Walt at Random

A very special (and very long) Cites & Insights is now available: Volume 10, Issue 10, September/October 2010.

It’s at http://citesandinsights.info/civ10i10.pdf, if you’re not seeing the links.

The 60-page issue (which, at 1.5MB, may take a little longer than usual to download) is PDF-only and consists of one essay:

But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009

Except for a few paragraphs (most of page 56), this is taken entirely from the book But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, which is still available. Page 56 summarizes what’s not in the issue–a few graphs, one column of quite a few tables, a substantial portion of one text-only chapter…and all 521 liblog profiles.

Pages 57-60 contain an index to liblog names and people’s names within the issue–since it came directly from the Word document used for the book, it was easy to create a new index (the book index uses W0rd’s internal indexing features), and a group of advisers from that august body, the Library Society of the World, encouraged me to include it.

Since the issue includes dozens of tables and a fair number of graphs, and since it would be vastly longer in printed-HTML form, no HTML version is provided.

Does “September/October” mean there won’t be an issue for another two months?

It means this is three times as long as my target size for issues and twice as long as most actual issues. It means there might not be another issue before the November 2010 issue…depending on a whole bunch of other things.

Meanwhile, enjoy. And to the 17 people and libraries who actually purchased the book to date: Thanks. I hope a few others join you. There’s a bunch of good stuff in the book that isn’t in this issue.

It has been pointed out to me (surprisingly, only once so far) that in the three blog posts and one email (to two lists) announcing the publication of Cites & Insights 10:9 (August 2010), I managed to refer to the year as 2009, both in the post title and in the first sentence.

I have a complete and total excuse explanation for what happened:

I goofed.

Fortunately, the issue itself has the right date, as does the Cites & Insights home page. And I’ve fixed the three blog posts–so it didn’t really happen, right? So, you know, no mistake was ever made, nothing to see here, move along…

The funny thing is, I was a little more careful than usual with the actual C&I pages–and found that, in fact, I’d managed to:

• Use the wrong link for the first article (in the contents list and home page)
• Have the hyperlink to the full issue wrong in every one of the HTML articles.

I fixed those…and then got the year wrong in the announcements. Sigh. I think I’ll wait a day before doing the most annoying part of publishing an issue (updating the volume index).

Of course, the August 2009 issue is available–but it has been for almost a year now. It’s a 32-page issue with two big essays (including “Library 2.0 Revisited”) and an Offtopic Perspective.

Cites & Insights 10:9, August 2010, is now available.

The 34-page issue (PDF as usual, but HTML versions of each article are available–the article titles are links) includes:

Perspective: On Social Media and Social Networks pp. 1-10

I no longer believe “Social Media” names anything real–or at least not anything interesting (except to marketers). That’s the “tl;dr” version. I think the longer version is worth reading.

The CD-ROM Project pp. 10-13

It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide, which may be all I really need to say about the first of three CD-ROMs reviewed here–in this case, a seven-CD set that works very well.

Perspective: On Words, Meaning and Context pp. 13-18

Do you own your words? If people feel free to moonwalk away from what they say, is it possible to have useful discussions?

Making it Work pp. 18-26

It’s summertime (for most but certainly not all C&I readers), and that seems like a good time to deal with some miscellaneous items–sort of a reversion to the old “The Library Stuff” sections. I discuss a baker’s dozen worth of posts and library-related discussions.

Trends & Quick Takes pp. 26-30

More miscellany–this time including four mini-perspectives and nine quicker takes.

This issue has no sponsorship (other than those of you who choose to sponsor it). You’re likely to see a longer gap before the next (September 2010) issue, for various reasons… Meanwhile, enjoy what’s here.

Just did the stats for first-half-of-2010 readership of Cites & Insights issues and articles (where article pageviews only include HTML, issues only include downloads)–and updated overall spreadsheet for the, to date, 142 issues (including end-of-volume indexes) and 364 HTML articles (a lot fewer than there are actual articles, mostly because I didn’t start doing HTML until Volume 4 and still don’t do HTML for all articles), noting that the stats are woefully incomplete (there were none for the first few years).

Issues

More than 573,000 PDF downloads to date. Two issues downloaded more than 10,000 times; four more than 8,000; 17 more than 6,000; 44 more than 4,000. In all, 67 of the 142 issues have been downloaded more than 4,000 times to date.

