and TV, Technology and software on February 21st, 2009

    How do these all relate? Only in that none of them deserves a full post, I’m not inspired to start the next C&I essay just yet (or my next print-magazine column), I’m really not inspired to flesh out the PoD workshop proposal…so it’s another random musings post.

    UPDATE: Portion of post, and two comments, removed; I don’t need the hassle.

    Dollhouse

    Didn’t do it for us. [Remainder of commentary removed. Life is too short.]

    Checkpoints

    Since I don’t do video editing (or download videos) and not a whole lot of photo work anyway, the 250GB drive on my main computer (the cheapo Gateway notebook) has way more than enough space–heck, I’d never come close to filling the 80GB drive on my 5-year-old XP system. It’s OK by me that Gateway partitioned off 11GB or so as a recovery drive (E:), and I’ve become inured to the 10s of gigabytes that Vista and the various programs require.

    But I did note that the drive was down to something like 139GB free out of 221GB–still at least twice as much room as I’m likely to need, but still…I figure I’ve got less than 15GB of stuff, almost all of that MP3 versions of my music collection.

    So, since I use the McAfee Security Center, which includes disk maintenance tools, I thought I’d run the QuickClean process, which checks for and lets you delete various temporary and unneeded files–including, notably, System Restore Points. I probably run this two or three times a year…

    And now I have 173GB free. Why? Oh, a gigabyte or so of cached files, a few registry entries (no real space, but worth cleaning up periodically), perhaps a hundred megabytes or so of various temporary files and internet cruft…and 31+GB of system restore points!

    Since it’s been weeks since I’ve made any system change that could require a restore, this seems safe enough. I’m a little surprised that it was this much space–I don’t really do all that many things that should set restore checkpoints. It might be friendlier of Vista to provide a rolloff point, so maybe only the 10 most recent restore points are saved…but, I guess, hard disk space is now so cheap and plentiful that it’s not necessary.

    How much space is used by system restore checkpoints on your system? Do you care?

    Sales

    A brief update on sales of The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 and other books may be in order.

    For February, so far, three copies of Liblog (all Lulu, none since 2/12); two of Academic Library Blogs (both CreateSpace/Amazon); one of Public Library Blogs (CreateSpace/Amazon); one of Balanced Libraries (CreateSpace/Amazon).

    One commenter asked whether I’d sent out review copies of Liblog Landscape. I haven’t yet; it’s an expensive and slow process, frankly, and experience with First Have Something to Say (lots of review copies, a grand total of one print review) isn’t encouraging.

    Why do I mention this? Not as a plea for you to go buy these things–but as a checkpoint in desires to do further research. If I was doing a new (single) study to update the two library blog projects, I’d do it every differently–fewer blogs, more analysis, and probably a questionnaire to as many blog “owners” as I could locate to get “the other side”–known readership figures, success stories, etc. I might also do something similar if I continued the Liblog project (which is nearer & dearer to my heart).

    But either of those would involve a lot of work and inherently produce book-length results. It’s not just the oddity of spending that much time for a possible few dozen book sales, it’s the fact that the results are only reaching a few dozen people or libraries–which hardly makes it worthwhile. That’s not a plea; it’s simply reality. I’m good at ignoring reality, but maybe not that good. Sponsorship might solve some of these problems, but that would imply the existence of sponsorship.

    [And yes, that is also one reason I have yet to move forward with a possible "How to do short-run books good for your library and community" workshop: It's another effort-vs-results quandary. A different one, to be sure.]

    No common thread

    Not much ties these together. Such is life, sometimes.

    Secret bonus for people who read this far: While Balanced Libraries isn’t a big success (it has yet to reach 300 copies), it’s been reasonably well received and reviewed. If I conclude that it really is silly to continue any of the blog tracking, I’ve been toying with doing a second edition–one that would incorporate Library 2.0 and “Library 2.0″ as a standalone (but indexed) section, take some new approaches elsewhere, and update the whole thing. Comments welcome–even if (particularly if?) they amount to “Don’t waste your time.” I’m not going to make any decisions all that rapidly…

    4 Comments »

    The awesome power of Amazon discounts

    Posted in C&I Books, Liblogs on February 14th, 2009

    Wow.

    Four days ago, as chronicled here, I learned that Amazon put The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 on sale, with a healthy discount, bringing it down to $27.76 (still enough for free shipping).

    At the time, zero copies of the book had sold on Amazon or CreateSpace in February; the sales rank reflected the single sale in January 2009.

    Now, what a difference! Sales of the book on Amazon have zoomed up to…none. (And the sales rank has declined a little, not too surprisingly.)

    Meanwhile, one copy did sell on Lulu, making the February total three for Lulu.

    2 Comments »

    Liblogs, library blogs, sponsorship and sales

    Posted in C&I Books, Liblogs, Writing and blogging on January 6th, 2009

    A while back, I posted about the possibility of sponsorship as a way for me to continue (and improve) research into library blogs and liblogs, how they’re used, when they succeed, how they’re changing.

    The longer version of that discussion is here (on my personal website). I haven’t updated it, and probably won’t at this point. That discussion does not mention actual dollar amounts, and includes a “Complete sponsorship” possibility that is not available, at least not in 2009. (YBP will continue exclusive sponsorship of Cites & Insights, at least for this year.)

    In the interests of transparency, I’ll add a few notes that do include dollar amounts. If you know of or work for somebody for whom sponsorship would make sense–a library school, a library vendor, a consortium, whatever–please pass this along. I’d be delighted to discuss the possibilities, via email (waltcrawford at gmail.com) or possibly at Midwinter (you can see my current schedule in a link on the right sidebar).

