Walt at Random

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…

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.

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.

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”

14 shopping days for early birds

Want The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 for $22.50 (or $20 as a download)?

That price is good, only at Lulu, from now through January 15. After that, it goes up to $35 ($25 for the download).

If you really, truly hate shipping charges or avidly desire a book with an ISBN, you can buy the book at Amazon–but it’s already $35 there.

Why you should buy this book

• The Corporate Librarian says (among other things):

…Let me say how great it is to see someone who tests hypotheses with data. And in a thoughtful way, not just reporting averages and percentages context-free and sitting back and waiting for the applause. Walt’s transparent about his methodology and why he made the choices he did.

• Jennifer Macaulay says (among other things):

I found this book to be a valuable read – and would think this would be the case for anyone interested in the liblog universe.

• You’d like to see ongoing coverage of changes in the liblog landscape, and you recognize that–barring sponsorship–the only way that can happen is if people are willing to pay for the results.

A change note

As of now, as promised, Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples and Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples are out of print at Lulu.com.

The two books are still available (at the links in the previous paragraph) as $20 downloads, and will be available until it’s clear there are no more sales.

Want the print book, beautiful cover and all? You can still buy them at Amazon–for now. (Again, until it’s clear there are no more likely sales.)

(Future research in these areas? I believe sponsorship is the only possibility. Neither book is anywhere close to a hundred copies, although Academic Library Blogs finally passed three dozen–and it would take at least three hundred sales to even semi-plausibly justify the work.)

Kathleen de la Peña McCook left a nice comment on the last of twelve promotional posts for The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look. She said, in part:

I think maybe all this (blogs) may fade and that your books may document the movement.

I think blogs are already fading in one sense, but I also think it’s unlikely that they’ll fade away any time soon–no more likely than, say, the end of mail lists or email itself. I believe they’ve become reasonably well established as one medium; the uses for that medium are changing as other media emerge–so, for example, Twitter and delicious are probably reducing the number of pure link posts.

But that’s another discussion. It’s the second half of the sentence that generates this post.

Sponsorship and sanity

I did this particular project, by far the largest and most time-consuming blog-related project I’ve done, because I thought it was interesting–and hoped it would generate some interest. It’s too early to tell whether the amount of interest (as expressed in book sales) can in any sense justify continuing the project.

I have not, so far, continued the library blog investigation, which I believe could be useful to the field (probably done differently, certainly done over time)–because I don’t find it quite as interesting and it’s pretty clear that book sales can’t possibly justify continuation.

Sanity enters in here. The time spent on that project would serve the household budget a lot better if I was writing freelance articles, preparing possible courses or workshops, or, for that matter, greeting people at a big-box store or flipping burgers somewhere. (Flipping burgers would pay much better.)

Alternatively, if income isn’t the answer, then there are a few thousand novels I’d like to read, a lot more time I’d like to spend with music, more places to visit (if the budget allows–you can’t check trips out from the library), and other ways to use unpaid time that make more sense.

I suspect sponsorship is the only reasonable answer–I’m sure of that for library blogs, and unless ongoing sales surprise me, I’m fairly sure of it for liblogs. And, frankly, I’m not sure who to approach for sponsorship (I sent out a handful of remote possibilities, which all turned out to be as remote as expected).

We’re not talking big bucks

I’ve recently seen another library-related service asking for sponsorship, and specifically approaching most library schools (which could certainly sponsor my work). The amount that service is looking for, for one year, would sponsor my library blog/liblog investigations (and free PDF publication of the results) for three years.

How big an audience could these investigations serve? I’m not sure, but I can give you a few figures for the last year’s use of Cites & Insights (December 6, 2007 through December 5, 2008):

• More than 36,000 unique IP addresses visited Cites & Insights in a total of 127,000 sessions.
• There were more than 79,000 downloads of full issues.
• There were some 170,000 views of HTML pages–that is, individual articles (excluding the home page and other overhead pages).

A quarter per download and a dime per article view would yield more than enough money (by a long shot)–and, without mentioning figures, that’s a whole lot more than the sponsorship I do have (or than the maximum I’d ever suggest for C&I).

(If you’re wondering, this blog has had 48,754 unique IP addresses over the last year, for a total of 490,000 sessions and just over a million pageviews. A million pageviews? Really? Apparently. At one point, I had Google Adwords–and was earning a grand $3 to $5 a month. Yes, I have more traffic now than I did then; based on that, I might earn some huge amount like $6 to $10 a month: Librarians aren’t much for clicking on ads.)