Articles

More than 2.2 million HTML pageviews (of articles, excluding other pags) to date. Including both HTML pageviews and PDF downloads, three articles have been viewed more than 20,000 times; 21 more than 10,000; 63 more than 8,000; 100 more than 6,000; 85 more than 4,000. In all, 272 of the 364 articles have been viewed more than 4,000 times to date.

You already know the (by far) most frequently downloaded and viewed article, which still gets downloaded as an issue more than any other in 2010 (although it’s not the most downloaded article in 2010–That is, of course, Library 2.0 and “Library 2.0.” If I had a quarter for every download/view of that issue/article, it would cover two years’ sponsorship for C&I. Ah well…

Since my online presence is going to be erratic [that is, more erratic than usual] for a little while, and I may not get around to proper posts for a bit, I thought I’d do a quick summary:

• Making the Case: While it’s premature to say anything definitive, there’s some good news here. I believe that some level of sponsorship for Cites & Insights and (maybe) Walt at Random may be in the works. (I think it’s a little more positive than that, but it’s also not final yet. Separately, a book proposal–a “real book” through a first-rate library publisher–has apparently been accepted. (No contract yet; soon.)
• That leaves the possibility of a new home for some of the content formerly in the Library Leadership Network and possibly ongoing development of content and conversations; I’d love to discuss this possibility. It also leaves the possibility of some sponsorship or other arrangements for some research that I’d love to do…
• As for ALA itself: Thanks once again to the Library Society of the World. It was a good conference–a couple of highly informative programs, one good program that I was part of (hey, there were two other speakers, so I’m certain it was a good program), a couple of fine social events, unfortunately one great social event not held this time…and as always exhibits and casual conversations. (Exhibits were interesting: Very busy at book publishers, reasonably busy at service providers/traditional library vendors, seemingly very “unbusy” at library automation vendors, or at least at some of them. Dunno what, if anything, this means.) One interesting note from one particular session : I finally encountered a panelist being Always On Message in the Proper PR Style: The moderator was engaging the panelists with some tough questions–and this person, uniquely among the panel, simply ignored whatever question was asked and proceeded to give another pitch. Amazing. Effective? Maybe not so much.
• But: When I set up the VCR to tape Good Guys last night because there was no way I could stay up until 10 p.m. (after, admittedly, getting up at 3 a.m.–really midnight PDT–to start the journey back home), when I realize that I’m not really back to full energy now, and when I think about how long it’s been since I did any writing and how long it will be until I get back to “regular” writing (partly due to issues that need to be settled having to do with being almost 65, sigh, but partly due to “ALA hangover” of various sorts)…well, as much as I find ALA worthwhile, I’m also starting to balance that out against the sheer body strain of going to East Coast conferences and the general week-long disruption a “three-day” visit (call it 3:30 p.m Thursday to 3:00 p.m. Monday, plus time for packing, organizing material, etc.) entails. I won’t say I’m getting too old for this, but…

So that’s a quick summary. More later, maybe…or maybe not. (Oh, I’ll be back to regular irregular blogging; just might not revisit these particular situations.) Meanwhile, there are Part D choices to download and investigate, Part A&B choices to actually make and activate, some other financial issues to deal with, some changes to make in one existing piece of writing…

And a day that’s cooled down just enough from yesterday that a good walk would be a good idea.

“Making the case” for what, exactly? Well, really, for “semi-” still being part of my self-description as semi-retired. Oh, and for going to ALA conferences (or any library conferences) after this year, as part of staying involved in the field–which, for reasons of real economics and household harmony, needs to involve some appropriate earned income.

To recap:

• Making the Case 1 notes the solution I’d find most desirable–finding ongoing sponsorship for Cites & Insights or (and) Walt at Random.
• Making the Case 2 starts with a surprise (the shutdown of the Library Leadership Network) and considers the possibility of a new site providing diverse essays that can inform library leaders (and managers) and possibly generate conversations on relevant topics.
• Making the Case 2.5 explains some fine points (that 1 and 2 aren’t either/or, that finding a home for much of the LLN content is relatively easy but also less interesting, etc.)

I think this is the last of this post series, both because it’s getting close to ALA Annual (the ideal spot to discuss these possibilities) and because I’d rather get back to other topics.

Research

I’d love to be involved with some group involved in real-world library research, and I believe I’ve demonstrated my ability to carry out focused, transparent projects.

