Walt at Random

A few months back, one of the many Library Society of the World FriendFeedFolk made an idle comment about setting me up as an institution.

I trust the person didn’t actually mean that I need to be institutionalized. Let’s assume that’s the case. I hope I’m still a few decades away from being institutionalized…

While I’d certainly accept an ongoing “consultancy” or, say, Jack-of-some-trades Emeritus position, with adequate funding (let’s call it $15,000/year plus inflation, for at least four years), somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’d still like to hope that there’s a way to make a more project-oriented version of this happen–namely, the future outlined in “Prospectus: An Ongoing Public Library Social Network Scan” [which I've updated slightly since it was first posted, and which appears in differently-modified form in Bibs & Blather within the current Cites & Insights] and expanded in “A library is…”

Over the last few days, as I’ve reviewed the full second draft of Successful Social Networking in Public Libraries and started determining how to modify it for the third (submission) draft, I’ve realized and found out some additional items that may add meat to all of this.

The IMLS Oops

I knew all along that the best source of key data for libraries in all 50 states (plus DC and some American territories) was IMLS–but last August, when I tried to download and open the latest public library statistics, I found that it wouldn’t work: The Access file wouldn’t open in Excel and the flat file was not something I could handle. (The Access file is actually three linked .mdb databases.)

Either I did something wrong back then (quite possible), something’s changed on my computer (also possible–I do have Windows Update auto-enabled), or something’s changed elsewhere in the universe, because when I tried the same thing today, it worked.

This would have been nice last August–or, better, last June before I started any of the library scans–if only because the IMLS database includes the actual names that public libraries use, which either aren’t always used in the state spreadsheets (available from most but not all states) or aren’t in columns that I found obvious. As a result, some library searches were clumsier than they needed to be, and it’s even possible that I missed a few.

So: If I did have funding to do a complete sweep for 2012 and later years, I could apparently work with the national files even without buying new software. That’s a good thing. And having the actual library names in one neat column does make life easier…

The potential side-effects

If I could get ongoing funding for this project, I could be persuaded quite easily to treat it as a form of personal sponsorship (and yes, $15,000/year plus inflation would be about right), which would mean:

• PDFs and other electronic output directly from the studies themselves would be freely available and would carry a Creative Commons BY (attribution) license. (If there are spreadsheets, they’d carry a CC0 license, although that’s silly since data is fundamentally not copyrightable anyway.)
• I would retroactively change the Creative Commons license for Cites & Insights and Walt at Random from CC BY-NC to CC BY–that is, “use it as you will, as long as you give me credit.”
• I would treat all of my books for which I have full control as carrying a Founder’s License: That is, I’d dedicate them to the public domain after 14 years. That would include all my books before Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness & Reality–which is more than 14 years old, but I’m not in a position to make it public domain. (When Being Analog turns 14, in another year, I’d ask ALA Editions whether it’s out of print and thus has control return to me. If so, I’d make it public domain.)

So there’s an amplification. Any takers?

Last November (November 25, 2011), I asked the musical question “How many US public libraries have actually closed?” I got some comments (including one suggestion that it was 0.4% since 2005) but no actual answers.

I asked the question again recently in a comment grumping about the lead sentence of a LISNews story, a sentence beginning “In an age of library closings”:

The net number appears to be negative

As I was looking at IMLS offerings, I did open the Public Libraries Survey Fiscal Year 2009,

And in the executive summary I found this bullet point:

“The number of public libraries has increased over the past 10 years.”

Later, I saw text that suggested there were 151 more public libraries in 2009 than a decade before.

It’s not clear to me whether IMLS means 151 more outlets (branches) or 151 more entities (libraries and library agencies). In either case, it’s a net increase, which says a lot about the flood of stories about how public libraries are shutting down all over the place. (In one case, it’s about a 1.6% increase; in the other, it’s about 0.9%.)

My question still stands: How many public libraries (not branches) have actually closed for extended periods, let’s say two years or more? How many of these are in towns and cities that have not become ghost towns?

Yes, there are budgetary problems. (When aren’t there?) Yes, public libraries need more funding.

But to me the primary effect of the “public libraries are closing all over the place!” meme is self-fulfilling prophecy and grist for the mill of libertarians and those who dislike public libraries: Oh well, they’re already shutting down like crazy, that’s just the way it is.

Which, as I suspected, is simply not true.

On January 4, 2012, I posted “Prospectus: An Ongoing Public Library Social Network Scan.” I’m still hoping to see some results from this (hey, hope is a good thing). Meanwhile, I recalled something that I’d thought about while finishing the fall 2011 partial scan.

