Walt at Random

When I announced the trade paperback version of Open Access and Libraries, and the free final PDF version available from Lulu, I didn’t provide any information on how often the various preview versions had been viewed or downloaded…because of a temporary reporting problem.

That problem’s been solved, and here are the numbers, for what they’re worth:

• The “html epub” version was viewed/downloaded 304 times.
• The “rtf epub” version was viewed/downloaded 78 times.
• The draft PDF version was downloaded 155 times
• So far, the final epub version has been viewed/downloaded 60 times
• Two copies of the trade paperback have been purchased so far, but one of those was mine.
• I have no way of knowing how many people have downloaded the final PDF version, apparently: either Lulu doesn’t report free downloads as sales, or there haven’t been any.

No attempt to draw conclusions. Should there be?

Three items not really worth full posts–two book-related, one DVD-related:

La misma luna

Last Saturday, our weekly movie night, we watched La misma luna or “Under the Same Moon.” Unless you’re familiar with Mexican cinema, the only actor you’re likely to recognize is America Ferrera, and she’s only in it for about five minutes.

The plot, basically: A young mother is working in LA to send money to her son…in Mexico, staying with his grandmother…to make his life better. She’s undocumented. They talk once a week, when she calls him, always from the same pay phone to the same pay phone (she describes the corner at which the pay phone stands)–and they’re both “under the same moon” even though they’re in different countries.

Grandmother dies, son can’t stand being apart from mother, takes action to fix it. He’s nine years old.

I won’t say more than that. It’s excellent–well made, well acted. It’s also subtitled (not unreasonably), including the “making of” featurette (except when Ferrera is speaking). The only language option is Spanish. That’s only reasonable. We enjoyed it very much. No, I didn’t regard it as political propaganda, but then I don’t view the world as being entirely political statements.

Reservation Blues

On my long-term semi-random walk through the fiction available at Livermore Public Library (each time I go, I get three books: One nonfiction but with a narrative arc; one genre fiction, alternating between mystery and science fiction, and one fiction that’s not in a genre section and looks interesting), I picked up Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie–who I’d heard of but never read.

I can’t say I read it in a single sitting. I can say that, if the rest of life had allowed, I might have done so–and I did read it in two days, which is highly unusual.

Don’t know whether I’d recommend it to others, but I was pleasantly surprised. (OK, so the rest of you, being more up on important literature than I am, have already read this–after all, it’s been out for fifteen years, it won an American Book Award, etc., etc.. What can I say? I’m a couple of decades behind on most book reading.)

Anyway, on the off chance that you haven’t read it…you might enjoy it.

Open Access and Libraries

Going from the sublime to the…well, anyway, I just received my own copy of Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights, 2001-2009. (USPS for the win, as usual: Three days for MediaMail from North Carolina to Livermore.)

I gotta say, the cover is even brighter in real life than on the screen (go down a few posts to see the screen version, or click on the link above for that matter). It is, of course, my tribute to the two primary flavors of open access and some of the many shades of those flavors.

It’s also a thick book (191,000 words in 519 pages): the thickest I’ve done via Lulu, although not actually either the thickest book I’ve published or the one with the most pages. (Desktop Publishing for Librarians, published in 1990 by G.K. Hall, is about 0.05″ thicker as a page block–that is, exclusive of hardcover–even though it’s only 420 pages; The Online Catalog Book: Essays and Examples, published in 1992 by G.K. Hall, is 560 pages and 8.5×11 rather than 6×9, but it’s a little thinner, printed on lighter-weight paper. Hmm. As with this book, I did the typography for both of those.)

Is it a “good” book or a “worthwhile” book? I can’t say. I know the price is right if you want PDF: $0.

I’m pleased to announce that Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights, 2001-2009 is now available via Lulu.

The 519-page book is available as a free PDF download or as a 6×9 trade paperback for $17.50. (If you’re wondering, I get $2.10 of that $17.50. For every three print copies published, I can buy lunch…)

I’d like to think that the cover treatment is obvious for anyone who knows much about OA. I could be wrong.

Why this book?

In short:

• I’ve stopped writing about open access within Cites & Insights for a number of reasons.
• When I asked a couple of knowledgeable people–specifically Peter Suber–whether a collection of those essays might have some minimal value, the answer was Yes.

