Walt at Random

Another post commenting on Chapter 20 of Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four (2012-13)–now available as a $9.99 Kindle ebook or $21.95 paperback with ISBN 978-1481279161 on Amazon, along with the usual Lulu options. Note that Lulu prices for the paperback and hardback versions are now lower.

New York has the second largest number of libraries (second only to Maine): 745 in the tables, 11 omitted. Many of New York’s libraries are quite well supported, with nearly a quarter in the top bracket and 37% in the top two (compared to 20% overall). Circulation is fairly strong, with 49% circulating at least 10 items per capita and 63% doing eight or more (compared to 38% and 50% overall); expenditures track consistently with circulation. Patron visits are also fairly strong, with 42% of the libraries having seven or more visits per capita (compared to 33% overall); spending also tracks consistently with patron visits. (The budget tables also show consistent correlation between spending and both circulation and visits.)

Program attendance is also fairly strong, with 47% having at least 0.5 attendance (compared to 33% overall). PC use is almost exactly typical, never varying by more than 2% from the national figures.

Libraries by legal service area

Circulation and spending per capita

Circulation per capita correlates strongly (0.51) with spending per capita

Circulation per capita plotted against spending per capita

Circulation per capita (rounded) occurrence by spending category

I’ve repriced most Cites & Insights Books, following a new simplified principal: except in cases where I’m more-or-less giving the book away, I’m pricing books (paperback, hardback and ebooks) at Lulu so that I’ll get at least $8 from each sale.

Here’s what that means in terms of modified prices:

Ebooks (at Lulu) [all PDF, no DRM]

Those that aren’t even cheaper (or free, as in the case of Open Access and Libraries) are now $9.99. That includes Balanced Libraries, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2010, and But Still They Blog.

Print books (at Lulu)

Most prices have gone down; I think one went up slightly.

• Balanced Libraries is now $19.99
• But Still They Blog is now $20.99
• Library 2.0: A Cites & Insights Reader is now $18.99
• The Liblog Landscape 2007-2010 is now $18.99
• Give Us a Dollar… (paperback) is now $19.99
• Give Us a Dollar… (hardback) is now $28.99
• Cites & Insights 6: 2006 is now $25.99
• Cites & Insights 7: 2007 is now $25.99
• Cites & Insights 8: 2008 is now $23.99
• Cites & Insights 9: 2009 is now $26.99
• Cites & Insights 10: 2010 is now $25.99
• Cites & Insights 11: 2011 is now $22.99
• Cites & Insights 12: 2012 is now $25.99

Just go to lulu.com and search for “walt crawford” to find all of these and The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing (hardback edition), which is published by ITI but fulfilled by Lulu in the case of the hardcover.

And, as usual, when Lulu has sales (they haven’t for a little while, but I imagine they will again), you’re encouraged to take advantage of them: The discount comes out of Lulu’s share, not mine.

I originally planned a short note pointing to a story in today’s San Francisco Chronicle (and available on SFGate): “‘Free for All’ explores libraries’ value“–about filmmakers who are working on a documentary called “Free For All,”

exploring why Americans are using public libraries in record numbers and what would happen to democracy if libraries became extinct.

Three Husbands, 1951, b&w. Irving Reis (dir.), Eve Arden, Ruth Warrick, Vanessa Brown, Howard Da Silva, Shepperd Strudwick, Robert Karnes, Emlyn Williams, Billie Burke, Louise Erickson. 1:18.

Pan up to the heavens, to the Lower Gates Authority, where a couple of newly-dead souls (voices only) ask their wish, which is granted—and then an Englishman who’s lived n California asks to be allowed to observe Earth for 24 hours. The reason: His lawyer is delivering three identical letters to three of his acquaintances on earth, each one confessing that he’d been intimate with the wife.

That’s the setup. The movie’s actually quite good (with, surprisingly, pretty much happy endings). The characters are interesting, it’s a fairly broad range, and the women are—as they should be—more important characters than the men. Eve Arden is, as always, first-rate, but so are the others. Not quite great, but close: $1.75.

The Villain Still Pursued Her, 1940, b&w. Edward F. Cline (dir.), Billy Gilbert, Anita Louise, Margaret Hamilton, Alan Mowbray, Richard Cromwell, Joyce compton, Buster Keaton, Diane Fisher, Hugh Herbert. 1:06.

