Walt at Random

Cites & Insights 8:6, June 2008, is now available for downloading.

The 28-page issue is PDF, as usual, but (since My Back Pages is missing) all segments are also available as HTML separates at the Cites & Insights homepage.

The issue consists of:

• Bibs & Blather: Quick Updates: Limits and Slouching - A brief reminder of a timely essay, and a progress report about where things stand on the possible 2007-2008 liblogs project.
• Perspective: On Wikis and Transparency - Transparency is great, as long as you’re aware of it. MediaWiki makes your wiki (and most other wikis) very transparent to outsiders. A good thing, but do pay attention.
• ©3 Perspective: DRM and ISP Surcharges - Comments on the slow death (?) of DRM for purchased audio downloads–and the latest plan to assure Big Media of ongoing profitability.
• Perspective: On Semantics, Reality, Learning and Rockstars - “Reality” in this case: When is a book not a book? Discover the connections between these four mini-perspectives and win yourself a virtual candy bar!
• Retrospective: Pointing with Pride, Part 2 - Selected excerpts and comments on issues past, another part of the centenary celebration.

Part the first:

I just finished writing a Perspective for the June Cites & Insights (which will emerge well before June 1, but certainly after May 11–I’d guess May 18-20, but that’s only a guess), “On Wikis and Transparency.” It’s mostly about MediaWiki and transparency, but that’s OK, since MediaWiki is pretty clearly the dominant wiki software for library-related wikis. The Perspective’s about 4,000 words long before editing; I plan to do a shorter version (maybe 2,000-2,500 words) to mount on PALINET Leadership Network as a companion piece to the Wikis and libraries article I completed there yesterday.

But first, I’ll give alert, knowledgeable, weekend-blog-reading folks a chance to tell me: Is this obvious stuff? Does everybody already know that MediaWiki wikis tend to be much more transparent than their owners might realize? (Which is, by and large, a good thing–once the owners realize it.) When I say “everybody,” I explicitly mean library leaders who need to know a little about wikis but are probably never going to install one or become intimately familiar with it…

Thus endeth part the first. And hey, if I do write something “obvious,” it won’t be the first time.

Update Monday, May 5: Having heard no cries of “everybody knows that,” I’ve completed the C&I essay and added a briefer version to PLN here.

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Part the deuce:

Here’s the setup: My wife and I are going on a real vacation, for the first time in a couple of years. It’s a cruise, and it makes sense to fly to the departure port a day early and stay overnight. To make it even more fun, we’re going with a dear friend of ours–who’s also flying in a day early.

As we investigated places to stay overnight, we found that this is one of those cities where we could either spend a lot of money, or stay in an iffy part of town or in an iffy establishment, or maybe both. But if we stayed nearer the airport, we could stay in a Hilton at a reasonable price.

Which then caused me to think. Given my odd travel, I belong to several hotel affinity programs–as with air frequent-traveler programs, it costs nothing to join, and some hotel programs at least get you a free newspaper or something–but I tell all of them to give me American miles instead of hotel points, since I rarely have the choice of hotel. But Hilton HHonors has “double dipping”–they give you both miles and points. So I’ve accumulated some quantity of points over the years (given the choice, I’ll tend to stay at a Hilton-family property, especially Embassy Suites). Hmm. Let me check…

Yep. I had enough points for one free night at this category of hotel. In fact, I had more than enough points for two free nights. Now, back in the good old days, at least as I remember it (but this may be airline rather than hotel), this was a multistep process: First you’d send in a mailed request for a certain kind of award certificate, then they’d send the certificate, then you’d book the award with certificate in hand. Now, of course, you go to the Hhonors website, log in, find the hotel and verify availability, and the certificate is created at the point of use: You get two emailed confirmations, one your actual reservation, one your award certificate. Fast, easy, well-designed. Cool.

And here’s the pitch: The best use I could think of for the rest of the points was to pick up another free room for our friend–if the friend wanted it. Which, it turns out, they did. How would I go about reserving a room in somebody else’s name and paying for it with points from my Hhonors account?

So I called the Hhonors 800 number. One clear menu choice. Another clear menu choice. Then a crisp message: You can book awards online, but if you’d like to speak with a representative, just wait. I waited…for about ten seconds, maybe less.