I did some of those projects on speculation, hoping that they would result in some modest amount of income either from book sales or, potentially, from speaking or other invitations. The results–not only monetary, but even having the research noticed–have ranged from mediocre to abysmal. It’s hard to justify doing any more projects except out of pure personal fascination, unless there’s some up-front sponsorship.

At this point, I don’t see how this is likely to happen. I’d love to be proved wrong.

Other improbabilities

When I was first looking for a new gig, three years ago, I did get a couple of offers–one to teach a library school course (after designing the course), one to do seminars. It’s also been suggested that I should become a consultant (hmm: suggest that someone out of work become a consultant–what a novel idea!)

Why haven’t I followed up on these possibilities? Turns out John Scalzi has a post today at Whatever that speaks to this situation: “The Self-Awareness of Incompetence (or Lack Thereof).” An excerpt:

I think there’s a critical intersection between being willing to try things you’re not good at (or good at yet) to learn and experience them — and thus accepting that there’s an interim period of incompetence in the area while one gets up to speed — and the self knowledge (or lack thereof) that no matter how much effort you put into something, you won’t ever reach a sufficient level of competence. Or in shorter words, there’s a cross street between “try something new” and “give it up, already,” and I think it’s interesting to find out, when people get to that particular curb, if they actually know where they’re standing.

I’ve done loads of the former–starting with computer programming and going on from there–with, usually, reasonably good results. I’m willing to continue.

But…

• I really don’t believe I’d be more than mediocre as an adjunct faculty member at a library school, and I do believe that if LIS students are to be taught by non-MLIS holders, those non-MLIS holders should be a whole lot better than mediocre.
• I know I’m not enough of a self-promoter to be a successful consultant, and the question “Consult about what, exactly?” keeps coming back to haunt me. I’m not closing this off entirely, but it’s clearly not My Future.
• As for webinars, quite apart from the ungainly name…well, not impossible, but it appears that I’m no longer in demand as a speaker (possibly for good reasons), and I think I’d be even less spectacular as a webinar presenter.

So, well, I haven’t followed up on these. Maybe that’s wrong.

Otherwise, there are always columns, articles and books. I have one book proposal (yes, with somebody else publishing it) in the works now. I suspect I’ll have one or two others along the way, although the sheer multitude of books in the field (ten at a time?) gives me pause. (One topic that’s been near & dear for many, many years might be ripe for book treatment…) Always possible–columns and articles. But with all of those, maybe books more than others, the issues of compensation and value add come into play. That is: I don’t want to write books that I don’t believe add substantial value…and most books and articles don’t really yield much of a revenue stream. They’ll be part of it, I think, but not a major part. (Psst: Thanks to the two people or institutions who’ve purchased But Still They Blog this month!)

And I think that’s it for the cluster.

Availability during ALA: Most any time Friday from noon to 6 or so, any time Saturday (period, so far), and Sunday from, say, 2 p.m. through dinner time. But contact me beforehand, ‘cuz I still travel without a netbook or notebook or iPad or iTouch or…  waltcrawford at gmail dot com.

Cites & Insights needs sponsorship–and ALA Annual would be a great time to set it up. That sponsorship could easily include a sidebar ad or banner on Walt at Random.

Current Reach

Here’s what I find from Urchin’s log analysis for January 1, 2010 through June 16, 2010:

• Cites & Insights: Nearly 40,000 PDF downloads and 174,000 pageviews. An average of 1,000 pageviews and 400 sessions per day. More than 69,000 readers (based on IP addresses) this year.
• Walt at Random: More than 617,000 pageviews–an average of 3,700 per day, in 1,500 sessions per day. Currently more than 1,100 RSS subscriptions. Although most posts are viewed via RSS, the home (/index) page has been viewed more than 60,000 times. More than 250,000 readers (based on IP addresses) this year.

I’ll admit that I’d rather see more C&I readers than Walt at Random readers, but the numbers are striking in either case–and, for C&I, don’t include passalong readership of print copies.

Other Facts

For better or for worse, Walt at Random was named a gold star “General Interest Library Blog” in Salem Press’ 2010 library blogs list–and is one of the 2010 LISNews “10 Librarian Blogs To Read in 2010.”