    1. Library Blogs

    The two books–public and academic library blogs–are both based on data from March through May 2007. I believe that set of data, and the work coming out of it, could serve as the basis for some worthwhile future investigation–not only how such blogs are changing but which ones seem to succeed, possibly aided by surveys or other contacts with some of the libraries. (Sponsorship by the right agency could also involved collaborative work…and if there are potential refereed articles arising, I don’t feel any particular need to be the one with my name on those articles, as long as I’m not actually writing them.)

    But that course of investigation simply isn’t interesting enough to do on my own time with no expectation of income other than a few dozen book copies (and that’s what I’ve seen to date–neither book has sold close to 100 copies, and the Academic Library one hasn’t even hit 50). Yes, money is an issue…much more so than it used to be when I was fully employed.

    I believe the only way this could work is as sponsored research, to the tune of around $15,000 a year. There’s the number. It might be negotiable.

    On the other hand, I think the data will start to get a little cold if I haven’t gained an understanding by, say, April 2009 or so. I’d want to do a 2008 scan, and I’d also need to adjust other possibilities that use time. So, unless I see some likelihood of sponsorship by sometime this spring, I’ll set the library blog stuff aside, apart from anecdotal stuff I can do to add to C&I.

    2. Liblogs

    The situation is a little different here. The book is based on March through May 2007 and March through May 2008. It’s a much better book, I think, and it’s being received more warmly (not meeting the total cone of silence, until a couple of weeks ago, that the other books did). And, well, liblogs are (to me) a lot more interesting to look at and work with than most library blogs.

    So there are two possible paths leading to an ongoing study, with or without the hypothetical Walt’s Big Book of Blogs:

    • Sponsorship–and here, $10,000 might be a plausible number. (It’s probably more work than the library blogs project, but it’s more interesting work.)
    • Sales–there aren’t a lot yet (still fewer than 50 copies), but it’s a good start for the first six weeks or so. I would say that the probability of my carrying this project forward another year, without sponsorship, would be roughly based on the combined sales of The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 (print or download) and the bound volumes of C&I, as of the end of June 2009, using the following approximate formula: P = S/6, where P is the probability (in percentage), S is total sales. In other words, if the combined sales figure is 600 copies, it’s almost certain I’d carry it forward–and if it’s more than 300, it’s a better than even chance. (All of this, of course, dependent on sponsorship, and other things going on in my life, etc., etc.)

    3. Walt at Random

    I’m not going to hold my breath on sponsorship offers (and I don’t think I’d be willing to move this blog to The Library World’s Worst Blogging/Comment Platform, brought to you by Reed Elsevier, unless truly serious bucks were involved).

    But I’m not opposed to the possibility of sponsorship, including a bannar ad. I believe we’d be talking about something on the order of $6,000 per year. If you’re wondering, over the last 366 days, Walt at Random had just over one million sessions and just over two million pageviews.

    So there it is: Dollars and all.

    Comments Off

    OLA and ALA

    Posted in ALA, C&I Books, Speaking on January 4th, 2009

    Speaking (twice) at OLA

    A note for my (dozens? scores? more than one?) of Canadian readers:

    I’ll be at the OLA SuperConference in Toronto this year. Attending pretty much the whole thing (arriving Wednesday afternoon, leaving Saturday early afternoon). Speaking twice:

    • Friday, 3:45-5:20 p.m. Session 1320, Shiny Toys or Useful Tools? (About liblogs and library blogs, with a few sidenotes about wikis. Some stuff from the books, some new checkpoints. Some of this may appear in the next-but-one issue of Cites & Insights.) Yes, I know there are, what, 28 other sessions at the same time–and, who knows, maybe I’d rather listen to John Dupuis (who’s on opposite me). [Dupuis' session has been moved.] But anyway…
    • Saturday, 9:05-10:20 a.m., OLITA Spotlight Session, Top Tech Trends. One of three panelists. I’ve never met the other two panelists, but will assume they’re better trendspotters than I am. I’ll be working on possibilities (and maybe attending Midwinter’s LITA Top Tech Trends session to take notes…)

    And attending some unknown number of sessions and social events, formal and otherwise. Right now, I have seven sessions and four social events marked as possibilities… It’s my first time at OLA, and I’m very much looking forward to it. And hope the weather and airports work out.

    But I’ve also done something a little out of the ordinary, at least for me: Mounted a temporary page here, containing my current tentative schedules for both OLA SuperConference and the 2009 ALA Midwinter Meeting, which I’ll be leaving unusually early (because of OLA, but also because Frontier cancelled their mid-afternoon Denver-San Jose flight, and I wasn’t about to get back home at midnight…)

    For OLA and ALA Midwinter both…

    The curious among you will see that the ALA schedule is pretty skeletal, other than Saturday. It’s busier than my usual ALA “must do” schedule, to be sure, because I agreed to chair the LITA Publications Committee (and have since realized that I really have done more than my share of this LITA governance stuff, and am feeling to old for it…)

    I’m sure some mandatory items will be added to that schedule, which I’ll attempt to keep up to date until shortly before the conference(s). (I’ll delete it post-OLA.)

    Meanwhile, if you’d like to get together, feel free to send me email or leave a comment. No guarantees, I’m not a nightowl and not on an unlimited budget, but I’m certainly open to possibilities. (For all I know, a flood of invitations to vendor receptions may be on its way–but since that’s never happened in the past 33 years of attending ALA and Midwinter, I’m not holding my breath.)

    If you missed the link above, here it is again–or just look over in the righthand margin, where it says “Midwinter 2009 and OLA 2009 schedules”

    5 Comments »

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