Five minutes or less (I’m thinking three, but could be wrong): That’s what it took to ask whether this could be done (it could), provide my information, validate who I am, give the hotel info, give the other person’s name, deal with a slight variance (yes, a room with two doubles would be fine, if no one-king room was available), and get an award certificate number…following which, an automated voice from the hotel gave me the reservation confirmation code. Within one minute after hanging up the phone, both confirmation certificates were in my email, ready to forward to the friend.

Maybe there’s nothing unusual here, but I’ve surely heard enough horror stories about telephone assistance with even straightforward issues, much less slightly complicated ones like this. OK, I’ve always had great luck with American Aadvantage people–but then, American’s people are one reason I prefer American Airlines (just as Hilton people are one reason I prefer Hiltons). For some reason, this exercise struck me as remarkably smooth and pleasant: No waiting, phone trees used to save me time rather than to avoid actual contact, really slick combined use of the human touch and computer backup–I mean, those emails were there when the call was done.

Just a nice little story for a Saturday. It certainly made my Friday.

Cites & Insights 8:5, May 2008, is now available for downloading.

This 28-page issue (PDF as usual, but each essay is also available in HTML form) includes:

• Bibs & Blather: One Book at a Time - A year’s experience with self-publishing.
• Perspective: Offtopic or Not? Mill Creek & Libraries - Do 50-movie (and 100-movie and 250-movie!) packs make sense for public libraries?
• Making it Work Perspective: Changes in Liblogs: Slouching Toward a Study - How have 227 liblogs changed between 2005/2006 and 2007? Notes toward a possible study of 500+ blogs.
• Net Media Perspective: Citizendium and the Writer’s Voice - Notes on Citizendium and how it’s developing–and why I disagree with one fundamental tenet of both Wikipedia and Citizendium.
• Offtopic Perspective: 50 Movie Hollywood Legends, Part 1 - From the sublime to the ridiculous, from Good News to The Fat Spy, two dozen movies with big-name stars.
• Retrospective: Pointing with Pride, Part 1 - Looking back at “the 1s”–the first, 11th…91st issues of C&I.

This exercise in randomness began three years ago today, not at all by accident. (Technically, I wrote the first post earlier…WordPress lets you schedule posts for a future date. They don’t let you go backward; only Gmail does that, and then only on certain days…)

So how’s it going since last year?

Prior to this post, the blog has a total of 729 posts and 2,480 comments. I’m still proud of the comment-to-post ratio: More than three comments per post is on the high side for liblogs, if not for Big Deal Bloggers. And I’m still bemused at the partially-random nature of which posts get lots of comments. For example, of the small handful of posts with more than 20 comments, most were “on topic”–but the one with the most comments of all was about as random as you can get: 27 comments on Tri-tip: A food question.

I guess I’m slowing down a little (not that the last year has been troublesome or anything…): There were slightly fewer posts than in the second year (210 as compared to 247) and significantly fewer comments (733 as compared to 936).

Readership? At the end of the first year (that is, for March 2006), the blog was up to 1,064 sessions/day and 2,370 pageviews/day.

Some alternate months for this past year, compared to the second year:

• May: 2007 = 1,693 sessions/day, 2,072 pageviews/day, 10,001 unique IP addresses. (2006: 1,254, 3,001, 6,930.)
• July: 2007 = 1,712 sessions, 2,546 pageviews, 8,194 IP addresses. (2006: 1,215, 2,549, 6,223.)
• September: 2007 = 1,320 sessions, 2,185 pageviews, 6,456 IP addresses. (2006: 1,219, 2,393, 6,303.)
• November: 2007 = 1,295 sessions, 2,233 pageviews, 5,839 IP addresses. (2006: 1,389, 2,433, 6,639.)
• January: 2008 = 1,362 sessions, 2,604 pageviews, 6,139 IP addresses. (2007: 1,445, 3,328, 7,173.)
• March: 2008 = 1,443 sessions, 2,462 pageviews, 7,115 IP addresses. (2007: 1,628, 3,298, 8,823.)

Over the past year, some 58,762 different IP addresses have visited this blog for a total of 541,816 sessions–and 911,817 pageviews. Last year, I was a little astonished that the IP count for this blog was almost three times that of Cites & Insights for its first nine months on LISHost. This year, it appears that C&I is making up ground: It shows 36,805 IP addresses for the last 12 months, about two-thirds of the W.a.r. total.