Holding my breath

I won’t be. I was pleasantly surprised that sales of Cites & Insights 8, 2008 in paperback form are infinitely higher than I expected: It’s sold one copy, and I wasn’t really expecting to sell any.

Know of a possible sponsor? I’d love to hear from them. I discussed that possibility just exactly a month ago. More details are here (noting that C&I is off the table for 2009, at least).

I’d love to “document the movement”–but with no full-time job and a lack of independent wealth, I really can’t justify doing it as a lark. I may be a little crazy, but not quite that crazy.

If you’ve been holding off on buying The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look because you really need to have an ISBN, your time has come.

The link on the title takes you to the CreateSpace page for this book. The CreateSpace version (which should also be available via Amazon in a day or two) has ISBN13 978-1440473845, ISBN10 1440473846.

The price is $35.00. Other than an ISBN, it’s pretty much identical to the Lulu edition–and since CreateSpace now offers cream book paper as an alternative to bright-white paper, it’s on comparable (maybe identical) paper. (The Lulu edition will be $22.50–plus shipping–until January 15, 2009.)

First the pitch:

Buy the book!

The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look.

This 285-page 6×9 trade paperback looks at 607 liblogs (nearly all English-language) and, for most of them, how they’ve changed from 2007 to 2008.

It’s the most comprehensive look at liblogs ever done–and the only one I know of that shows how they’re changing from year to year.

From now through January 15, 2009, and only from Lulu, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 is available for $22.50 plus shipping.

On January 16 or thereabouts, that price will go up to $35.00. If and when the book is available on Amazon, it will immediately sell for $35.00.

Why there’s not more personal commentary and evaluation

At least a couple of you have said you were looking forward to my comments about blogs–and, at least on the individual level, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.

The book includes lots of comments about how liblogs work in the aggregate and how they’re changing. The first 11 chapters are very much in my voice and include my opinions.

But I don’t attempt to discuss what bloggers are posting about–that’s just too complicated and too transitory. To be honest, with some of the more prolific blogs, I was just marking-and-counting: Adding up the number of posts, comments and figures, and measuring total word count, but not really reading each post. (Hey, the blogs included more than 22,000 posts during March-May 2007 and more than 19,000 during March-May 2008. I’m a fast reader, but that’s a lot of reading–more than 9.5 million words, or the equivalent of at least 95 good-size books.)

As I was building the preliminary version of Chapter 12–that is, building the profile for each liblog as I measured its metrics, knowing I’d go back and fill in some derivative measures later on–I was adding a brief evaluative comment in some cases: One or two sentences describing the blog’s nature as I saw it during the 2008 period.

I wound up stripping out all of those comments for four reasons:

1. In a few cases (maybe half a dozen?), I didn’t feel I could include a comment because I really didn’t like the blog (or some aspects of the blog, or disliked the blogger)–and I’d already decided to follow the “grandmother rule” (If I couldn’t say anything nice, I wouldn’t say anything at all.)
2. In a lot of cases (scores of them), I didn’t find that I had anything useful to say, because the blog was in an area I don’t understand very well or for other reasons.
3. As I worked my way through, I found my comments becoming less and less useful.
4. The killer: Those comments would take up at least 100 pages of the book, probably more like 150 pages. Maybe it might make sense to write “Walt’s BIG Book of Liblogs” some day, but this isn’t the day. I was hoping to keep the book under 300 pages (and finally succeeded, partly by using slightly smaller type) and certainly wanted to keep it under 400 pages.

But still…

Part of me wants to do that part–but I think it would be a separate book. Is that book worth doing? Am I the right one to do it? (Would I be able to keep on as even a part-time participant in the library field after doing it?)

Damned if I know. For now, I’m not sure how I’d go about it. The task of categorizing and judging 19,000 posts is far beyond me, I think; the task of providing useful evaluative comments on even 500 blogs–well, possible, but I’m not yet sure how.

We shall see. Meanwhile,

What’s here, the remainder

Here are the remaining liblogs included, with the number of times each appears in the index.