To wit: Lots of public libraries have mottoes or sayings on their websites (and probably elsewhere). Not all, by any means; I’d guesstimate 1/3, but that’s a NSWAG (non-scientific wild-ass guess).

Those mottoes are frequently interesting as tiny indications of what libraries are, or regard themselves as.

It might be fun and, I don’t know, uplifting to have a collection of these mottoes. I’m calling it “A library is…” for the moment, although I suspect only a minority of the sayings could be used to complete that statement.

If there’s interest, and if I get funding, preparing that collection could be an offshoot. It certainly wouldn’t be worth looking at all 9,000+ libraries (or the 8,000+, at a guess, that have websites) to find them, but if I was there anyway, capturing and organizing them would be a minor extra task.

Does this seem intriguing to anybody else? (Does the project in general seem intriguing to anyone else?)

If I try the Kickstarter route, A library is… would almost certainly be one of the thank-you items, especially since it could be offered at four or five different levels (PDF or EPUB or HTML; softcover book; autographed softcover book; hardcover book; autographed hardcover book).

Just another thought…

I wrote about this six weeks ago in “Dreaming out loud: An ideal ongoing sponsored project.” This is a slightly more fleshed-out version, done after completing the 5,958-library survey and revisiting the first 2,406 libraries. (I’m well into revising the manuscript now, preparing secondary metrics as I go).

Briefly, I believe it would be worthwhile to do an annual nationwide survey of public library presence on social networks, looking at all U.S. public libraries–9,184 of them (based on IMLS figures as reported in Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings (HAPLR)).

The earlier post offers a longer version of what I’ve already done and some other notes; this post goes into a little more detail on possibilities. I would love to see this happen, but I don’t really have the contacts to make that happen. In late January and early February, I’ll be trying to see what’s possible (with your help, I hope). At some point, it may make sense to try the long shot (see “How to Pay” below).

The Baseline

As background for my 2012 ALA Editions book Successful Social Networking in Public Libraries, I looked at all of the public libraries in 25 states (distributed by population) in late summer 2011–and later added the libraries in 13 more states, for a total of 5,958 libraries in 38 states. For the first 25 states (and 2,406 libraries), I revisited four months after the first visit to look at changes in social networking.

The result is two spreadsheets, one of which (LSNALL) would be the baseline for the new project. (The other, LSN25, looks at the four-month changes. It wouldn’t be particularly relevant for the new project.)

LSNALL includes, for each library, the following–based on my own searching, as detailed in the earlier post:

• Library name and Legal Service Area population as provided by the state library in its spreadsheet, noting that “Library name” is frequently something other than the name the library actually uses. (Only libraries that have an LSA are included, leaving out 7,000-odd branches but also cooperative agencies that aren’t double-counted.)
• State abbreviation
• Date on which I checked the library
• “FB?”–a code indicating whether I found a working Facebook link to a library Facebook page on the website (w), in the first 100 Google results (g), or by searching Facebook itself (f), in that order–or, if none was found, whether I found a community or information Facebook page instead (i) or nothing at all (n).
• If there is a Facebook page (or group, or non-page account), the number of Likes (or friends).
• For the most recent and fifth most recent Facebook post from the library itself, a code indicating its currency bucket: d (the day I checked), e (week–within the past seven days including today), f (fortnight), m (month), q (quarter), s (six months), y (year) or z (more than a year). (“e” was chosen to make the buckets directly sortable.)
• A one-letter code indicating whether I found some signs of interactivity within the “visible” posts (usually 20 to 30): “y” for a non-library comment or a non-spam post from someone other than the library; “l” if I found likes (by someone other than the library!) on posts but no comments; “s” if I found only spam comments (or only spam and likes); and blank if I found none of those.
• A Twitter code, similar to Facebook except that there are no “i” cases and I use “t” instead of “f” if the Twitter account could only be found within Twitter itself.
• Followers, following, and tweets, one number each.
• The same most recent and fifth most recent bucket codes for tweets
• An interactivity code, usually based on either non-library tweets, retweets, or tweets beginning “@”–I didn’t look as far for these, and don’t regard the results as very meaningful.
• Comments if needed–sparsely. (E.g., “FB0″ for a few cases where a library Facebook page is apparently the library’s actual page but has no updates, up through FB4 if there aren’t yet five updates, or “FB teen” or the like where there’s no general-purpose FB page but appear to be specialized pages.)
• Added after the initial scan: “SN?”–a number from 0 to 2 indicating how many of the two possibilities the library had–and “H”–a number from 0 to 9 providing the HAPLR size category (0 being under 1,000, 9 being 500,000 and up), to ease sorting and, as it turns out, reporting.