Cites & Insights issues and articles seem to age well–readership keeps growing. While the changes of sites over the years have prevented comprehensive statistics, here are some notes as of the end of 2009:

• Two issues had been downloaded more than 10,000 times (one of them more than 25,000 times)
• More than 30 other issues have been downloaded more than 5,000 times: two more than 8,000, three more than 7,500, 14 more than 6,000 and 12 more than 5,000. Add 25 with more than 4,000 downloads and 33 with more than 3,000.
• Article viewership (including only HTML pageviews and PDF downloads–excluding in-browser PDF pageviews, because these are hard to equate to actual readership) can be much higher than that. The classic, “Library 2.0 and ‘Library 2.0′”, reached more than 44,000 views by the end of 2009–with another 17 articles viewed more than 10,000 times and another 51 viewed between 8,000 and 10,000 times.
• Note that none of these numbers include the nearly 40,000 PDF downloads and roughly 100,000 article pageviews from January 1 through June 16, 2010.

Both Walt at Random and Cites & Insights have Google Page Rank 6.

Sponsorship Possibilities

• Basic Sponsorship: “Sponsored by” as part of the banner on the front page of each new issue of C&I, acknowledgment in the masthead on the back page of each new issue of C&I, optional logo as part of that masthead, “Sponsored by” on the C&I home page. The masthead (without the logo) also appears in every HTML article
• Expanded Sponsorship: Basic sponsorship plus either a sponsor’s column in some or all issues, or a partial or full-page ad in each PDF issue.
• Adding Walt at Random: Addition of a sponsor’s name to the Walt at Random banner, possibly a banner ad as part of the footer, possibly a text ad in the sidebar.
• Who? Anybody trying to reach “my part” of the library community–preferably a company or group in some area that I don’t directly write about, so there’s no conflict of interest. That could include book jobbers, library automation companies, consortia and probably others.
• How? Get in touch with me–waltcrawford at gmail dot com. We could talk during ALA, if you get in touch by Thursday noon.

I see by my handy-dandy spreadsheet (a grid of page counts and word counts for each issue in the first ten years of publication) that C&I 10:8 reaches two milestones–noting that neither of these milestones includes the two non-issues that appeared briefly and then departed, or the volume indexes:

• C&I now totals just over 2.5 million words since its inception–2,504,929 to be exact.
• My “target” for the last couple of years has been 12 issues averaging 20 pages each. That means a complete volume should come out to about 240 pages. On that basis, I’m done for the year–Volume 10 now totals 254 pages (again, not including the massive briefly-visible non-issue, which almost nobody downloaded anyway).

OK, so the target is a little ridiculous, since the most recent issue shorter than 22 pages was November 2005 and the most recent issue shorter than 20 pages was February 2003. And no, although the future of C&I (until I get sponsorship) is indeed in doubt, I don’t plan to shut down for the year.

If you’re wondering (“we weren’t, Walt, but we can’t stop you”), there were three volumes that came in at fewer than 300 pages, a reasonable secondary goal–the first three, as you might expect.

The article links for Cites & Insights 10:8 (in this post and on the C&I site itself) have been fixed and should be working.

(Actually, the links were fine; I just misnamed the four files.)

Sorry about that.

Available now: Cites & Insights 10:8, July 2010.

This 40-page issue (PDF as usual, with most but not all the sections available as HTML separates) has a variety of features to keep you entertained or informed on your long flights to & from ALA–and it’s well worth reading even if you’re not attending (or live near the District of Columbia).

What’s here:

The CD-ROM Project…pp. 1-4

The start of a “digital medium archaeology project”–taking a few dozen of the best title CD-ROMs (that is, CD-ROMs that are extended books and multimedia carriers, not just software) from 1994-2000 and seeing whether they’ll work on a contemporary Windows 7 system, whether they still have much to offer, whether they’re still available (as is or updated) and, if not, what we’ve lost–and what’s readily available on the web that appears roughly equivalent. For starters, we have two astronomical CDs and two art-related CDs…

The Zeitgeist: One Facebook to Rule Them All?…pp. 4-22

A range of commentaries on the December 2009 and April 2010 Facebook privacy changes, including some pre-December items and a few notes on the current situation. Commentaries include some by librarians and a wide range by others–including a group of first-rate commentaries by danah boyd and a ReadWriteWeb piece that gets my coveted middle-finger salute for asininity in the service of (almost certainly false) gengen.

Interesting & Peculiar Products…pp. 22-29

Ten products (or product commentaries) and five group reviews–but some of the product notes are more essay than description, including a non-elegy for OQO and “Catching up with the OLPC XO.”