From the time I made the draft PDF and some different trial ePub versions available (through April 26, for reasons that aren’t relevant here), the PDF has been downloaded 123 times and the epub versions have been viewed/downloaded anywhere from 71 to 290 times each. So, even with lots of ebook-oriented folks looking at those versions just for fun, I conclude that a few dozen people find enough value in this to download it.

In long–here’s the introduction to the book:

This book brings together articles (and, in a few cases, sections of articles) on open access and other aspects of library access to scholarship that appeared in Cites & Insights (citesandinsights.info/).

Articles appear exactly as they did in the original journal, modified only to fit the book’s page size and typography. No updates or corrections have been made (except for one or two typographical errors. Articles appear in strict chronological order. There is no additional commentary.

This book appears only for the record. It is not a comprehensive overview of OA during the first decade of the new millennium, and it is not even a comprehensive view of what Walt Crawford thinks about OA. It is what it is: A record of what I published about OA during that decade, quite possibly omitting some short pieces.

The first C&I article related to OA, before that name was well established in the field, appeared in May 2001. (At the time, the term was FOS—Free Online Scholarship.) The last, as I was concluding that I was no longer able to value to OA-related discussions, appeared in November 2009. Quite a few appeared during those nine years. I’ve also included one “disContent” column from EContent that’s directly on topic (that column appears as submitted, not necessarily exactly as published).

It’s possible, even likely, that some OA-related commentary within Cites & Insights doesn’t appear here—for example, predictions from Peter Suber and others would have appeared in larger Trends & Quick Takes articles, not picked up for this compilation.

Thanks to Peter Suber for agreeing that this might be a worthwhile compilation.

But There’s No Index!

For which I apologize. I had planned to include a partial index—including people, journals, article titles, but probably not topics—using Word’s indexing facilities.

It was not to be. Perhaps it’s the sheer length of this book; perhaps it’s the number of sections. Maybe there’s some obscure bug in Word2007.

Whatever the case, whenever I go beyond the first 60 pages or so, using “Mark All” and “Mark” as appropriate to flag index points (hey, Peter Suber’s name appears a few dozen times!), then save the result, then open that result…well, the result is chaos. Last time, the 519-page book suddenly turned into 1,290 pages, with multiple lines of headers from various chapters making up a huge and unchangeable page footer on each page.

If this was a project expected to yield significant income, I might prepare a separate index document—but for a book this long, that would take scores of hours. I honestly can’t justify the time for a book that’s being given away in electronic form and sold for barely more than the cost of production in print form.

If this book is useful, maybe some reader will generate an index. If not, well, again, my apologies.

Actually, I have a pretty good idea what was causing the autoindex blowups (it was a bug, but between my ears more than within the software)–but the fix would make indexing more effort than I could justify. (It has to do with indexed terms appearing within page headings…)

What’s Here?

Here’s the table of contents–noting that articles appear in strictly chronological order.

Introduction. 1

Getting Past the Arc of Enthusiasm.. 3

Scholarly Journals and Grand Solutions. 23

The Access Puzzle: Notes on Scholarly Communication. 34

The Access Puzzle (January 2003) 50

Scholarly Article Access (Formerly The Access Puzzle) 58

Open-Access Journals. 64

Sabo, SOAF, SOAN and More. 70

Getting That Article: Good News. 89

Scholarly Article Access (November 2003) 92

Scholarly Article Access (January 2004) 102

Tipping Point for the Big Deal?. 113

Library Access to Scholarship. 121

Library Access to Scholarship (June 2004) 131

The Empire Strikes Back. 140

Library Access to Scholarship (September 2004) 167

Library Access to Scholarship (November 2004) 193

Library Access to Scholarship (January 2005) 210

Library Access to Scholarship (March 2005) 221

Library Access to Scholarship (June 2005) 233

Library Access to Scholarship (November 2005) 248

Library Access to Scholarship (May 2006) 261

Thinking About Libraries and Access. 279

Pioneer OA Journals: The Arc of Enthusiasm, Five Years Later 285

Pioneer OA Journals: Preliminary Additions from DOAJ 296

Library Access to Scholarship (December 2006) 313

Open Access and Rhetorical Excess. 334

Library Access to Scholarship (July 2007) 355

PRISM: Enough Rope?. 366

Harvard & Institutional Repositories. 382

Signs Along the Way. 399

OA Controversies. 408

The Death of Journals (Film at 11) 430

Library Access to Scholarship (November 2009) 443

Closing Notes

It’s a 6×9 trade paperback because single-column serif text set on a 4″ line is just about optimal for reading long text…there’s a reason most text-oriented books (other than mass-market paperbacks, which squeeze every word possible onto each page) are 6×9 or thereabouts.