• Thoughts from Carl Grant [2]
• Thus Spoke Pragmatic Librarian [2]
• Tinfoil + Raccoon [3]
• Tiny Little Librarian [5]
• Tom Keays :: Blog [1]
• Tom Roper’s Weblog [4]
• Tombrarian [3]
• Travelin’ Librarian [9]
• Travels with the State Librarian [1]
• Twilight Librarian [2]
• Typo of the day for librarians [6]
• UBC Academic Search – Google Scholar Blog [9]
• The Ubiquitous Librarian [4]
• UK Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Blog [1]
• UK Web Focus [6]
• ulo.tricho.us [2]
• uncaged librarian [3]
• Union Librarian [1]
• User Education Resources for Librarians [4]
• userslib.com [4]
• The Utopian Library [6]
• Vagabondages [8]
• The Vampire Librarian [6]
• Vancouver Law Librarian Blog [3]
• Virtual librariesinteract.info [2]
• virtually a librarian [1]
• The Vital Library [5]
• walking paper [7]
• Walt at Random [6]
• A Wandering Eyre [2]
• Wanderings of an online librarian [1]
• Wanderings… [2]
• washtublibrarian [1]
• the wee librarian [2]
• Weibel Lines [4]
• The Well Dressed Librarian [10]
• What I Learned Today… [5]
• Wigblog – Things Internet and Otherwise by Richard Wiggins [4]
• wiredfu [1]
• Wireless Libraries [2]
• With Strings Attached [3]
• WoW! Wouter on the Web [1]
• WoW! Wouter over het Web [6]
• Writings of the Loud Librarian…. [5]
• yes to know [6]
• Young Librarian [3]
• Your Neighborhood Librarian [7]
• Z666.7.L364 (www.jenniferlang.net) [2]
• Zee Says=Film Addict + Teen Librarian [4]
• The Zenformation Professional [7]
• zydeco fish [7]
• Zzzoot [4]

What blog has (a) been around six years, (2) is written in English but comes from a European country, (iii) has an ISSN and (d) has as its slogan “Essence, effervescence, obscurity”?

In this case, the answer actually is in the chapter discussed here–Chapter 12, Liblog Profiles, which makes up somewhat more than half of The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look.

And, for those who somehow missed it over the past week or so, the book is on sale for an introductory price of $22.50 from now through January 15, 2009, only from Lulu.

What’s here, part 11

Fifty (or so) more liblogs and the number of times each one appears in the index:

• “Self-plagiarism is style” [6]
• Semantic Library [1]
• SemiConscious Dot Org [2]
• Senior Friendly Libraries [3]
• The Sheck Spot [3]
• Shelf Check [3]
• Shelved in the W’s [5]
• The Shifted Librarian [6]
• shimenawa [6]
• Silversprite [7]
• Simon Chamberlain’s library weblog [1]
• The Singing Librarian Talks (or Writes…) [3]
• Sites and Soundbytes [6]
• Slaw [6]
• Slow Library [1]
• Social Justice Librarian [2]
• Social Software in Libraries [2]
• The Soggy Librarian [2]
• Solvitur ambulando [4]
• Something New Every Day [1]
• Space Age Librarian [4]
• Speak Quietly: Ramblings About Libraries, Writing, and Everything in Between [4]
• Spellbound Blog [1]
• A Splash Quite Unnoticed [1]
• SPLAT [3]
• Stephen Gallant Review [3]
• Stephen’s Lighthouse [8]
• the strange librarian [6]
• Subject/Object [3]
• Superpatron – Friends of the Library, for the net [1]
• The SurRural Librarian [2]
• Swiss Army Librarian [9]
• The Synthetic Librarian [1]
• T. Scott [2]
• Tales from the “Liberry” [11]
• Talking Books Librarian [2]
• Tame the Web [9]
• TangognaT [10]
• TechEssence.Info blogs [1]
• τεχνοσοφια [1]
• The Ten Thousand Year Blog [6]
• Tennant: Digital Libraries [3]
• Terry’s Worklog [1]
• Texadata [1]
• Text & Blog [12]
• That Rabbit Girl [1]
• Theoretical Librarian [2]
• Thingology (LibraryThing’s ideas blog) [4]
• Thinking about the Future [2]
• Thoughts from a Library Administrator [3]

Hint

Page 123 introduces that blog, including its author, his affiliation, and 19 metrics (there would be 20, but the 20th is blank for reasons that may be obvious). Some of you probably recognize it from the slogan. More would from the unusual animal that forms part of the blog’s name.