A derivative spreadsheet, LSN38, leaves out all the rows with SN?=0 (libraries with no findable social network presence) and adds derivative columns for use in the book, such as “F%” (Likes divided by LSA), “T%” (same for Twitter followers), “T/F” (followers divided by likes), “Fr” (followings divided by followers) and “Fmx” and “Tmx”–two-character codes indicating frequency and reach buckets. There are also metrics spreadsheets and pages within these spreadsheets, of course, but the primary LSNALL spreadsheet is the true baseline.

Proposed One-Year Revision

With proper funding in place and possibly better ways to distribute the results, I’d see doing this between June and November 2012:

• Start a new spreadsheet (linked to the old one for comparative metrics) to include the other 12 states and DC, based on the most recent IMLS dataset  (which would require either acquiring Access or working with a partner, since the other 12 states don’t seem to have downloadable spreadsheets). [Note: I now find that I can open the IMLS dataset within Excel, although I would swear that this wouldn't work when I tried it in August 2011.]
• Update 1/25/12: The IMLS database includes actual library names, not always the same as those used in the state library spreadsheet columns I was using; I’d use those names.
• Check each row in the spreadsheet to fill in columns as follows:

1. Actual library name, as used for a Google search (with the state name added to the library name).
2. Position of the library’s official website (if one is found) in the result.
3. Facebook columns as at present, with these changes:
   a. The second “current post” bucket would be based on the 10th most recent post, but normalized to the same meanings (i.e., 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 fortnights, etc.)
   b. The interactivity column would be replaced with a number representing the number of non-library, non-spam comments and posts found within the first 10 library posts, from 0 to whatever. Post-level likes would be ignored.
4. Twitter columns as at present, with the same “bucket” change as for Facebook and with the “Following” actual number replaced with a code indicating general approach of following (open to modification, but storing the actual number feels like overkill). Unsure whether to modify the interactivity column or simply drop it.
5. Google+ columns along the same lines as Facebook columns, but with the number for “Added to circles” replacing Likes. (Subject to change.)
6. Optional, if someone believes it’s worth doing and would pay extra for it: Blogging column, with a number for the number of blogs identified on the library’s homepage, and with a separate spreadsheet identifying those blogs. (This could lead to a five-year update of my Public Library Blogs study. It may be a lot more work than it’s worth. The Public Library Blogs book sold 31 copies, but that was with only my own publicity.)
7. Optional, and I’m not sure any of these are worthwhile: Columns for MySpace presence, YouTube presence, Flickr presence indicated on homepage.

Later Years

Similar spreadsheet, linked to earlier sheets or pages for analysis, and adding significant new social networks that welcome institutional pages/accounts if such networks appear.

Deliverables

The deliverables would depend heavily on who’s paying for this and what they want. Possibilities:

• Writeup of results including comparisons to 2011 and metrics similar to those planned for the forthcoming book, distributed as a free PDF. The writeup (and specific writeups) would include not only benchmarks by size of library and state, but also lists of libraries doing particularly well in various metrics relative to their size, to serve as examples for other libraries wanting to improve their social networking.
• More specific writeups for individual states or for specific library sizes.
• Possibly the spreadsheet itself for further analysis.

How to Pay

I believe the results would be valuable, since I believe most public libraries can benefit from a social networking presence and it’s clear that most of them are not reaching nearly as many people as they’d probably like to. A variety of benchmarks and examples should help. (My book should help too, combining benchmarks, examples, discussion, advice…)

But it’s way too much work to do for free or on spec. My experiments in self-publishing have taught me that, and have taught me that I can’t really do it based on the hope of selling the results on my own.

I figure $15,000 a year for the whole process, including deliverables (but not including #6 and #7 above). Adding #6 would push that to $20,000; adding #7 is unclear.

That is in some ways small potatoes for most funding agencies, but it would meet my needs.

Possible avenues:

1. An agency could sponsor this–either a foundation or an agency that already does library research, or, for that matter, an agency that finds it worthwhile. I’d be delighted to work with almost any such agency. The one real exception is one where I can’t imagine they’d want to work with me. (As noted in the earlier post, I’d be delighted to work with OCLC or WebJunction on this, or the Gates Foundation, a library school, a vendor, whoever. I suspect my lack of institutional affiliation is a problem for most funding sources, but I’d love to be proved wrong. Unfortunately, independent research is not highly regarded in this field, as with most other fields.)
2. A group of state libraries could sponsor it, in which case I’d narrow the research to cover only those states and charge a different fee, something along the lines of $500 + $n per state, where $n is the number of reporting libraries in the state times a constant, probably $1 to $2.
3. I could find some way to be assured that sales of the report–which I’d prefer to be free–would come close to generating $15,000 in revenue. I don’t see too many pigs flying overhead, and I don’t regard that one as probable.
4. I could prepare a Kickstarter project, video and all. Would it be accepted by the curators? No idea. Would it stand a chance? Stranger things have happened…

I need help on this.