Offtopic Perspective: Mystery Collection Part 2…pp. 29-35

The second of ten segments of this massive 250-movie set, including three great flicks, three near-classics and another dozen worthwhile films. You get cheating wives, crooked electronics geniuses, a blind detective, a sexy ghost…and that’s just in the first two of six discs.

My Back Pages…pp. 35-40

As always, this chunk’o'snark is a bonus for “print readers”–those who download the whole PDF. Ten items, only half of them audio-related.

This is the final issue sponsored by the Library Society of the World. Now the uncertainty begins…

In some ways, this is another promotional post for the forthcoming July 2010 Cites & Insights (which, as of right now, seems likely to emerge on June 9 or June 10 and to be 40 pages long). The first such post appeared yesterday, and raised some troubling issues regarding the future of C&I (and of my involvement in the field).

To the extent that the second section of that post was a touch downbeat, I apologize–sort of. And I do apologize to the colleague with whom I had an email conversation (not sparked by the post), a conversation that revealed to me that I’ve been more demoralized by some events of this year than I’d realized. (Don’t worry: I won’t be wandering around DC being gloomy–I don’t do that at conferences. In fact, overall, I’m not gloomy…)

What Is Happening

The forthcoming issue has, I believe, some interesting stuff. The first piece starts a new project that might or might not continue; I think it’s interesting and maybe relevant to some libraries. The second piece–the big essay–is relevant to almost every librarian (in my opinion) and continues what I regard as strong Zeitgeist pieces (most of which could equally well be Making it Work pieces, this one less so).

The third piece is a traditional collection with a difference–it’s about products, but in most cases with brief (or not so brief) essays rather than pure descriptions. Then there’s a set of brief takes on old movies, always fun…or not. (This group includes three classics and three more that I thought were near-classics…indeed, this time I thought three-quarters of the flicks were worthwhile.)

And I close with an overdue PDF-only section of snark, only about half of it related to the wonderful world of high-end audio

But I thought I’d also talk about…

What’s Not Happening

There’s no Making it Work essay in this issue. I’m pretty sure there will be one in the August issue–there’s certainly plenty of source material, and I’ve started splitting into semi-manageable chunks. (How semi-manageable? 44 items in one big chunk, 25 in another, 26 in a third, and a bunch of smaller groups.)

There’s no Perspective as such–and in that case, I have a working “On” title that will almost certainly get written very soon (I would have written it for the July issue, but this issue was already overlength, and the particular topic can only benefit from a little more thinktime). For that matter, I could treat an MiW chunk as a Perspective…and quite easily come up with an all-Perspective issue.

By far the largest group of Delicious items relates to Google Book Search and the proposed settlement…but there’s no indication of when or whether a settlement will actually be approved, and I have no idea whether it will even make sense to dive back into that particular pool.

Blogging, copyright, writing, reading, social networks, ereaders, ebooks…lots of future topics with lots of worthwhile source material.

It’s clear to me that, if it makes sense to keep C&I going, having enough varied material and ideas won’t be a problem for years to come. Does it make sense to keep C&I going? That’s a tougher question…

What’s Also Not Happening

Beyond C&I–and at least one promising individual project that I won’t discuss until it’s final–there’s some potential research that isn’t happening. At least not yet.

• I’m now fairly well convinced that it’s futile for me to spend time on library blogs, even though it would be fascinating to do a qualitative/quantitative study focusing on those library blogs that appear to be succeeding (based on comments or Google Page Rank). The field seems to have told me in no uncertain terms that my work in this area is simply not valued, so there’s little point in even considering additional bruises on my forehead.
• Liblogs–blogs by library people–are another question. Not that But Still They Blog is setting any sales records (I do appreciate the purchase of PDF versions of both liblog books last Friday–thanks, whoever you are!)–it’s now up to 16 copies–but, well, this one still interests me. Maybe. I can think of two approaches for a future study, but in my saner moments I think that neither one may be worth pursuing. (One approach: An attempt to capture the entire field, but only at a gross level–that is, without individual commentaries or difficult metrics. The other, which may be complementary: A detailed analysis of a smaller group of blogs, focusing on those that can be said to be currently active.)
• Anything else where my skills and tenacity might be worthwhile. It just doesn’t make sense to do this kind of stuff on speculation, based on results to date.