Yes, you can download the PDF and print it out, and maybe save a couple of bucks (if you can print 519 pages for less than $17.50). You won’t get the cover, and I’m afraid you’d be wasting a lot of paper on a typical 8.5×11″ printer–but it’s your choice. The paperback version is there as a convenience; I obviously don’t plan to get rich off $2.10 times an anticipated sale of one to ten print copies. Especially since I bought one copy for my own records–and that wipes out the profit on the first seven sales.

The typeface is Berkeley Oldstyle Book, which is still my preferred text face for books (and was the C&I typeface for several years).

Oh…about the ePub version:

1. I never did find a truly satisfactory conversion that didn’t cost money.
2. Lulu seems to have offed a lot of their FAQs in favor of articles that are harder to make my way through, and at this point I don’t quite understand how I’d attach an ePub version to the project.

Therefore, until further notice, I’ll leave the most recent ePub version available from this post; just click on the link. Other versions will disappear as I get around to it.

A couple of months ago, I wrote three posts about a possible new book–and a possible ePub version of that book.

The February 4, 2010 post identified two attempts at an ePub version. I later added a third attempt and made the full “draft” PDF available.

I wasn’t particularly happy with any of the ePub versions, all created by Calibre (and viewed in Calibre’s version of an ePub ereader).

Nothing more happened with the book itself because I was hoping a volunteer would come through on producing an index–given that I’m giving this one (a collection of Open Access essays from Cites & Insights) away, except for maybe a buck or so “profit” on the paperback version, I couldn’t see spending a lot of time on an index.

That didn’t happen–the volunteer had better uses for their time.

Where Things Stand Now

I’m getting ready to go ahead with the book, Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights, 2001-2009. It won’t have an index. It won’t have textual corrections. It will be a proper 6×9 trade paperback, table of contents and all, running 519 pages (not all numbered)–a fairly fat book. The cover is going to be very simple, I suspect (I had a great idea having to do with primary OA terminology, but my 10-year-old graphics program isn’t cooperating, so…).

My current plan is to do the work on Thursday, May 6, and announce the book that day or the next. As usual, it will be available through Lulu.

Meanwhile, I tried something that seemed likely to generate a better ePub version–I took a copy of the Word document (the whole book), eliminated hyphenation and justification, stripped out page headers and footers (or, rather, left them all blank), saved as PDF, and converted to ePub.

Here’s that version. If you have an ereader that handles ePub, you might give it a try. Through the Calibre pseudo-ereader, I don’t think it’s any better than the others and maybe not as good–all the headings seem to be converted to standard body type, the links in the table of contents don’t work, and you still get lots of false paragraph breaks at page breaks. But maybe I’m missing something.

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Update 5/9/10: Remainder of post removed as no longer relevant. The free PDF and $17.50 paperback versions are now available from Lulu.

If you have reactions, I need them by 10 a.m.  (PDF) Thursday, May 6, 2010.

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

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

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

The tools

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

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

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

The trials

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

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

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

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

Conclusions?

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

Maybe I’m missing something.

Update 5/9/10: Remainder of post removed as no longer relevant. Here’s what there is of an epub version, but I strongly recommend the free PDF or the $17.50 trade paperback at Lulu.

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

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

To wit:

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

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

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

Do it or dump it?

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

Thoughts?

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Status Update, February 2, 2009:

Two developments:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reminder

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

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

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

With, of course, no actual numbers.

Thought experiment

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

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

Equally valid and impressive story

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

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

And the numbers

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

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

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

The reality

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

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

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

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

But the real story here–

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

isn’t a particularly interesting or novel story.

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

The curse of a cleverly-written press release.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Profiles

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

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

Another PS

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

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

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

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

In case it’s not obvious…

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

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

As I was saying…

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

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

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

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

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

Profiles

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

Not So Distant Future

The Rock & Roll Librarian

infomusings

Zzzoot

snail

The FRBR Blog

It’s all good

Infoblog

Random Musings from the Desert

Tombrarian

Superpatron – Friends of the Library, for the net

T. Scott

Marcus’ World

One Big Library

Library Cloud

LibraryTavern

Chicago Librarian

uncaged librarian

librarytwopointzero

mélange

LibraryLaw Blog

Pop Goes the Library

RSS4Lib

CogSci Librarian

The Bunless Librarian

PS

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