I’m scheduling this post to appear on January 4, just after most people get back to work. I won’t do anything active beyond this post until the draft of the social networking book is done (around the end of January if all goes well); then, I’d make whatever contacts I can–but I don’t have the contacts I’d like to have. I’d need to have funding lined up by June in order to plot out the survey process, and by May if I was going to attend this year’s ALA Annual Conference. If I can’t work something out by June, I’ll probably turn my attention to other book or writing possibilities and abandon this.

If you think you could help find a home for this, let me know, either in a comment or by email to waltcrawford at gmail dot com.

If you believe the project is worthless, there’s no real need to comment. [If that reaction is based on an assertion that all the public libraries already are on Facebook, you're simply wrong, by several thousand libraries, but never mind...]

Updated 1/7/12: This blog is now receiving so many spam comments–over 130 on some days, even after tightening the comment period–that a response via comment is likely to disappear. So if you can help or are interested, please send me email, waltcrawford at gmail dot com.

This post describes a possible offshoot of the public library social network scan, and a likely thank-you premium if I try to go the Kickstarter route and succeed.

I’ve just finished revisiting 2,406 libraries in 25 states, four months (plus or minus two days) after the first visit–that is, visiting the websites (if they exist) and Facebook and Twitter pages (if they exist).

I also revisited 20 libraries where people contributed comments, three months after the first visit.

Combined with the 3,555 libraries in 13 states who only get a single visit (at least for this project), I’m now done done done with the actual research for my book.

Tomorrow: A day off (hiking in the morning, reading & watching an old movie in the afternoon).

Thursday: Starting in on refreshed and new metrics for the 13 states and the changes in 25 states, and rethinking the book (about 80% of which was written, and most of that will be rewritten).

Done done done. With that phase, that is.

And, to be sure, contemplating the fact that very little of the data I’ve gathered will be used in the book… But that’s gist for another post or three.

The Zula B. Wylie Library in Cedar Hill, Texas (up to the comma, that’s the name the library uses) calls itself the “Door to Discovery” and serves some 45,000 people.

It has both Facebook and Twitter accounts, both represented by icons on the clean & attractive homepage.

And that’s the last of the 3,555 libraries in Part 2 of my survey of public libraries on social networks.

But I’m only about 1/4 of the way through the four-months-later revisit of the 2,406 libraries n Part 1, so there’s lots more work to do…

The small surprise

In the first 25 states, as of this summer, it appeared that most libraries did not have a presence on either Facebook or Twitter (excluding teen & children’s accounts and “community pages”)–more than 40% did, but that’s less than a majority.

Given that small libraries are typically less likely to be on social networks than are larger libraries, and that the 13 states added in Part 2 have a lot more smaller libraries, I anticipated a lower overall percentage.

That’s not what I finally found.

Indeed, including all 38 states, it appears that most public libraries do (or did) have a presence on one of these two social networks–52%, or 3,108 out of 5,961. When I finish the revisit, the numbers will be higher, although not (I think) a whole lot higher.

“Most” in this case is a bare majority. If the other 12 states were included, there’s no way of knowing how the total would wind up.

The bulk of this activity is, of course, on Facebook, although I believe I found more libraries in these 13 states that have chosen to focus entirely on Twitter. I believe the total number of Twitter accounts is around 800, or less than 15% of the nearly 6,000 libraries.

That’s as much analysis as I’m likely to do at this point, until I get caught up and a little ahead on the 4-month scan.

Since my only real argument with some commentators was the claim that “all” or “nearly all” libraries were on Facebook, I’ll stick with that disagreement. Neither 52% nor 54% counts as “nearly all” in any version of reality I choose to honor. And when I say presence, that does include dozens of accounts that haven’t seen any new tweets or updates for six months or more…but not, as it happens, a handful of Facebook pages that are clearly library-owned but have no updates whatsoever.

When reading various posts and articles from various directions–some celebrating the promised end of public libraries, most bemoaning the decline of public libraries–I keep running into comments about so many public library closures.

Which got me to wondering: How many public libraries have actually closed permanently in the last year or decade?

Let’s be more specific: How many library agencies, defined as libraries that report statistics to their state library and/or IMLS, have shut down with no expectation of reopening, or have been closed two or more years?

One percent of the 9,000-odd library agencies in the US? Five percent? Half of one percent?