A send-up of melodramas, almost a little too much so. We get a silly disclaimer up front, a buffoon of a host telling us to applaud the good guys and hiss the bad guys, and then the show (occasionally interrupted by slides with messages). The tale itself involves a widow and her beautiful daughter, the banker who’s just died (who didn’t care if he was ever paid), his Evil Lawyer, the innocent son—and the curses of drink. No scenery goes unchewed, and the fourth wall is ever absent—except that sometimes a character has to wait for passersby to pass by before he can deliver his direct speech to the audience.

Some of it’s very well done: a pie fight, for example, and a discussion between the Best Friend (Keaton in a late role) and the Villain where people keep walking between the two of them until, at one point, the pedestrians must back up because the BF is declaiming with his arms upraised. There’s also a little scene in a barn where the hero, in his drunken abandon, has awoken in the straw after collapsing the last night—and belches. A pig lying next to him rises, offended, and walks away.

It’s an odd one, it is, with a fine cast. All in all, given the length and oddity, I’ll give it $1.00.

A Bride for Henry, 1937, b&w. William Nigh (dir.), Anne Nagel, Warren Hull, Henry Mollison, Claudia Dell, Betty Ross Clarke. 0:58.

A resplendently dressed bride is outraged because the groom hasn’t showed, and all her high-society friends are waiting downstairs…so she sends for her lawyer. And marries him, to show her fiancé what’s what…never quite realizing that her lawyer’s loved her for years.

That’s the highly plausible start for an odd sort of bedroom farce, one that never really gets into bedrooms: The three wind up on a curious honeymoon. The bride is somewhat of a self-centered bitch. The ex—whose excuse is that he got drunk at the bachelor party, woke up puzzled and went to a morning movie instead of the wedding—turns out to be somewhat of an priggish oaf. Tthe lawyer’s quite a charmer—charming all the ladies at the honeymoon hotel, off with his charming wealthy female friend (who may have a thing for him), charming when he sings a number at the friend’s party. All ends well, of course.

The print’s problematic in some ways—a few clips, some waviness at times—but watchable. The movie itself is light romantic farce and works pretty well. Given the length, I’ll give it $1.00.

We’re in the Legion Now, 1936, “color” (but the print’s b&w). Crane Wilbur (dir.), Reginald Denny, Esther Ralston, Vince Barnett, Eleanor Hurd. 0:56.

The sleeve says color. The opening credits include a “color by Magnacolor” line. Unfortunately, that’s the only color you’ll see (other than shades of gray)—it’s another one of those “it should be color, but it’s not” flicks. (Apparently Magnacolor was an early two-strip color process and TV prints—which this is probably sourced from—were b&w.) The story’s colorful enough, I suppose: Two American gangsters (one of whom speaks with a British accent), in Paris on the run, join the French Foreign Legion and wind up in Morocco. One’s a heavy drinker who always throws empty bottles over his shoulder; the other’s a charmer and also a heavy drinker. They wind up in a labor camp—and, in the process, manage to redeem themselves.

I didn’t find it particularly funny; you might feel otherwise. It’s OK, but at best I’d give it $0.75.

If you’re one of my few readers who don’t follow open access developments elsewhere–and I’m guessing there aren’t many of you:

This is a very big and mostly good news day.

Specifically,

• The White House responded to the We the People petition on open access.
• The nature of the response is excellent, almost astonishing. Quoting from Dr. John Holdren’s response (the link above):

I have issued a memorandum today (.pdf) to Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication. As you pointed out, the public access policy adopted by the National Institutes of Health has been a great success. And while this new policy call does not insist that every agency copy the NIH approach exactly, it does ensure that similar policies will appear across government.

This is probably the biggest gain in OA since the NIH policy became law.

And there’s more (again quoting from the response):

In addition to addressing the issue of public access to scientific publications, the memorandum requires that agencies start to address the need to improve upon the management and sharing of scientific data produced with Federal funding.

That goes beyond free access to reports, to encourage open data–access to the actual data.

So why the mostly?

It’s good news. It’s very good news. But, as usual, it could always be better.

• I’ll suggest–as other more knowledgeable sorts are–that this does not mean FRPAA isn’t needed. This is an administration policy, subject to reversal by a new administration. FRPAA would be a law (also, to be sure, subject to reversal, but a little stronger).
• This memo (and NIH policy) allow for up to a one-year embargo. Ideally, there would be no embargo, or at most a six-month embargo. Delayed open access still delays progress.