Here’s a precision grouping: What do Swiss Army Librarian, Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia, Tinfoil + Raccoon and the pod bay door have precisely in common?

The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: Introductory Offer

You’ll find the answer and more in The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look.

This 285-page 6×9 trade paperback looks at 607 liblogs (nearly all English-language) and, for most of them, how they’ve changed from 2007 to 2008.

From now through January 15, 2009, and only from Lulu, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 is available for $22.50 plus shipping.

On January 16 or thereabouts, that price will go up to $35.00. If and when the book is available on Amazon, it will immediately sell for $35.00.

Chapter 10: Visibility

Many blogging gurus (mostly outside the library arena) would say visibility is the most important thing for a blog–how many readers, how many ad impressions, how many links?

In previous studies, I’ve looked at it as an interesting factor–but also one that’s hard to judge externally. (Internally too: Given the way aggregators work, it’s hard to tell how many readers you actually have.)

This brief chapter discusses how I’ve looked at visibility in the past, what I did this time (and why it was only used as a lower limit for inclusion, not as an actual metric), why it’s getting even more difficult–and what I’ll do in future studies.

Chapter 11: Liblogs and the larger blogosphere

This very brief chapter looks at the 2008 Technorati State of the Blogosphere report and draws some comparisons between the liblog landscape and the larger blogosphere. Portions have already appeared elsewhere.

Who’s here, part 10

Fifty-one more liblogs (if I’m off by one or two, hey, counting while you’re marking to copy is hard):

• poesy galore [6]
• PomeRantz [2]
• Pop Culture Librarian [8]
• Pop Goes the Library [7]
• Practical Katie [3]
• Prairie Librarian [3]
• Professional-Lurker: Comments by an academic in cyberspace [1]
• Quædam cuiusdam [2]
• Queequeg’s Content Saloon [1]
• quiddle [2]
• Quiescit anima libris [2]
• The Rabid Librarian’s Ravings in the Wind [7]
• Radical Reference [2]
• rambleonsylvie [1]
• Rambling Librarian :: Incidental Thoughts of a Singapore Liblogarian [9]
• Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia [4]
• Random Musings from the Desert [3]
• Ravings of a Lunatic Librarian [2]
• rawbrick.net [3]
• The Reader’s Advisor Online Blog [3]
• Readers’ Advisory Knapsack [2]
• REAL PUBLIC LIBRARIAN [6]
• Redhaired Future Librarian [1]
• reeling and writhing [3]
• Ref Grunt [3]
• Remaining Relevant [3]
• repressed librarian [2]
• Required field must not be left blank [1]
• ResearchBuzz [3]
• ResourceShelf [3]
• ricklibrarian [5]
• Right Wing Librarian [2]
• Robotic Librarian [2]
• The Rock & Roll Librarian [3]
• RSS4Lib [6]
• Ruminations [3]
• The Running Librarian [3]
• RUSA Blog [1]
• Saving the world daily through information [5]
• The Scattered Librarian [1]
• schenizzle [1]
• Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog [3]
• School Librarian in Action [2]
• School Libraryland [3]
• ::schwagbag:: [1]
• Science Library Pad [1]
• SciTech Library Question [1]
• SD Librarian [1]
• Second L!fe L!brary [3]
• Second Life Research Journal [1]
• See Also… [5]

Hint

Page 48.

Do pseudonymous/anonymous blogs differ significantly from the liblog landscape as a whole? What about Canadian blogs–or blawgs?

In this case, there are no actual blog listings to highlight. Chapter 9 takes a dozen groups of blogs, including most groups with at least 15 blogs, and offers some brief notes on how they differ (quantitatively) from the entire study. It’s a short chapter (including a dozen figures and notes on each figure) and an interesting one.

The pitch

The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look looks at 607 liblogs (nearly all English-language) and, for most of them, how they’ve changed from 2007 to 2008.

From now through January 15, 2009, and only from Lulu, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 is available for $22.50 plus shipping.

On January 16 or thereabouts, that price will go up to $35.00. If and when the book is available on Amazon, it will immediately sell for $35.00.