I can’t find good info at ALA. In fact, when I go looking for library closures, I see some surprising ambiguities. For example, you have the wifty claim that 15 states reported closure of “fewer than two” library outlets last year. Problematic on two counts: In what world is “fewer than two” anything other than one (unless it’s zero)–and what’s an outlet?

Going back a little, I see ALA press releases on the subject of the closure of the library in Colton, California in November 2009. Which is a tragedy–except that the Colton library was reopened within a year.

I didn’t find good info at IMLS either, although maybe I didn’t know where to look.

I’m certainly not trying to minimize budgetary problems. I know lots of branches have been shut down or had hours reduced; I also know that some libraries quite appropriately close some branches for the sake of the health of the library system as a whole.

(Where I live, two small branches are only open a couple of days a week, if that–but the result is that the main library, in a relatively compact city, has robust seven-day-a-week operating hours. Would we be better off if all three locations had reduced hours or no book budgets? Not in my opinion–but then, I’m closest to the main anyway. And I’m aware that one of the two branches is in a part of town where huge construction plans didn’t work out very well…)

I think the question deserves an honest answer because the assumption that libraries are closing like crazy hurts libraries–it makes it easier for those who don’t like public libraries to suggest that they’re anachronisms in any case.

Maybe there should even be two more refinements:

1. How many public library agencies have closed in towns/cities that are still themselves viable communities? (If a town’s lost its schools, its businesses, its post office because nobody really lives there any more, the library’s likely to go as well…)
2. How many public library agencies have opened in the last year or decade? Do library closures exceed new library openings?

If someone can point me to an authoritative and reliable source, I’d be pleased.

A two-part post of no enormous import…

Texas

Just finished checking Zelienople Public Library, the alphabetically last library in Pennsylvania, for presence on Facebook and Twitter. That process began with A Hufnagel Glen Rock Library on November 17. Given the bad cold I’m finally getting over and other stuff like turning around the micropublishing book and helping (a little) get ready for Thanksgiving, I guess I shouldn’t be too unhappy with that progress. That’s 453 libraries in roughly four weekdays and one weekend; a little below my 100-per-weekday, 100 over the weekend goal, but not badly so.

Now on to Texas’ 561 [565: Seeing that the table I had was only showing city names, I found another table, showing 565 main libraries with population figures, and it has full library names] libraries, aiming for 50-75 today, the rest starting Friday. (For those who follow my activities closely, if there are any of them, the reason I’m posting this on a Wednesday morning instead of being out hiking is because I *am* about 95% over the cold and decided to take it easy–and because it’s threatening rain out there any minute.) I might miss the aim: As always, I’ll help with anything Thanksgiving-related my wife asks me to do, but I’ve found in past years that I’m usually most helpful by staying out of the way.

The Texas process will be a lot slower because November 25 is also precisely four months past the point at which I began the original 25-state/2406-library scan, and thus marks the start of the four-month rescan. So I’ll be happy with 25 or more new (Texas) libraries per day…

And somewhere in there I may put out a truncated little C&I issue…

Thanksgiving

I won’t scan any libraries tomorrow. We’ll be hosting a small dinner (brother & sister-in-law, sister & brother-in-law; none of the nieces and nephew and grand-nieces are here this year), with my wife doing, oh, 95% of the work. That may be a conservative estimate. It’s her choice, although it’s my immediate family. I doubt that I’ll even be on the computer tomorrow–and if I am, it won’t be until late afternoon at the earliest.

I could provide a gratetude (Jon Carroll’s marvelous term) of things I’m thankful for (John Scalzi’s been doing a wonderful “Thanksgiving Advent Calendar” series of daily gratetudes at his Whatever blog), but I’m not much of one for lists. At a start, there’s my wonderful wife (we met not much more than 34 years ago, and we’ll celebrate our 34th anniversary on New Year’s Day). Then, there’s good health (this cold being a rare exception–I’m 66 years old, not taking any prescription medicines and not having any real complaints, so I’m extremely thankful to my father and other ancestors for great genes!). And, to be sure, being in a country, state, and community that I love, despite all their failings; having not only a roof over my head but the nicest house we’ve ever owned; good food (much of it local, most of the produce from farmers’ markets) and having not gained the habit of eating too much of it; good wine (some of it very local, nearly all of it from within 200 miles); good music; good friends locally and the many good virtual friends of LSW (and others); good books and a great local public library to borrow them from…

And more, but I think that’s enough. On to Abernathy, Abilene, Alamo…

As I’m continuing with the 38-state, 5,957-library survey of current public library Twitter and Facebook practice, with 850 libraries left to go (but 2,406 to revisit beginning 11/25, four months after they were first checked), recognizing that it’s a heck of a lot of research for one book (a book that will not be entirely or even primarily research results)…

I think about what I’d like to do in the future–if there was an appropriate sponsoring and facilitating agency.

