3. The Liblog Landscape Revisited

Note: This could potentially be done in 2010, skipping 2009 or doing two year metrics in one.

A replacement for The Liblog Landscape that would add new value in several ways:

  • Begin with a chapter or two on good practices and the range of blogs.
  • Take 475 blogs (or maybe only 373 of them) as a baseline, with quick notes on those left behind.
  • Add new blogs from 2008 (and from 2009, if done), with tougher criteria: At least three posts during each year’s quarter, at least GPR3.
  • