Walt at Random

This is the last of the introductory series of posts discussing promoting Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples. (And aren’t you glad I didn’t include the cover in all of them? In case you’re wondering, it’s a library–a very old library.*)

Here’s what I removed from the end of Chapter 3, after thinking about it a lot. I removed it because it’s so partial–I found even more blogs intriguing in one way or another, and decided it was inappropriate to single some of them out.

Still, for what it’s worth… (yes, I’ll do another post when the book[s] become[s] available via Amazon)

As I was gathering information on these blogs, which typically included reading or at least skimming three months of posts, I was impressed by the variety, personality and vitality found in so many blogs. I’ve always been an optimist about public libraries; this book has increased that optimism considerably.Here are some of the blogs I found particularly intriguing for one reason or another—in Zip order, since I’m gathering them as I make the last pass through the profiles. The reasons may be obvious from the profiles; they may not.

• FPL Teen Blog 01702
• Carver Public Library . blog 02330
• Newton’s Quick Job Search Blog 02459
• Director’s Blog 03060
• From the Reference Desk 03060
• Dover Public Library news 03820
• Latest entries from lucys-webrarians.blog-city.com 06111
• The Short List 06426
• Darien Community Matters (and other Darien blogs) 06820
• Westport Public Library MOVIE & MUSIC blog 06880
• West Long Branch Public Library 07764
• Highland Park Public Library Teen Blog 08904
• Administratively Speaking (and other Goshen blogs) 10924
• Children’s Department Paperless Notebook 15102
• Sellers Library Teens 19082
• Birmingham Public Library’s Latest News, Reviews & Information 35203
• Worthingteens 43085
• Turning the Page… 45202
• SJCPL Blog 46601
• Ann Arbor District Library 48104
• MADreads 55703
• What’s New @ Coloma Public Library 54930
• Kids Lit and other Menasha blogs 54952
• PaperCuts 66604
• ICARUS… the Santa Fe Public Library Blog 87501
• The Librarian’s Own Grove 92501
• Mostly NF (and other Pierce County blogs) 98446
• Seldovia Public Library 99663
• Fahrenheit 451: Banned Books L0S 1E0
• Invisible Ink [Australia]

What I find intriguing and what you find worth examining are entirely different things, or at least they should be. I think all of these blogs may be worth quick looks, but I’m not recommending any of them as models for your blogs. Every community is different; every library blog should reflect the interests and needs of its community and the interests and capabilities of the library’s staff.

*The Library at Ephesus, to be exact. Credit my wife for the photograph. Any blame for clumsy cropping and color shifts in rendering go to me. My proof copy of the CreateSpace/Amazon version has a somewhat purplish sky instead of deep Mediterranean blue; your color may vary, I hope.

Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples demonstrates again what appears to be true of any group of blogs: There is no such thing as an average blog–and they vary so much that the mean and median for any given measure tend to be very different.

So it is with these 252 blogs. Here, then, the metrics I used (all based on posts during March, April and May 2007), with the mean (the average of all blogs), the median (the point at which half the blogs have a higher number and half have a lower), and the limit for “outliers”–most commonly the top quintile for a given measure (that is, the top 20%). The book lists the outliers for each measure. Within the descriptions that make up the bulk of the book (of which metrics are a tiny part), metrics always appear–and they’re boldfaced (or, in one special case, italicized) if they’re outliers.