Sponsoring: To pay a modest sum (at least a modest hourly sum) for the research and writing. Facilitating: To make sure the results reached the appropriate audience–and maybe to extract the nationwide set of public library data (OK, so I could buy Access and extract it myself, or install a robust enough programming environment to extract it from the flat files…)

Not that I’m expecting anything like this to happen–it’s too small-scale for typical grant situations and I don’t have the institutional credentials or backing to seek such grants. Still, I think it would be highly useful to the library community, although that may also be misguided.

The idea

A true nationwide study of public library use of / presence on social networks, with possibly a few extensions on library website findability. Involving all 9,000-odd public libraries/library agencies. Ideally, done every year or every other year for at least two or three cycles.

For this to work as a one-man “crazed researcher” project, the sponsoring agency and I would have to agree on a set of data that’s plausibly gatherable in, say, three to four minutes tops for each library. At three minutes, that’s 450 hours of data gathering (but you go nuts spending more than 3-4 hours each day on this kind of work). At four minutes, it’s 600 hours. At five minutes, it’s 750 hours. I figure data analysis and writeup at 150 hours or more.

What I’m gathering now probably averages 90 seconds to 2 minutes per library, and I find I can do at most 125, maybe 150 libraries a day. Here’s what I’m doing now:

• Finding the library website if there is one, using Google and the name provided by the state library with the state name added, cleaning up some oddities as I go.
• If there is a website, following Facebook and Twitter icons or text links if they exist and work, to get the specifics below.
• If there isn’t a website or if one or both icons/links is either missing or doesn’t work, searching the first 100 results in Google for “faceb” and “twit” and, if appropriate sites are found, getting the specifics below.
• If this doesn’t work for either or both, searching within Facebook and/or Twitter to see if I can find something for the specifics below–and here are those specifics:
• For Facebook: How I got there (homepage, Google, or Facebook); the number of Likes (or Friends or Group members in special cases); currency of the latest and fifth most recent post (divided into categories of day, week, fortnight, month, quarter, six-month, year, and beyond: so, for example, libraries checked today would have date boundaries of 11/18/2011, 11/12/2011, 11/5/2011, 10/19/2011, 8/19/2011, 5/19/2011, and 11/19/2010 respectively); and whether there’s visible evidence of engagement (defined as at least one non-spam post, comment or like), recording “y” if there’s at least one comment, “l” if there are post-level likes but no comments.
• For Twitter: How I got there; the number of followers, number being followed, and total tweets; then the same currency notes; and obvious evidence of retweeting or responding (but I don’t spend a lot of time looking for this).

I’m not sure what would make sense for a longer-range, broader project, if indeed any of this makes sense at all. I think the measures so far are all useful (total tweets primarily for followup purposes–e.g., for the 380-odd libraries with Twitter accounts among the first 2,406 libraries I studied, I’ll know the tweet frequency fairly exactly). Possible additions:

• Existence of a  working MySpace link; unsure whether any visible MySpace measures are worth tracking at this point. Yes, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of libraries with MySpace icons.
• Existence of a working Google+ link (assuming this is done in late 2012 or later) and key visible measures, if those are available. Unsure whether checking for Google+ pages within Google search results or within Google+ would be useful–it’s a time sink, and for Facebook and Twitter I think the added yield for searches within the application comes out to about 0.1%-0.2%.
• Maybe existence of a working Flickr link and key measures, although Flickr is (I think) less of a social network than these others.
• Ditto YouTube…
• Possibly a number for relative placement of the library’s homepage within the Google result, although I’m not sure whether that’s meaningful.
• Maybe there are others I haven’t thought of. LinkedIn? Worth the trouble?

The idea would be to gather this over a reasonable period (3-4 months), write up a variety of results (and possibly make extracted spreadsheets available), and then redo it every other year (or every year), adding or deleting new social networks as appropriate.

What it would need

Some form of sponsorship and distribution method so that the results were widely available–and so I’d be getting some kind of remuneration for the work. (How much remuneration? Certainly in the five-figure range, with an actual figure depending on what’s feasible, whether the results would appear under my name or not, and, um, special arrangements for one or two institutions that are highly unlikely to go for this anyway. And no, MFPOFTW–my former place of full-time work–is not one of those institutions: I’d be delighted to work with them.)

This is mostly dreaming out loud. I think it would be worthwhile–but that may be wrong. I find the research fascinating (if slogging), but certainly not worth doing beyond the book’s publication if no money is involved.

If anyone’s interested and knows of a way to make this happen, you know how to contact me–comments here, mail to waltcrawford at gmail.com.

I won’t be holding my breath. I just wanted to get this down for the record.

To continue a series of progress reports almost nobody will (or should!) care about…

Although a couple of those posts combine progress reports with other things–in one case, the second part of my probably-two-part Relevance and Reward, in another case some notes on the “computer game” I actually play…

Wisconsin done

More reporting libraries/library agencies than any state I’d surveyed before–381 of them in all. And almost all of them with web pages (certainly not true for every state). Probably just finished in time: Twitter’s now showing me Wisconsin tourism ads for every search that includes the word “wisconsin.”

The decision

I’m now at the point where I was going to make a decision on just how much I’d expand the original survey of 25 states and slightly more than 2,400 libraries (but more than half of the people).

The eleven states I’ve done now add another 2,537 libraries–which means I’ve now checked more than half of the 9,000-odd public libraries (not physical locations, but reporting entities) in the U.S.

There are two more states I could reasonably survey (the rows are in my spreadsheet but not yet checked): Pennsylvania and Texas. Each of which has a whole bunch of reporting libraries–1,014 between the two of them.

If I stop now, I’ve covered 72% of the states, just about two-thirds of the population, and around 55% of the libraries.

If I add PA and TX, I’ll have covered 76% of the states…but also about 80% of the population and about two-thirds of the libraries. Pennsylvania and Texas combined have almost as much population as the 11 states I just finished surveying…

As very populous states with lots of independent libraries, they also add to the incredible diversity of the states I’ve included (although Massachusetts also fits in this category); California and Florida have relatively few–or at least fewer–reporting library agencies. (New York is one of the dozen states that just isn’t going to be part of this survey, both because of time and because the state library doesn’t show a spreadsheet of library names and LSAs on its statistics website. Illinois and Michigan are also in that group.)

The book really doesn’t need the extra data, but having it will add a little more richness to the picture.

So, well, I’m 99% certain I’ll continue with those two. Not that it matters.

Except….

That I’m formulating a newer “ideal job” picture, one that might be worth posting. I don’t know that it has any more real-world chances than other pipe dreams, but it might be worth fleshing out. Maybe in another post, before or after a stub issue of C&I (yes, I think there will be another 2011 issue; no, I don’t think it will be a substantial one).

How many more Facebook pages and Twitter accounts have I surfaced this time around? Dunno; I haven’t done any analysis of the 11 states. “A bunch” would be one fair summary, as would “certainly not present in nearly all libraries”–but that’s nothing new.

As I’m scanning public library websites and looking at Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, I’m finding a growing number of occurrences of a message.

The same message, on each page. I’ve seen it already half a dozen times this morning, and probably at least two dozen over the past few days. Currently, I’m seeing it in Wisconsin libraries, but that’s because those are the libraries I’m looking at–there is nothing in the message specific to Wisconsin, as far as I can tell.

Paraphrasing…

Without quoting the message directly, it’s a pitch for a new book, posted by the author; the book is related to the Human Genome Project, supposedly in plain language, and published by Xlibris (a PoD house that charges several hundred to several thousand dollars in advance, making it a vanity press by my standards).

The message is identical on every Facebook wall. It’s either attached as a comment on some library post (none of which have anything to do with the HGP) or offered as a standalone comment, presumably on pages where that’s easy to do.

I’m doing this post for two reasons–and will link to it in a message on Publib and Web4lib for both reasons:

1. If you’re an administrator for a public library Facebook page and you see this message and wonder what it’s all about: You’re not alone. It’s popping up all over the place. It’s not specific to your library, although I suppose it’s indirectly arguing that you should buy the book. If you choose to treat it as spam and delete it, you’re probably making a sensible choice. (By the way, for libraries whose Facebook pages are largely inactive: Do you check them once in a while to delete the make-big-money-at-home spam that pops up on such pages?)
2. A tiny little part of me wonders whether what this author is doing could be considered legitimate self-promotion? That tiny little part notes that I’ll have a book–from Information Today, Inc., definitely not self-published–out early in 2012 that is directly relevant to every public library and its relations with its community. Should I be posting a notice about that book to every public library Facebook page? Even more interesting: The reason I’m looking at all these Facebook pages is the other book I’m working on, which should be out later in 2012 from ALA Editions–and I suppose you could make the case that it would be directly relevant for me to post something on each and every public library Facebook page (that I’m aware of) about the book. After all, the Facebook pages are the major basis for the study, and the book will allow libraries to see how their Facebook page compares to their peers.