If you look at year-to-year trends, if this was a “brand” blog, I might be upset: It’s trending slightly downward year to year. But this isn’t a “brand” blog, and I’m thrilled at there being almost a million pageviews for a blog that ain’t all that much.

As for subscribers…since I didn’t force everyone to resubscribe via Feedburner, I really don’t know how many there are overall. As of mid-March, I had 510 Bloglines subscriptions and 192 Google Reader subscriptions (for one feed, at least); since, of the Feedburner subscriptions I do have (only 77 of the 510 Bloglines, pretty much all of the Google Reader), about three-quarters are for those two readers, I’m inclined to believe there are between 800 and 900 subscriptions in all. That’s probably about the same as a year ago.
It looks as though readership probably reached its peak in the blog’s second year. So did my blogging, for that matter, so I’m not surprised. I’m inclined to believe that blogging in general may have peaked in 2007, and that liblogs might have peaked then, but that’s just a belief.

“Peaked” doesn’t mean “and is now falling apart,” to be sure. I’m not going away, and I continue to be astonished at the number of people who apparently read and respond to what I write here. Neither are liblogs going away (or library blogs, for that matter).

Enough metablogging for one day. (Did I mention: buy my books and join the PALINET Leadership Network?)

Here’s an honest question, where I’m actually looking for advice–although, admittedly, factors beyond email and comment responses could influence my decision.

The question:

Would a really big look at liblogs, including lots of year-to-year change data, be a good idea, a waste of time, or a positively bad idea?

Definition: “Liblogs” = what Steven Cohen calls “libr* blogs”–that is, blogs by “library people” as opposed to official library blogs, but not limited to blogs by MLS-holding librarians (as if there was any way to know!).

Now, if you already have an answer without reading further, great: send me email or comment below. If you actually want a little clarification…read on below the fold.

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Really big look: The population for the new study would consist of:

• All the blogs in my 2005 “60 interesting blogs” survey that are still active. (See this essay or this issue.)
• All of the 213 blogs in my 2006 study of “the great middle” that are still active. (See this issue–since the essay is essentially the entire issue, it’s a better bet than the HTML version.)
• A bunch of others–including those mentioned in Meredith Farkas’ “favorite blogs” study, those in LISWiki’s blog list that weren’t included in 2005-2006, those in the LISZen source list, those in Dave Pattern’s “library blog cloud” source list, and those I just discovered on my own–that meet the base criteria.

Base criteria for those that weren’t in one of the other studies:

• In English
• Not clearly defined as an official library blog
• Somehow at least vaguely related to libraries or library people
• Reachable
• Established before January 2008
• At least one post between August 31, 2007 and March 1, 2008
• “Visible”: The sum of Bloglines subscriptions and Technorati “authority” in the first two weeks of March 2008 is at least nine.

If I do the full study, there would be one more criterion, for blogs that weren’t in earlier studies: “Semi-active”–having at least one post in two of the three months March, April, and May 2008.

That population–not including the final criterion–is now 542 blogs, including 48 added from Farkas’ “Favorites” report, 81 added from LISZen, 37 added from LISWiki, 9 added from the cloud, and 29 others (items were added in that order–if something was added from LISZen, it wouldn’t also be added from LISWiki).

Lots of year-to-year change data: If I do this, I’d have the following:

• March-May 2007 data for all blogs for which it’s available, noting that data would be limited to what’s reasonably available. (E.g.: If the archives for a blog hide most of each post, I’ll include post count and comment count, but not length of posts–I’m not going to take a sample and extrapolate, and I’m sure not going to retrieve each post individually!)
• March-May 2008 data for all blogs.
• Comparisons between 2007 and 2005 for 43 blogs that were in the 2005 report and not the 2006 report.
• Comparisons between 2006 and 2007 for surviving blogs that were in the 2006 report.
• Comparisons between 2007 and 2008 for all blogs available in both periods.

If I do this, I’d establish norms and quintiles based on real populations: Thus, overall length and length per post would only include blogs with easily-retrievable full-text archives; comments overall and comments per post would exclude blogs that clearly don’t allow comments (or that have comment counts hidden in archives).

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An honest question, this. Last weekend, I did enough experimenting to conclude that it may be feasible to do this megastudy this summer/fall–and I’m planning to do the 2007 metrics for 2005 and 2006 inclusions (they’re about 1/3 done already) for my TxLA appearance. A lot of work for five minutes out of a 50-minute presentation, but it should be interesting.

So the question is: Do I do the other 2007 metrics and do I plan for the big project?

If I don’t, I’ll turn the current project into one or more blog posts or C&I articles.

If I do, I’ll produce a book. It might even have one-sentence summaries of what I believe to be each blog’s focus and strengths–but only when I have something nice to say and am capable of reading the blog. I wouldn’t include a full sample post for each blog; I might include a paragraph. I would have a little writeup on each one.

So: What’s your opinion? (I’m not asking “Would you buy the book?” Different question.)
Note: If someone offers me another part-time gig, this whole discussion might be moot.

I’ve always treated Cites & Insights as “published”–that is, once an issue appears, it doesn’t change. I don’t correct typos or meaningful mistakes. (When the publication moved to the current domain, I revisited each PDF to change the domain name in the masthead, but made no other corrections.)

I’ll stick with that standard for actual errors–cases where I’ve left out a word or said something incorrect. Naturally, I try to do followups when needed, but it’s good to keep the published record intact. And I don’t plan to go back and fix dumb typos in past issues…

But I just replaced the PDF and two of the HTML essays for the current Cites & Insights, and it’s likely that if a similar situation arises in the first week after a new issue’s published I might do the same.

What changed? Three cases where the string “egan” within a word appeared as “Elgan” instead–one “bElgan” instead of “began,” one “elElgant” instead of “elegant,” and one other (I’ve forgotten the string). In no case could an incorrect meaning have been assumed; it just looked stupid. A reader in Australia alerted me to the problem this morning.

Clever people can probably guess what happened…and I really should know better. Here’s the whole silly story:

In an attempt to minimize typos and other errors introduced in the copyfitting process, and to give the material one last read, I now consistently print out an issue after I’ve gotten it to the desired length, let it sit for at least a day, then read the hardcopy as carefully as possible, marking any changes.

In this case, one section of the Kindle & ebooks essay included notes on a Mike Elgan column–and somehow I’d managed to alternate “Elgan” and “Egan” roughly equally throughout the notes. I wasn’t sure which it was, and did the search to verify that it’s Elgan.

Then (ahem) I did a “replace all”–and, duh, forgot to check the “Match case” box.

Actually, I think I had the section of the text highlighted–but I’d also forgotten that one step backward in Word 2007 (from Word 2000, and this may have changed earlier) is that “replace all” no longer limits itself to a highlighted region, asking before going any further. (I can’t find any way to restore that limitation. Anyone out there know of one?)

So there it is: My extra step to minimize errors worked great…except for introducing a few new ones.

It’s good to be perfct. It’s also unsusual.

Cites & Insights 8:4, April 2008, is now available for downloading.

The 28-page issue is PDF as usual (or not as usual–I’m now using Word 2007 and Microsoft’s free PDF-output download), but HTML separates are available from the C&I homepage

The issue includes:

• Bibs & Blather - a very short introduction to the issue and what got left out.
• Library Access to Scholarship - Harvard and Institutional Repositories
• Old Media/New Media Perspective: Thinking About Kindle and Ebooks
• Making it Work Perspective: TechNos and TechMusts

By the way, if you know anyone who’s been getting issue alerts via email, let them know they need to sign up for C&I Updates or Walt at Random; Topica no longer accepts my posts (and entirely lacks help/contact info).

It’s possible that a few of you may have gone to the Cites & Insights home page and found it presenting the February 2008 issue as current.

I’m not sure what happened (whether I did something stupid–quite possible–or whether some other glitch was to blame), but the “current” home page wasn’t there this morning, replaced with a pre-February 15 version.

I’ve re-uploaded the current home page. Other statistics indicate that this couldn’t have affected very many people. Anyway, it’s fixed. Issue #100 is the current issue (and will be for at least a while longer).

Now, as to why there continue to be so many downloads of a two-year-old issue…

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I notice that one fairly high-profile blogger, who also writes the occasional book, now inserts an ad for that book after every post. I’m tempted, but would hate to lose readers because of the annoyance factor. Still, Cites & Insights books has some worthwhile books–Balanced Libraries, Public Library Blogs, Academic Library Blogs and paperback versions of the two most recent C&I volumes–at reasonable prices ($29.50 each). For those who prefer e-reading, the first rhree even available as $20 PDF downloads. End of ad, and I promise I won’t do this on every post.