• Frequency (number of posts): The mean is 23.7 posts, roughly two per week–but the median is 12.0 posts, slightly less than one per week. The top 20% have 33 or more posts during the 92-day quarter. (If you’re wondering, 10 average at least a post a day.)
• Comments: The mean is 4.5 comments–but the median is zero, since only 118 of the blogs had any comments at all, and 25 of those had one comment each during the quarter. Quite a few of them don’t allow comments, generally for sensible reasons. (Note: I eliminated obvious groups of spam comments from the counts–and no, I didn’t consider teens dissing one another as spam). The top 20% have five or more comments during the three-month period.
• Comments per post: You already know the median (zero); the mean is 0.3, with only 45 blogs exceeding that modest figure. I listed the 41 blogs (16%) averaging at least half a comment per post; fourteen averaged at least one comment per post.
• Illustrations: Average 18.6 during the quarter, median 5.0; top 20% start at 24 illustrations.
• Illustrations per post: Average 0.7 per post, median 0.5 per post. Too many blogs have essentially 1.0 illustrations per post (book review blogs, etc.) to use a boundary at the 20% mark, but I list the 44 blogs (17%) with at least 1.1 illustrations per blog.
• Total length: The whole set of blogs totaled just over a million words for the three-month period; the average blog had 4,120 words, but the median was 1,968 words. The outliers in this case are slightly more than 20%; I used 5,000 words as a reasonable cutoff.
• Average length per post: The “average average” was 187.3 words–roughly two typical paragraphs. The median was 153.8 words. In this case, I noted two outlying groups–those with longish posts (I used 251 words per post as the cutoff, roughly the top 20%) and those with considerably shorter-than-average posts (I used 89 words per post as the cutoff).
• Longevity: I didn’t attempt to calculate a mean or median, and blogs had to be around for at least six months to qualify. (I did not remove blogs that had no posts between June 1 and the completion of the study. Summer can be strange at some libraries.) Of the 252 blogs, 155 began during 2006 and another 38 began in the last half of 2005. I list the other 59, the 23% that had been around at least two years by the time of the study.

The mythical “average public library blog,” then, began in early 2006 and had 24 posts with five comments, 19 illustrations and a total of around 4,000 words or around 180 words per post. For what that’s worth.

So what varieties of blogs are in the book?.

No, I don’t mean how many use WordPress or Blogger or whatever. I didn’t record that (and didn’t test printability). It just didn’t seem particularly relevant in this case.

I mean what the blog’s “about.” The most common category is what I characterized as “General”–multipurpose blogs, not aimed at a particular age group, that include library news and hours, events, new materials reviews, what have you. These also include several cases where the library website is a blog, or where the blog feeds directly into the library’s home page.

97 of the blogs fall into the General category, including both blogs for libraries serving fewer than 1,000. Here’s some of the other categories, in the same seemingly meaningless order* as in Chapter 2 of the book.

• Book (new books and summaries); Eight blogs
• Books and more (primarily books but some related posts): Seven blogs
• Book clubs and discussion groups: Six blogs
• Book reviews (sometimes including book clubs, but primarily reviews): Twelve blogs
• Reviews of all sorts of material: Four blogs
• Movies and music: Four blogs
• New item lists with little or no annotation: Three blogs
• New materials, including lists and discussions: Five blogs
• Director’s blogs: Eleven blogs
• Library events: Ten blogs
• Genealogy: Four blogs
• Technology: Six blogs
• Children and KidLit: Eight blogs
• Teens: 36 blogs!
• Tweens: One blog
• Young adults (which could, of course, be teens): Six blogs
• Adult literacy: One blog
• Censorship and banned books: One blog
• Websites of interest: Two blogs
• Community, city, state posts: Two blogs
• Construction projects: Two blogs
• Digital collections: One blog
• Essays (that didn’t seem to fit any other category): Two blogs
• Friends of the Library: One blog
• Gaming: One blog
• Job advice: One blog
• Library staff: Three blogs
• Local history: One blog
• Nonprofits: One blog
• Parents: One blog
• Podcasts: One blog
• Readers’ Advisory: One blog
• Reference: Three blogs

Here’s two paragraphs of Chapter Two, immediately following the detailed list of blogs by type:

The lists above should challenge some of your assumptions as to what smaller libraries can and can’t do. Book review blogs when your library serves fewer than 15,000? See 46923, 06096, 02090. Do directors of under-20,000-user libraries do their own blogs? Maybe even 10,000! See 05301, 06820, 10924, 60521—and, a little larger, the remarkable back-and-forth blog at 60901.