That’s it for now. Once again, I’d love to discuss possibilities with people or groups, before I admit that “semi-” in “semi-retired” has become a lie.

That title can be read two ways. This post is about both of them.

Coming Soon

Cites & Insights 10:8, July 2010, will be out soon–some time later this week, Gaia willin’ and the creek don’t rise. It’s a varied issue, but also a big one, perfect for those long flights to & from DC. I’m not sure just how big, but 40 pages doesn’t seem improbable at this point. (I’m in the third-stage editing & copyfitting process; right now, it’s just over 42 pages.)

An earlier discussion involved the possibility of a special “summertime fun” issue combining two Offtopic Perspectives on old movies and the first installment of my new digital medium archaeology project–but after thinking about responses, I decided to integrate those into regular issues. If I’d done the special issue, the June 2010 issue would have been 26 or 28 pages long, the Summertime Fun issue would be out right about now and would be 16 or 22 pages long…and the July issue would come out after ALA and probably be 32 pages or longer.  The only downside of not doing the special issue: The July issue doesn’t have any true essay-style Perspectives, although several are coming in future issues.

The biggie for this issue: A new Zeitgeist essay, “One Facebook to Rule Them All?” That’s roughly half the issue. Unless things change, there are four other sections with a fair amount of variety in each one.

This is also the final issue of C&I sponsored by the Library Society of the World, and that only because I chose to count the “getting Walt to Washington” contributions as also being direct support for C&I. Which brings us to…

Future Sponsorship and Publication

As of next week, I have no sponsorship for Cites & Insights and only one very small source of any income related to writing, editing and librarianship.

The direct sponsorship course hasn’t worked out terribly well: Other than LSW’s special effort, total donations received to date are in the low three figures, with none of that coming in since that special effort began. This does not appear to be a plausible revenue source for the long term.

I could really use sponsorship–with or without paid ad columns or even full-page ads in the issues. Or even with sponsorship (and an ad) for Walt at Random included.

Without such sponsorship (or some part-time telecommuting situation that takes advantage of my skills and offers plausible rewards), it’s hard to justify attending ALA once or twice a year (and I’d really like to go to both 2011 conferences, for starters), since it would be pure out-of-pocket, not even deductible as a business expense (you really can’t deduct from nothing). Maybe we could afford it, but it’s hard to convince my wife–a reasonable and intelligent person–that it’s a good expenditure under the circumstances.

Without attending ALA at least once a year, it becomes more difficult to stay in touch and to justify to myself the time spent on Cites & Insights. Which gets tricky, because in many ways I’d prefer to keep doing what appears to be something unique and valuable within the field. It’s that “valuable” word that starts to get difficult: Valuable to whom? How does that value translate into, say, meals, clothes, utility bills and gasoline? (None of which are endangered, to be sure; we’re really talking about extras–wine, vacations, those fancy $6.31 lunches at Canton Villa…and going to ALA Annual and/or Midwinter.)

If C&I is no longer valuable, then I should give it up. If it is valuable…well, it sure would be nice to find some sponsorship.

(Yes, I’m considering alternative models along the “Freemium” lines. Honestly? I don’t see that working out very well. The four annual volumes of C&I are partly “Freemium” items, especially the PDF versions…and the total number of PDF versions sold to date has been zero.)

ALA Annual would be a great time to discuss possibilities with people. I’ll be there from Friday morning through Sunday evening. I think I have one related conversation scheduled, although “scheduled” overstates the fixity of the situation.

The email address is, as always, waltcrawford at gmail dot com.

Cites & Insights 10:7 (June 2010) is now available.

The 34-page issue is, as usual, PDF; each essay is also available as an HTML separate

(just click on the links, or use the highly sophisticated notational scheme, http://citesandinsights.info/vNiMx.htm, where N is the volume (10), M is the issue (7), and x is a lower-case letter indicating the article, starting with a, then b, then c…)

What’s Here

Bibs & Blather…pp. 1-3

Announcing the new book Open Access and Libraries: Essays from Cites & Insights, 2001-2009, a 519-page 6×9 book combining all OA-related essays from C&I–free as a PDF, minimally priced ($17.50) as a trade paperback. Also a note on ALA and my rehearsals for [semi-?]retirement.

The Zeitgeist: There is No Future…pp. 3-19

You could think of this as a Making it Work Perspective on library futures, if you prefer–focusing on exclusionary vs. inclusionary thinking (OR vs. AND), The Future vs. many futures…and more.