The tale initiated here and continued here (hey, the WordPress paragraph-swallower strikes again!) continues, with an episode that won’t matter to most folks.
I’m continuing to use the notebook as my only PC. Haven’t done more downloading yet (because I really don’t need those applications yet). With one enormous exception, everything’s been going fine–the software works, it’s snappy, I prefer Vista, etc.

The enormous exception only involves one application–but that’s the application that, other than Firefox, matters most to me. Namely, Word 2007 was taking forever to close files, move between open files, and shut down–”forever” being anywhere from seven to ten seconds or more. (And 5-7 seconds to open a file.) Taking more than a second to switch between multiple open files is simply not acceptable; if I’d had that situation with Word 2000, I never would have done the blog investigations (they basically require two open files at all time, switching back and forth frequently, in addition to Excel and Firefox windows).

The open web to the rescue. Turns out it’s my fault (sort of), and probably won’t affect many of you. I’d reinstalled Acrobat 7–knowing that I’d probably need to move to 8 (there’s no way that 7 will recognize .docx) eventually, but that 7 might do in the meantime.

And Acrobat 7 installed a COM addin into Word 2007, even though it couldn’t actually work.

And that COM addin was the culprit–I’m not sure why, but it was adding absurd amounts of overhead to any file-change operation.

Here’s the thing: I don’t even need Acrobat to produce PDFs directly from Word: Microsoft’s free download to add PDF save-as capability to Office 2007 works beautifully. It seems to offer the same flexibility as the old Acrobat toolbar, it’s a lot faster than the old Acrobat/Distiller combination, the output’s actually a little smaller than the old Distiller output, the bookmarks are there… It is, in short, a better tool, fully integrated into Word (and the other Office 2007 applications). And, to be sure, it’s free.

Where I will need Acrobat: To produce the book version of Volume 8 (which requires combining multiple PDFs)–and probably to produce the book my wife is working on (which also seems likely to require combining multiple PDFs). So eventually I’ll pay the $99 or so for an upgrade to Acrobat 8 anyway.

For now? I uninstalled Acrobat 7. The problem went away. It still takes a little while to open a file (longer if it’s still in .doc format), but “a while” is a second or two. Closing a file: Instantaneous. Switching between open files: Instantaneous. Closing Word: Instantaneous. As it should be.

(Why doesn’t Adobe offer a way to let you back out plugins without removing the whole application? That would be too easy…)

There’s the advice, if Word 2007 seems sluggish in certain ways: Check for add-ins (the start/Office button, “Word Options” in the lower right-hand corner, Add-ins on the Options pane). Disable any that you don’t need–especially COM add-ins.

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Now here’s another one that will affect almost nobody else, I suspect.

When I tried out Word 2007 by opening the the current issue of Cites & Insights (in .doc) form, it came out a little longer–taking up just a little of a 37th page. OK, so the spacing’s a little different. Turns out that I only had to compress one paragraph by 0.1 points to fix that.

But: When I convert any of the Cites & Insights issues to .docx–taking Word out of “compatibility mode”–the resulting documents are a little shorter than they were (and a lot smaller on the disk–a known change). Not a lot shorter, but C&I 8:1 has about a quarter of an empty column on page 30. (So that’s about 0.25% change, but it’s never that simple.) Looking at a page or two, it appears that Word 2007 does a slightly better kerning job than Word 2000–or maybe it’s got a better hyphenation dictionary. Maybe both.

Again, this only affects me when it comes time to do a book version of volume 8, and the changes are so small that I suspect I won’t bother trying to make pages match up exactly. I certainly approve of tighter kerning and better hyphenation. (I’m also seeing better grammar suggestions and a general move to preferring close style–that is, combining two words without a hyphen when that’s sensible.)
Oh, and have I already said how clear it is that dual displays will improve my productivity–e.g., when I’m marking up a PLN page, assembling a page from blogs, working on a C&I essay that’s partly derived from blogs, and especially if I do any more blog investigations? Even yesterday, adding another movie to a 50-pack file, being able to have the full IMDB page for a movie open while also having a good-size Word window open made life easier…

Update: The migration to the new Vista notebook is going surprisingly well–well enough that I’m using it (with a dual-screen setup) as my working system while finding remaining issues. “Easy Transfer” got pretty much all the files and settings–with the singular exception of Firefox bookmarks (an easy manual transfer).

