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