What’s here, part 9

Fifty more…

• Misadventures of the Monster Librarian [9]
• Miss Information [4]
• The Mlxperience [3]
• Museum 2.0 [8]
• Musings from Vermont [4]
• Musings of a Medical Librarian Maven [2]
• NeverEndingSearch [3]
• the New Cybrary [9]
• New Jack Librarian [3]
• New Jersey Academic Librarian [2]
• New Librarians for Better Job Prospects [2]
• nichole’s auxiliary storage [3]
• nirak.net – Musings of an LIS Student [10]
• Nodalities [6]
• Not So Distant Future [10]
• The Notebook [1]
• Nowhere North [2]
• OA Librarian [1]
• Obnoxious Librarian from Hades [2]
• Observations of a Librarian [2]
• Off the Mark [6]
• Office for Intellectual Freedom [1]
• omg tuna is kewl [3]
• One Big Library [2]
• One New Thing [1]
• Online Insider [2]
• Open Access News [5]
• Open Libraries [3]
• Open Stacks [5]
• OPL Plus (not just for OPLs anymore) [1]
• OptimalScholarship [1]
• oss4lib [2]
• The Other Librarian [4]
• OUseful.Info, the blog… [1]
• Out of the Jungle [3]
• Outgoing [4]
• Overdue Ideas [4]
• pafa.net [5]
• pamryan.info [3]
• Panlibus [3]
• A Passion for ‘Puters [2]
• Pattern Recognition [1]
• Pegasus Librarian [7]
• Peter Scott’s Library Blog [5]
• Phil Bradley’s weblog [7]
• Pimp My Library [2]
• PLA Blog [8]
• The PlanetEsme Plan [8]
• The Playful Antiquarian [2]
• Please Be Quiet [5]
• the pod bay door [4]

The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look is now available!

This 285-page 6×9 trade paperback looks at 607 liblogs (nearly all English-language) and, for most of them, how they’ve changed from 2007 to 2008.

Eleven chapters consider the universe of liblogs (that is, blogs by “library people” as opposed to blogs from libraries):

• Age, authorship, country of origin
• Number of posts during a three-month period (and change in that number from 2007 to 2008)
• Total word count and average post length (and change)
• Total comments and comments per post (and change)
• Total figures (illustrations) and figures per post (and change)
• Patterns of change from 2007 to 2008
• Correlations between pairs of metrics
• A look at 143 blogs from 2006 through 2008
• Interesting subgroups (national, authorship, type of librarian)
• The visibility issue
• Liblogs and the larger blogosphere

The final chapter, just over half the book, provides a brief objective description and available metrics for each blog. The book includes many tables and a fair number of graphs. There is an index of blogs and authors.

It’s the most comprehensive look at liblogs ever done–and the only one I know of that shows how they’re changing from year to year.

Earlybird Price

From now through January 15, 2009, and only from Lulu, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 is available for $22.50 plus shipping.

On January 16 or thereabouts, that price will go up to $35.00. If and when the book is available on Amazon, it will immediately sell for $35.00.

Want to know more?

You’ll find a lot more about the book (or the process of creating it) by clicking on the “Liblog Landscape” category. Additionally, I plan to do a series of posts offering brief descriptions of each chapter, posing some puzzles and noting how often each blog appears in the index.

The best way to find out more, of course, is to order the book.

Yes, I know that’s not the proper abbreviation, but it’s what I’m more likely to do in November.

A few prosaic words about this mammoth fiction event

NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, has been around for a decade (that is, this will be the tenth event). The idea is to write “a novel”–50,000 words, which is longer than a novella–during the month of November. But, well, it’s not about turning out a readable novel. Quoting from the site:

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Last year, 100,000 people signed up–and 15,000 “crossed the finish line,” turning out something constituting at least 50,000 countable words. According to the organization, that makes them novelists.

Avoiding the Boojum

It’s tempting to be snarky about this. Writing 50,000 words in one month no more makes you a novelist than buying chaps and the right hat makes you a cowboy. The site lists 27 published novels that began as NaNoWriMo projects. I’m prepared to call those 26 authors (one has done it twice) novelists, not the (presumably) 20,000+ who have “crossed the finish line” one year or another.

At the same time, I think the NaNoWriMo people are on to something–at least for some people. As the site also says, for most people “writing that book” is a “one day” thing–”One day, I’ll write…”

Maybe that’s just as well in most cases…but there are always exceptions, people who really do have a flair for fiction writing but have never managed to put seat in chair and hands on keyboard long enough to do anything about it. At least I think there are–although, I must admit, even as a boring old nonfiction writer I find the urge to say things more than overcomes the inertia of not writing, at least most of the time. Is that less true for fiction?

I’m not going to put down NaNoWriMo: It’s too easy for that snark to turn into a Boojum, and I’m not ready to disappear just yet. (Oh, go look it up.) My guess is that it does free some people enough to result in more creativity, resulting in some worthwhile creations that would otherwise never get written. So only perhaps one-tenth of one percent of “successful” NaNoWriMo manuscripts ever get published–for all I know, only one percent of them (or less) ever gets submitted. For most participants, the journey is the reward. (I’m guessing that most also don’t call themselves novelists or poke fun at novelists who require months or years to complete a book. There’s a little snark on the website also.) For some, the creative juices result in publishable short stories…or maybe just high-quality blog posts.

But not for me

As a teenager, I wrote two science fiction stories. I submitted one of them to Astounding (now called Analog). I got a nice note back from John W. Campbell, rejecting the story but encouraging me to try again. Like an idiot, I eventually lost the note, which would probably be worth, oh, $1 by now.

I also looked at the stories again…and never wrote any more. See, they just weren’t very good, particularly the characterization (or lack thereof).

In college, I tried writing one or two brief humor pieces and taking them to the California Pelican, UC Berkeley’s humor magazine. Jon Carroll–the superb San Francisco Chronicle columnist–was editor at the time. He took the time to explain to me that my writing was OK but, well, I just wasn’t funny, and maybe I shouldn’t try humor. It was excellent advice, and I have since thanked him for it (by email): It saved me wasting time at something I just wasn’t any good at.

I’ve had it pointed out to me why I’ll probably never write good fiction: I’m not observant enough. I don’t pick up enough about people to be able to write strong characters or dialogue–and without strong characters and dialogue, it’s hard to do even mediocre fiction.

So for me, spending 50 hours churning out crap next month would be a waste of 50 hours. (50 hours? I usually write about 1,000 words an hour when I’m in good form, including interlinear editing. Of course, the overall average is a lot less because so much of “writing” isn’t writing at all.) I could probably do it–hell, there’s no question I could produce 50,000 words in a month–but why?

NaNoNonMo

So, for me, November will be NaNoNonMo–National November Nonfiction Month. A time when some of us who don’t do fiction will try to do good nonfiction.

I don’t plan to write 50,000 words next month. I’ve probably written roughly that much over the last 30 days, actually, between the most recent Cites & Insights (22,000 words after editing), a Crawford at Large column for Online (2,000 words), and most of the first half of the manuscript for The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look (67,000 words, and I’d guess 30,000 of those were done in the last 30 days).

For November, the goal will be another 25,000 words of new material (the December C&I and another Online column) and revisions and final editing for 67,000 words: I’d love to have the book at Lulu, with proof copy ordered, by the end of November.

National? Well, not really. I’m certainly not suggesting that everybody try to prepare a nonfiction book during November. How about a narrower goal, and only for those of you who already have blogs: Write 5,000 words of interesting prose during November, posting it as appropriate. 5,000 words is ten medium-length blog posts; this post is a little over 1,000 words.

Oh, and if you’ve signed up for NaNoWriMo? Enjoy. Maybe you’ll be the one in a thousand, or maybe you’ll find it energizing in other ways. Just because I’ll never be a good fiction writer doesn’t mean you might not be.

A funny thing happened this month at Amazon…

Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change sold a few copies–not quite one per weekday, but close, very close.

That’s the first time the book’s sold more than 10 copies in one month since November 2007. (One copy sold at Lulu as well…) It’s the most copies it’s sold in one month since I made it available on Amazon.

I’m not sure why it’s happening, but I’m delighted. I think it’s still a good, worthwhile book, and worth the $29.50. (The Lulu version has a slightly truer cover and cream paper instead of bright white–but it’s hard to argue with free shipping from Amazon, and the CreateSpace/Amazon version is just fine and does have an ISBN.)

In case you love tracking “best seller” status, I seem to be at around 350,000. Hey, being anywhere in the top million is an improvement…

In previous episodes:

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

Now the story continues with:

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

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

Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples

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

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

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

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

But that’s the middling case…

Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples

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

Still…

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the other hand…

Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change

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

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

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