Don’t worry: I have no intention of doing either one. It strikes me as inappropriate and maybe a little unsavory. But I’ve always been a terrible self-promoter, and maybe I’m wrong here. What do you think?

Another state done (OK, so it’s only 47 libraries, but still…)

Rhode Island crossed off. Next up: Virginia, also a reasonably small set of libraries (91 of them).

Nothing more to say: A short progress report for a small state.

The Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County serves around 238,000 people and has a bunch of social icons on its clearly-organized homepage, including a Facebook page with nearly 2,000 likes and a Twitter account with…well, with 157 followers.

And, given that this library appears as “YOUNGSTOWN AND MAHONING COUNTY, PL OF” in the spreadsheet, that’s the last Ohio library–a few days after Ada Public School District Library started it out.

Ohio went a little faster than expected because most (but certainly not all!) Ohio libraries have websites and most (but certainly not all!) of the libraries with social network accounts (which might or might not be a majority of the libraries–not doing that sort just yet) have icons on the homepages that link to those accounts. That makes it faster, and “encouraging” searches (those that yield results) keep me going longer between breaks.

Good luck with the levies

It’s abundantly clear, doing this sweep between November 5 and 8, that a fair number of Ohio libraries are going out for tax levies. I’ll assume (and hope!) that these libraries have engaged their communities and been strong enough contributors that they’ve made the case for financial support. Good luck to all of you in passing the levies.

Next up, Rhode Island, and with only 47 libraries to check, I should finish that today and move on to Virginia. Interleaving that with continued work on the first 2/3 of the manuscript, based on the first 25-state survey, to be sure. And maybe, just maybe, an entirely different post.

Meanwhile, if you’re in Ohio, go vote. Or, for that matter, if you have local elections (not everybody does, as some offyears in some places don’t have any contested positions), go vote–if you have an opinion and know what or who you’re voting for [or in some cases against]. I certainly will.

I didn’t find evidence of a Facebook page or Twitter account for the Woodsville Free Public Library in New Hampshire–and that’s the last of a scan that began with Aaron Cutler Memorial Library on Tuesday. (Aaron Cutler does have a Facebook account with 125 likes, the most recent update on the day I checked, the fifth most recent within the last quarter but not the last month, and clear community engagement. But no Twitter account.)

Since I was looking at New Hampshire public libraries this week–following a major weather situation–I was reminded once again that most public libraries, even (or especially) the smallest, really do serve as centers of their communities.

Now on to Ohio–just one more library/library agency than New Hampshire, but roughly nine times as many people, so I’m guessing the patterns will be different once more.

When, in the first part of the manuscript (devoted to the initial 25 states), I discuss possible regional bias, I noted that–at the time–the Northeast wasn’t very well represented (including New England). Now that I’ve added Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and will definitely add Rhode Island and Vermont (and probably Pennsylvania), that won’t be true for the larger set of results.

Hmm. I also turned around the fifth revision of The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing (to take into account proofreader’s notes and another round of copyediting). So I guess it hasn’t been a wasted week. (By the way, the people in Information Today, Inc.’s book division are not only a pleasure to work with but excellent at what they do. The fifth revision of the book is significantly better than the first submitted version, as I anticipated it would be.)

As for C&I…still no writing, still no urgency. I should do the second part of the Relevance and Reward series of posts..maybe soon.

Update Sunday, November 6, 2011: Partway through Ohio, I’m realizing that I really would like it to be the case that nearly all PLs have FB pages and Twitter accounts–it’s faster for me (than attempting to be satisfied that they don’t), and it’s a lot more fun to look at how PLs use social networks than whether they use them.

(The first 16 Ohio PLs–alphabetically–all have Facebook accounts. The string runs out there, although I continue to see a healthy percentage. Even there, only half of those 16 have obvious working links to their Facebook pages on their homepages.)

And I’ve gone far enough to see that, while Multnomah has the most Likes of any public library in the first 25 states surveyed, it’s definitely not the most of any PL in the nation (nor, as far as I know, does it claim that distinction). Columbus Metropolitan has more than half again as many Likes. But then I checked a library that won’t be in the expanded survey–New York just doesn’t have the downloadable spreadsheet of library names and LSAs–and there it is: NYPL’s primary Facebook page has more than 42,000 Likes. Is that the highest? If not, I’m sure someone will let me know what library has even more.

One more state done, six (or eight) left to go,,,

I just finished the Nebraska scan.

Now, after a break, I’ll start in on New Hampshire. Slightly fewer libraries. (But also, it looks like, a lot fewer tiny libraries…)

Nothing interesting to say at this point…that is, that isn’t going into the book.