I’m now in the process of unlearning/relearning some advanced Word things (I knew that would be necessary). I’m a heavy template user, and Word2007 (Office2007 in general) sensibly treats sets of style definitions as, well, sets of style definitions–which can be part of themes and templates but can also be separate. You can switch a set of styles in an existing document. In Word2000, the only way to do that was to switch templates (which, as far as I can see, you can’t do in 2007). So in 2007, a template really is a template: A full document design for you to add text to. Separating themes (which, so far, I don’t quite grok) and style sets makes good sense, and it’s easy to save new style sets from old templates–once I figured that out (which took a while). This fits the general theme I’ve heard from Office2007 reviewers: Different and with a learning curve, but ultimately more logical and with more useful features made visible when they’re useful.
Other than an occasional startup switching the right-left placement of the primary and secondary display (now that I realize that’s a possibility, I won’t think my cursor’s simply stranded), it’s going pretty well. I have no desire to drop back to XP, and certainly no desire to drop back to Office 2000. Or, for that matter, to return the notebook: Time to send in the rebate form.

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Promotion: Want to encourage long life and robust content for C&I? One way to help is by telling other people about it; another is to buy Cites & Insights Books.

Want to encourage library leadership in yourself and others? One way to help is to join the PALINET Leadership Network (PLN), where you’ll find a growing range of varied content. You’re encouraged to add your own relevant comments and participate in the forums.

Interesting. I originally planned to publish the centenary issue of Cites & Insights toward the very end of February. Then, with all the copy ready, I moved that up to February 19 or so. Then, Friday, when I’d double-checked the draft printed version twice, after doing all the editing and copyfitting, I said “Oh, what the hey,” and published it right around 6 p.m. on Friday.

Including Perspective: Tracking High-Def Discs, in which I finally offered as firm a projection as I’ve ever offered:

• That the format war might very well end this year, although there was also a chance it wouldn’t.
• That the most probable outcome was Blu-ray as the sole commercially-viable high-def disc format, with that happening “sometime in 2009 or possibly late 2008.”

Good thing I published it Friday night. I was way too cautious (I don’t claim to be a futurist or to have any inside knowledge), but at least I got the right direction.

It’s not entirely official yet, but apparently Toshiba isn’t quite as “stubborn and profitable” as I thought–or at least not as stubborn. It’s been reported, and apparently confirmed by a company official (although not a named one), that Toshiba’s pulling the plug on HD DVD in the very near future. (At a loss of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars: If you believe some observers, Toshiba’s been losing money on every player it sells, and one can only assume that Toshiba forked over a big chunk of the $150 million that helped Paramount & Dreamworks to say they’d only release HD DVD versions, a decision you can expect to see reversed in a few weeks or months.) Understand: I like Toshiba. My wife is delighted with her Toshiba Satellite notebook; the only real flaw (a tendency to drop WiFi once in a while when running on battery) is a Windows Vista power-management defect, not a Toshiba defect.

So maybe “sometime in 2009 or possibly late 2008″ becomes “in the first half of 2008″–although there’s a second part to that probable outcome: “Blu-ray as the sole commercially-viable high-def disc format.” Whether that will be true in the first half of 2008, or any time, probably depends on your definition of commercial viability.

No, I don’t buy Wired’s latest (and wholly predictable) note that it doesn’t matter because it’s all going to be downloads. As I imply in the Perspective, true high-def downloads aren’t really practical on a mass scale–and in any case a lot of us actually like to own some of the movies and programs we expect to watch more than once.

It seems highly probable that Blu-ray will be a total market (combining players, drives and discs) in the hundreds of millions of dollars this year (actually, it may have been in 2007, depending on what percentage of PS3 sales you consider to be Blu-ray sales). I think that counts as commercially viable, although still a relatively small percentage of overall video disc and player sales.

So: I was too cautious–but at least I got it right (and I’d been saying since the get-go that Blu-ray had the edge.)

Oh…and yes, I know it’s “Samsung” not “Samsong.” Even reading in print, twice, I still manage to miss at least one typo in every C&I. Such is life.

Cites & Insights 8:3 (March 2008) is now available.

This is the centenary issue–#100–a nice round number that I’m a little surprised to have achieved. Naturally, that milestone affects the issue–but not as you might expect.

The issue’s long–36 pages–and PDF as usual, although all but the last section (My Back Pages, always exclusively PDF) are also available in HTML form from the home page.

This issue includes:

• 100 Reasons for Doing Cites & Insights - an introduction
• Trends & Quick Takes - ink costs, life without software, the significance of good sound and more: six trends, ten quicker takes.
• Perspective: Tracking High-Def Discs - including a prediction for the likely winner in the format war.
• Making it Work - the biggie: 19 pages devoted to aspects of making libraries better, including reading (reader’s advisory, slow reading, etc.), philosophy, hassles, balance, and “Library 2.0 debased.”
• Interesting & Peculiar Products - flashy labels, green PCs, supercheap laptops and more: 19 items in all.
• My Back Pages - 16 mini-perspectives, none of them terribly serious.

Ignore them, or at least most of them.

It was pointed out to me (indirectly) that, of the thousands of dead links to the old Cites & Insights site, some were under my control–that is, links in W.a.R. posts prior to July 2006.

So I’m fixing those links. I’m never quite sure what causes a post to look changed enough to trigger a feed. If these changes–which, with one minor exception, are nothing but URL changes–do that, then my apologies. I’m partway through, and will finish as soon as possible…

Sigh. At one point, C&I had a pagerank of seven (although I think Google’s generally adjusted pageranks downward). It’s at five now, and I wonder whether it will ever get back even to six, much less seven. Such is life on the open web.

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Update: I’m done. I’m hoping that the URL changes were too minimal to cause new feeds, but I’m not sure. If not, my apologies: There are a lot of W.a.R. posts mentioning Cites & Insights (imagine that!).

Well, at least they’re cleaned up before the centenary Cites & Insights appears–which is likely to be this weekend or shortly thereafter.

I received an email a day or two ago from a person who purchased Cites & Insights Volume 6 (2006) and Volume 7 (2007), noting that his motive was partly to support Cites & Insights.

Earlier, Mark Lindner noted that his reason for purchasing both volumes was partly to support Cites & Insights..

To Steve (it was private email, so first name is all you get) and Mark: Thank you.

If anyone else has the same idea–well, thank you as well. It’s certainly a concrete way of supporting my occasionally-waning morale and drive to keep C&I going. (Even though each print volume has three or four times the text of a typical C&I book, the odd economics of Lulu and page size are such that, while you get a bargain in these oversized volumes, I don’t take a beating on net revenue.)

I’d like to think that each volume is a pretty good package on its own merits. The cover photographs (one wraparound for 2006, two–one on each cover–for 2007) are, I think, first-rate, but of course I’m biased (my wife took them). Volume 6 has the two big Library 2.0-related essays, the “great middle” study of liblogs, and a whole lot more (and the print volume has a bonus section telling you what’s happened to some of those liblogs). Volume 7 has loads of good stuff, and the print volume is the only way you can get Cites on a Plane.

I prepared the two print volumes for my own benefit; even two sales of each count as more than I was expecting. I turned off the PayPal and Amazon tip jar routes when I got partial sponsorship for Cites & Insights, but I sure do appreciate the support.

Cites & Insights 8:2 (February 2008) is now available. The 24-page issue (PDF as always, but all articles are also available as HTML separates) includes:

• Announcing Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples - The latest from Cites & Insights Books, a $29.50 289-page paperback that complements Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples. Included are brief notes, the list of academic institutions represented, examples of blog coverage for both books, the announcement of $20 PDF downloads for those who just can’t stand print books–and a few notes on the status of Cites & Insights Books.
• Trends & Quick Takes: Trends and Forecasts - Time to look at some pundits’ scorecards and forecasts, along with some of the trends from the LITA Top Tech Trendspotters, with some of my comments interleaved.
• Bibs & Blather: Midwinter Musings - Notes on a much warmer Philadelphia Midwinter, along with a special essay based on an odd but not unique occurrence: “Leadership and Initiative: The Case of the Empty Chairs.”
• Offtopic Perspective: 50 Movie Western Classics, Part 1 - Roy Rogers is riding tonight, as are Tex Ritter, Gene Autry, John Wayne and a slew of others. A bunch of one hour “oaters” and a handful of pretty good pictures.

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When I chatted with a few of you at Midwinter, I may have expressed concern that the February issue might be some combination of late, short and peculiar, since I didn’t think I had any of it written (I forgot about the Offtopic Perspective). Well, one out of three ain’t bad: It’s not late and it’s not short. Enjoy.