Surely only larger libraries could devote blogs to genealogy? 46511: Service area 3,100. A children’s book blog from a 9,100-person library: 45419. Teen blogs for libraries of under 20,000? Eight of them—go look at the list (and don’t forget the YA blog for a library serving 8,700 people).

What will work for your library and serve your community? That’s up to you to determine–but these examples may help.

*I thought the order made sense at the time, but I’m no longer sure it does. If you see meaning in this order, let me know–maybe I’ve just been going through it too often.

This post from early August sets forth the purpose of Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples. A little more on that:

Public libraries vary enormously in service size, funding and staff resources. What works for a library serving half a million people with $120 per cap funding may seem wholly out of reach for a library serving 7,000 people with $20 per cap funding (or, for that matter, for a library serving 7,000 people with $120 per cap funding but the smallish staff likely in that library).

I’m hoping this book will help librarians see whether blogs might work for their library by offering a range of examples that speak more directly to their situation. I’m also hoping that showing the diversity of specialized public library blogs will be useful to those considering such blogs.

As an earlier post noted, I’m not looking for “bad blogs”–and I don’t know someone from outside a library and its community can judge whether that library’s blog is “bad.”

The book doesn’t even point out “good blogs” as such (for much the same reason). I put together a list of blogs that intrigued me for various reasons, as I did the penultimate editing pass–and finally left that list out of the book, because it’s either too short or too long and in any case inappropriate. I might post the list in a later post (or include it in the Cites & Insights extravaganza on the book.

Which libraries are included? In general,

• If your library has a blog in English, that was listed in either the LISWiki “public library blogs” page or the Blogging Libraries Wiki “public library blogs” page in late May 2007 and
• That blog demonstrably began before January 2007 and
• That blog has at least one post in at least two of the three months March, April, May 2007 (i.e., one in March and one in April or one in March and one in May or one in March and one in May) and
• I was able to reach the blog and verify all of that,

then you’re almost certainly in the book. One or two may have dropped out because I couldn’t reach them or for other reasons.

I hope to send email announcing the book to all 196 libraries, or at least those libraries for which an email address is within two or three clicks of a blog.See bottom of this post. In the meantime, here’s a list of the libraries in a form that included libraries should have no trouble understanding, but that doesn’t take too much space here. Namely, it’s the way the book is organized: by Zip code for U.S. libraries, postal code for Canadian libraries, and country/library for the few libraries outside North America.

Libraries are included for these Zip codes and postal codes:

• 01301, 01557, 01702, 01824, 02048, 02090, 02188, 02330, 02347, 02459, 02860, 02895, 03060, 03743, 03773, 03820, 03842, 03849, 04030, 05301, 06096, 06111, 06426, 06810, 06820, 06850, 06870, 06880, 07753, 07764, 07922, 08043, 08525, 08542, 08831, 08857, 08865, 08904
• 10924, 11576, 11743, 11747, 11772, 11795, 12074, 14103, 14203, 14468, 14489, 14551, 14569, 14850, 15102, 15213, 16743, 18350, 19082, 19083, 19103, 19380, 19543, 19602
• 20186, 20912, 21017, 22922, 27203, 27263, 27530, 29506
• 31906, 32801, 33401, 33755, 35203, 38111, 39043
• 40004, 40475, 40769, 41011, 43050, 43085, 44087, 45133, 45202, 45419, 46410, 46511, 46601, 46703, 46802, 46923, 47250, 48104, 48170, 48218, 48730, 48917, 49242, 49440, 49503
• 50613, 50701, 53010, 53040, 53119, 53703, 54901, 54911, 54930, 54952, 54963, 54967, 55305, 55746, 55981, 56007, 56649, 58102
• 60053, 60067, 60068, 60077, 60091, 60106, 60172, 60190, 60410, 60438, 60462, 60477, 60491, 60513, 60521, 60526, 60901, 61401, 65801, 66049, 66061, 66101, 66212, 66523, 66550, 66604, 66801, 67357, 67701
• 70501, 74003, 74501, 75491, 76092, 77054, 78701
• 80903, 87501, 89012
• 90620, 91502, 92501, 92648, 93721, 93940, 94063, 94086, 94102, 94903, 95032, 95678, 97005, 98446, 98503, 99663, 99801
• K0K 2K0, K7L 1X8, L0S 1E0, L3Z 2A7, L4J 8C1, L4P 3P7, M4W 2G8, N1H 4J6, N1S 2K6, N2L 5E2, S6V 1B7, T1R 1B9, T8N 3Z9, V8W 3H2
• Australia: Casey-Cardinia, Eastern Regional, Sutherland Shire, Yarra Plenty; Ireland: Galway; New Zealand: Wellington