But in this case, three-quarters of a loaf is most decidedly better than none!

You’ll have no trouble finding oodles of cheering, commentary and (I imagine) bitching & moaning from all the usual suspects. Meantime, it’s definitely a fine day for OA.

Another post commenting on Chapter 20 of Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four (2012-13)–now available as a $9.99 Kindle ebook or $21.95 paperback with ISBN 978-1481279161 on Amazon, along with the usual Lulu options.

Nevada’s 22 libraries (none omitted) have a range of funding—indeed, nine of the ten brackets are occupied (no libraries spend less than $12 per capita), with the only real clusters being the four libraries spending $53 to $72.99 and the seven spending $26 to $30.99. With so few libraries and systems, other tables are predictably choppy—but it’s fair to say that circulation is on the low side (only 27% circulate at least eight items per capita, compared to 50% overall), as are visits (18% have at least six patron visits per capita, compared to 42% overall). In both cases, the single library in the highest bracket (it is the same library) is also exceptionally well-funded ($398.04 per capita).

Program attendance is low and odd: While 18% have at least 0.7 attendance per capita, that same percentage applies for 0.4 or more—leaving 82% with less than 0.4 (compared to 58% overall), and 64% in the lowest two brackets (compared to 31% overall). PC use is also on the low side.

Libraries by legal service area

Circulation per capita and spending per capita

Circulation per capita correlates almost perfectly (0.97) with spending per capita, but that may be an artifact of the peculiar distribution: One (small) Nevada library spends several times as much per capita as any other—and circulates several times as many items as any other.

Circulation per capita plotted against spending per capita

Circulation per capita (rounded) occurrence by spending category—an essentially meaningless chart in this case.

I’m not a big graphics person, but sometimes I need to do some graphics work.

I don’t do it often enough to justify one of the commercial programs (say Corel Paint Shop Pro, which my wife uses and likes, or Adobe Elements)–and, as I found when I tried to use Paint Shop Pro, if you’re not using them reasonably often, there’s a significant learning curve each time you use them.

I tried The GIMP–I guess it’s now just GIMP–and the learning curve seemed like a cliff in front of me. I gave it up fairly quickly.

Then I tried Paint.NET, and found that I liked it pretty well. I used Paint.NET for a couple of book covers, for example.

More recently, I heard about Pinta–which I mistakenly took to be a fork of Paint.NET. It’s not. It’s another open source software/freeware effort, “inspired by Paint.NET” but–like GIMP and unlike Paint.NET (which is Windows-only)–available for Mac, Windows and Linux. I downloaded it as well, without deleting Paint.NET

Background

Recently, I prepared a report based on Give Us a Dollar… but specific to Oregon and Washington public libraries, as part of a speaking agreement (I’ll be doing two talks and, if people sign up, a preconference during the 2013 joint conference in late April 2013). Initially, I planned to make the report available exclusively as a free 6×9″ PDF. To make an interesting cover page without needing to be an artist, I decided to create two mosaic strips, each 3″ high (900 pixels) and 5″ wide (1500 pixels), consisting of graphic elements taken from Washington and Oregon public library websites and Facebook pages. That didn’t always mean pictures of libraries; some Oregon libraries using Plinkit for their sites use images evocative of where they are.

I used the wonderful Windows Snipping Tool [if you ever need to capture screenshots and you're using Windows, I suggest you find this tool--key "snip" in the Start box--and make a shortcut to it on the desktop or, better yet, the taskbar] to capture images from various libraries. I think I used Paint.NET to normalize image sizes and then to fit the three dozen (or so) images into two mosaic strips. It wasn’t difficult, and I was happy with the results. You can see a smaller version of those results, and the rest of the cover page, in this post (which also discusses the three talks).

Foreground

A bit more recently, I thought it would be nice to make the Washington/Oregon special report available to others as an example of what I could do for other states or groups of states, either as part of a speaking engagement or as a separate project. The person who I’m working with on the conference and I agreed that the following approach would be reasonable:

• Beginning March 1, 2013 or thereabouts, the PDF–it’s a 73-page 6×9 PDF–will be available as a free download from Lulu. I’ll probably take it down around October 1, 2013. It will be available to anybody, and it’s the best example I have of at least one approach I could take.
• When I do the formal announcement, I’ll also say how people can turn the PDF into a nice little printed book, albeit a book that’s just slightly smaller in each dimension (telling Adobe Reader to print it in booklet form, which puts two 6×9 pages–reduced to 91.7% of original size–on each side of 8.5×11″ paper and prints the pages so that, folded, they’ll be in proper order, then center-stapling the results).
• I’ll offer a slightly expanded version of what I just said for a simple reason: Because 20 of the 73 pages include color graphs, a paperback Lulu edition would be expensive–the whole thing has to be printed in color, at $0.20 a page rather than $0.02 a page. Whereas a color laser printer or inkjet with, say, $0.03/page for black text and $0.15/page for 4% coverage in four colors (a lot more coverage than the color pages–except for the cover page–actually use), using $0.01/sheet paper, can probably print the whole thing for less than $6, maybe considerably less. (Actually, I’d guess around $3: since each “page” is really two pages, figure $0.03×37 plus $0.15×11 plus $0.36.)
• But I’ll also offer a true book for those who might want it–and it will be a book, hardcover and all. It will probably cost around $30-$35, a couple of bucks more than production costs. (It will only be available while the PDF is available–probably March 1, 2013 to October 1, 2013.)
• To do the book right, I needed to strip off the “cover page” and add a true cover–and I liked the idea of a wraparound cover with those mosaic strips wrapping all the way around. That meant having two strips each 900 pixels high by 4,260 pixels wide (front, back, spine and enough extra for the binding bleed). And it meant building a new cover 3,225 pixels high and 4,260 pixels wide.

I captured a whole bunch more images using Snipping Tool and normalized them (not all to the same size, but all to sizes that could plausibly be combined into a mosaic) with Pinta. I found Pinta a little less smooth than I was used to, but…well…OK.

If you’re wondering, which you’re probably not, both the original strips and the new strips are chosen to include a broad cross-section of libraries by LSA in both states; the new strips include roughly one out of three Oregon and one out of two Washington libraries–Washington has fewer libraries.

Then I wanted to paste the old Top strip into a new, much wider, Top2 strip and add more images to fill out the almost-three-times-as-wide strip. And immediately ran into trouble. Pinta would turn the bottom half of that large strip image into garbage. I “fixed” that by opening the strip, resizing the canvas to the new size, and going from there–but I ran into the part-garbage situation in a few other cases, when I was copying-and-pasting larger images. I also found that the copy-and-paste process was slow and difficult, enough so that I wound up with a few places where the pieces aren’t combined as carefully as I’d like. But since this was all just a frill, I accepted the results.

And then, wondering, decided to do the Bottom strip with Paint.NET rather than Pinta. It went much better–no problems with larger images, much smoother operation, some convenient info on the screen that Pinta didn’t offer and that made life easier… Well, it just went better. So much so that the Bottom strip became the Top strip for the new cover, since that’s more prominent. If this was a project where I anticipated lots of sales for the hardcover book (where “lots of” is significantly more than, say, 3 copies), I’d probably redo the other strip from scratch. I didn’t.

As you can probably guess, I used Paint.NET to create the full cover as well. Once I remembered the layer tricks to be able to get the spine text done properly (you have to put that text on a separate layer and rotate that layer–there are other ways, but that’s the most straightforward) and to have guidelines where I wanted them, it was a snap.

Here’s a small version of the cover (you’d never see all of it–the leftmost and rightmost 1/3 inch or so is swallowed up by the binding, as are the top and bottom fraction of an inch). As you can see even at this small size, the bottom strip is, well, a little ragged by comparison to the top.

Conclusion

For me, at least, and with a Windows computer, Paint.NET is the tool of choice. It just seems to be more polished, smoother, more powerful. I wish I’d used it for both strips. (But for various reasons, it would be a LOT more work to go back and redo the bottom one…)

That doesn’t matter if you’re using Linux or Mac OS X: Paint.NET isn’t available.

It might be the other way around for some other uses–there are aspects of Pinta’s UI management that seem to be clearer and more modern. I think.

Of course, you can have both: they’re the same price. Still…after using both, I’m more fond of Paint.NET than I was before.

Update, February 22:
As I was maybe procrastinating a little on preparing the Powerpoint slides for the talk that features this book, I found myself touching up that lower strip with Paint.NET. Not redoing it entirely, but doing a little selective modification. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better. And I found it easier to do on Paint.NET.

After which, I did do the PPT…

Another post commenting on Chapter 20 of Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four (2012-13)–now available as a $9.99 Kindle ebook or $21.95 paperback with ISBN 978-1481279161 on Amazon, along with the usual Lulu options.