Feedback and Following Up…pp. 19-20

Finally (and probably having missed some feedback), a little feedback–three items in all.

Copyright Currents: Catching Up with the RIAA…pp. 20-27

Yes, the RIAA says they’ve wound down their vastly offensive campaign of suing 30,000+ file-sharers for a few thousand bucks each–and, during that process, exactly two cases have gone to jury trial. Guess what? So far, the RIAA’s batting 1000 in those cases. This piece brings us up to date on the longest-running case (Jammie Thomas, now Jammie Thomas-Rassset)–and ads notes on the other one, Joel Tenenbaum, where a defense lawyer’s novel interpretation of fair use was so convincing that the judge ordered a directed verdict…in favor of the plaintiff.

Offtopic Perspective: Spaghetti Westerns…pp. 27-34

That’s the name of the five-disc set containing 20 movies covered in this set of offhand impressions (although in 2.5 cases I refer back to an earlier impression). For a few of you on FriendFeed, inclusion of this piece also means I don’t plan to do a special “summer silliness” issue–and will integrate my odd digital media archaeology project, if and when, into regular issues of C&I.

Sponsorship and Support

This is the penultimate issue sponsored by the Library Society of the World. Chances are, the final such issue (July 2010) will appear before the 2010 ALA Annual Conference (although that’s not guaranteed).

After that, I’m in need of sponsorship or, failing that, direct support. If you regard C&I as worthwhile, one way to show that is to provide some support: The PayPal link is right on the C&I home page.

I was looking at a liblog I hadn’t heard of before, and happened to glance up at the GPR flag (it’s on my Firefox navigation bar, useful for certain things)… which is irrelevant except for the side-effect:

For the first time in a few months, I went to this blog as a regular reader (that is, not through my administrator’s door) and, after that, to Cites & Insights.

And found that both of them have Google Page Rank 6.

Which ain’t no big deal, actually–of the 521 liblogs in But Still They Blog, when I checked GPRs in August 2009, 90 (17%) had GPR 6 and 19 (3.6%) had even higher Google Page Ranks (18 had GPR 7; one had GPR 8)–but, well, it was nice to see a rise in visibility (I find “importance” too silly to use for GPR).

If you’re wondering, here’s the breakdown of GPRs for liblogs in August 2009–noting that I used GPR 4 in either late 2008 or mid-2009 as a criterion for newer liblogs for inclusion in the book:

• Google Page Rank 3 or lower: 47
• Google Page Rank 4: 196
• Google Page Rank 5: 169
• Google Page Rank 6: 90
• Google Page Rank 7: 18
• Google Page Rank 8: One–and it’s probably not the one you think it is.

As for Cites & Insights, that had risen (slowly) to a Google Page Rank of 6 (and maybe 7 at one point, although I could be wrong about that) while it was at its earlier site. Moving to its own domain, while absolutely necessary and a Very Good Thing in the long run, automatically broke a bunch of links and caused the GPR to plummet–that’s a given.

Last time I checked on either–it’s not something I look at very often (my ego does know some bounds)–both were at GPR 5.

The timing is nice because, well, I’ve been ruminating about the “semi-” part of being “semi-retired” and how hard I should try to keep that “semi-” part. And whether full retirement might mean retiring some of my writing activity.

I’ll keep ruminating, doing some of it in public, no doubt, but this slight rise in visibility is nice, particularly coming at this point. My mantra used to be “I’ll keep writing this stuff as long as people want to keep reading it.” It’s not that simple at this point, but apparent interested, voluntary readership is certainly part of what makes doing this stuff worthwhile.

For those who feel posts need to be substantive and significant: This one isn’t. Not sorry about that. And I may have a new clarification on comment moderation policies coming up soon…one that makes an exception to the usual “your email address will never be revealed” rule. However, that policy change–if and when it happens–will only be prospective: I will not reveal any email addresses for comments received up to that change.

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Quick update on the “collection of OA stuff from C&I” project: I’d been holding off on actual publication of that collection, including free PDF (and maybe free ePub) and minimally-priced paperback version (probably Lulu’s cost plus $1, or rounded to the nearest $5 interval), because of two factors:

1. Someone had expressed an interest in building an index for the collection, which would have made the book more useful (effort I frankly was not ready to add)
2. I’ve had other things to think about, and the level of interest in the collection was, while non-zero, not huge either.

#1 didn’t come through. #2 is still a factor, as is the lack of an easy epub conversion that I’m particularly happy about.

Within the next two weeks, I think, I will do the minimum necessary–slap together a simple cover, put up the free PDF and minimally-priced paperback, and maybe put together a (free or minimally-priced) epub version that’s at least plausible. [The best way to do that, at this point, seems to be to take the Word version, make a copy, turn off hyphenation and justification, remove page headers and footers, and turn that into an epub version either directly or via a PDF intermediary. That's less than half an hour's work; I'll spend that much time.]

And, of course, I’ll announce it when it is available.

I’m wondering about a possible way to make my peculiar writing and organizing talents in the library field worthwhile as an ongoing source of revenue. (“Monetizing the synthesis” sounds awful, so I didn’t say that.)

Pre-clarification

Before describing a possibility, I should clarify a couple of things:

1. Cites & Insights itself–the monthly+, PDF (and selective HTML) ejournal on the intersections of libraries, policy, technology and media, ISSN 1534-0937, 129 published issues, just over 3,000 pages and 2.4 million words–is not going to become a fee-based ejournal, a print journal, or something requiring authentication. That’s just not going to happen. Period.
2. I’m still hoping to find an ongoing sponsor for Cites & Insights. Depending on the terms (and amount) of sponsorship, that sponsor might have textual space or actual ads in C&I–or might not. I’d prefer a sponsor with whom conflict of interest could not arise as a possibility, that is, a sponsor that operates in an area I don’t write about. That’s why I’ve mentioned library automation vendors, book jobbers, consortia, bibliographic utilities and the like as possibilities; consultancies would also fit in that category.
3. While what follows is not even as polished as a rough proposal, and while all sorts of modifications to the vague idea are possible, I do not see founding a new ongoing print publication, for several reasons.

C&I Executive Edition?

Here’s my thinking:

• Cites & Insights is great for what it is–the best in the field (it’s the only one in the field, as far as I know).
• What seems to work best in Cites & Insights is the relatively long essay that includes a variety of perspectives on a given topic, combining my ideas and synthesis with lots of other folks’ commentaries. Increasingly, “relatively long” means 5,000 to 15,000 words or longer, with a handful of shorter features and occasionally “On” perspectives running 2,000 to 5,000 words.
• Lots of people who might benefit from what I do–let’s call them “executives,” but in fact they include leaders, managers, and a great many others–just don’t have or won’t take the time to read those long essays. After all, a typical library magazine column is 700-800 words; a typical article is rarely more than 2,000 words; there’s only one blog with posts averaging more than 2,000 words each, and even that one (do I need to name it?) comes in at under 3,000 words per post.
• So maybe I should offer something that serves people with either little time to spend on this kind of reading, or short attention spans, or both.
• And maybe people would pay for that something–or a company (or whatever) would be interested in underwriting it.

Here’s what I have in mind, right at the moment, noting again that this is very tentative

• Length: Two pages if printed out from single-column HTML original. Call it 1,000 words, more or less.
• Frequency: Say 24 or 26 issues per year–roughly fortnightly, with time off for good behavior vacations.
• Content: 12-14 issues would consist of extreme summaries of Cites & Insights issues, boiling each essay down to a few hundred words (and, of course, linking to the originals). The other issues would be some combination of “best of the liblogs” summaries (with links to original posts) and very brief versions of the kind of essay I was doing for my former place of work, on specific topics leaders should be aware of.
• Distribution & Funding: To be worked out. RSS distribution seems like one good possibility, with an email backup for executives who find RSS too newfangled. Presumably, either of these could be controlled if this was funded by its readers, or open if it was underwritten by a sponsor.

I think this might be interesting and worthwhile for the field. I know that I won’t consider doing it unless the economics make sense–if anything will survive as a retiree’s hobby (and that’s still very much an “if”), it will be C&I and the blog, not something new that specifically requires concise writing. This might be something where someone else should handle the distribution issues, or it might not. (I’m not sure I’m ready to get into the paid-subscription business: That has a variety of odd accounting and tax consequences.)

Reactions? Refinements? Potential partners? If this happened at all, I don’t see it happening before 2011, but that means this is the time to consider the possibilities. Feel free to comment here, or send me email. You know the routine: username waltcrawford, domain gmail dot com.