Next (in a day or two or three…), a few notes about the kinds of blogs and some sample metrics.

I have attempted to send an email notification to each library (sending in groups of 8 to 10), or to provide the same notice via a library’s contact form if no email addresses appear to be available.

In 10 or 11 cases, I was unable to locate either an email address or a contact form, or the contact form rejected the message. My apologies.

In another three or four cases, I suspect the contact form converted several brief paragraphs into one overwhelming paragraph that probably looks like spam.

And there may have been two or three cases where a mailing problem (apparently one email address had a hidden character that Gmail treated as either a space or an at sign) caused one or two mails to disappear.

For some 180 libraries, though, you should have received a courtesy note. It’s not a solicitation to buy: That’s entirely up to you! (“You too can be listed in this directory, for a mere charge of…” Nope. Not happening here.) I won’t even know who buys copies, which I think is as it should be.

Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples is now available at Cites & Insights Books. Price: $29.50 plus shipping and handling.
The 299-page 6×9 trade paperback (x+289 pages) features descriptions and sample posts for a wide range of blogs from 196 public libraries of all sizes, in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.

If your library is considering a blog, this book should help you find blogs from comparable libraries to consider as examples. If your library has a blog and is considering more (or revising the ones you have), this book should help you find interesting examples–the public library blogging community is remarkably diverse!

For now, Public Library Blogs is only available from the Cites & Insights Books store at Lulu.com, printed on 60lb. cream book stock. In a few days, a version on bright white paper and with an ISBN will be available from CreateSpace–and, a couple of weeks after that, from Amazon.com.

Update Monday, August 27: Public Library Blogs is now also available from CreateSpace, ISBN 978-1434805591. At least in the proof copy, the cover is more purplish than I’d like, but it’s within bounds–and in this case I have to admit the text looks better on the bright-white paper. While it’s possible that it can be pre-ordered from Amazon in a few days, it probably won’t ship from there until the official publication date of September 14, 2007. End Update

I’ll do a couple of posts over the next few days offering a little more detail on what’s in the book, and of course the October Cites & Insights will have lots of information. (I’ll also be letting the 196 libraries know the book is out–at least all of them I can find email addresses for.) For now, just a quick note on the range of service area populations for the 196 libraries:

• Under 1,000 (actually under 400): two libraries
• 1,000 to 2,400: five libraries
• 2,500 to 4,600: eight libraries
• 5,000 to 9,900: 17 libraries
• 10,000 to 15,000: 16 libraries
• 16,000 to 24,000: 20 libraries
• 25,000 to 33,000: 20 libraries
• 34,000 to 46,000: 17 libraries
• 51,000 to 69,000: 17 libraries
• 75,000 to 97,000: 11 libraries
• 100,000 to 137,000: 19 libraries
• 146,000 to 240,000: 21 libraries
• 260,000 to 497,000: 10 libraries
• More than 670,000: 13 libraries