The 80 profiled libraries in New Mexico (11 omitted) range broadly in terms of spending, but with quite a few at the top (24%) and very few at the bottom (only 18% in the bottom three brackets combined). Circulation is on the low side, with only 36% circulating at least six items per capita (compared to 64% overall). On the other hand, patron visits are strong: 35% have at least nine visits per capita (compared to 20% overall). More libraries than usual are in the top bracket for program attendance, although the numbers are fairly typical below that group of 13 libraries—and PC use is very strong, with 46% of the libraries having at least 2.25 uses per capita (compared to 19% overall).

Libraries by legal service area

I believe this may be the smallest number of libraries so diverse as to have at least one in each of the 17 size brackets!

Circulation per capita and spending per capita

Circulation per capita correlates moderately (0.39) with spending per capita.

Circulation per capita plotted against spending per capita

Circulation per capita (rounded) occurrence by spending category

I’ve come to the conclusion that several of my intermittent efforts are really aimed at smaller libraries–but I’m also aware that such an aim is probably quixotic.

The aim? Give Us a Dollar... is, I believe, most likely to be useful in a public library that doesn’t already have a statistics maven or standing arrangements with a consultant. But, at least in its current form, I wonder whether it’s usable by the many-hatted librarians in such libraries (that is, librarians who of necessity wear many hats).

The Librarian’s Guide to Micropublishing should have a home in public libraries of all sizes (and in many academic libraries). But its approach–establishing a “makerspace for the mind” without the need for the library to invest significant sums of money, space or library-employee time–is especially relevant for smaller libraries, where the likelihood of establishing a true makerspace (with the likely need to monitor its use) is extremely low.

The book idea I’m toying with–a down-to-earth, plain-English, no-fancy-equations discussion of basic statistical number-handling concepts that apply to libraries, how to spot chartjunk and avoid doing it, and (step by step) how to use the national library statistical repositories without becoming a statistician or database expert–is, I believe, primarily useful for librarians at smaller libraries. Again, libraries unlikely to have statistical mavens or standing arrangements with a consultant, but who could benefit (as I believe every library could) from the ability to spot craptastic statistical claims and to develop appropriate results from IMLS/NCES data.

What’s a smaller library?

I’ll suggest a simple cutoff: Academic and public libraries with fewer than three librarians.

Based on the 2010 IMLS and NCES databases–the most recent available–that includes something like 1,750 academic libraries and 6,000 public libraries (not branches). (If I cut the public-library figure to fewer than two FTE of librarians, that still yields around 5,000 public libraries.)

The problem…

The big problem, I suspect, is that libraries that small have very little spare money for professional literature.

An even bigger problem: My ability to reach those librarians is extremely limited.

And maybe another big problem: I may be the wrong writer to reach them. Even if I set out to write a clear, down-to-earth, “you’re intelligent but you probably don’t love numbers” book. (I know I didn’t hit that tone, or even come close, in Give Us a Dollar…)

I think the possible book–which, if self-published, would be priced at $9.99 as a PDF and certainly less than $20 as a paperback–might strike the right tone to be useful to librarians who are a little nervous about advanced statistics. But I wonder whether enough of them would give it a try to make it worth doing.

If my guess is right, 90% of the sales of professional literature–my self-published stuff or ALA Editions, ITI, etc.–comes from bigger libraries (and a few non-library sales, e.g. consultants). But 90% of the need may be in the smaller libraries.

‘Tis a quandary.

I became aware of a recent PLoS ONE article, “Subjective Impressions Do Not Mirror Online Reading Effort: Concurrent EEG-Eyetracking Evidence from the Reading of Books and Digital Media,” thanks to a LISNews item entitled “Reading e-books easier than printed versions for older people” and consisting of one sentence and a link to–well, not to the PLoS ONE article but to a news story about the article. (The link above goes directly to the actual article, by the way).

The sentence:

Older people may find e-books much faster and easier to read than their paper editions, a new study has claimed.

That’s a direct copy of the first sentence of the news article, so I can’t fault it as such.

I responded to the news article in a comment:

Twenty-one people. And their preferences were dismissed as “cultural bias.” And, lessee, books were better than ereaders but tablets were better than books. Among twenty-one people. And based not on the people’s own reactions but on external measurement.

That drew an anonymous response (seems like very few commenters at LISNews choose to identify themselves), titled “External measurement = objectivity” and reading: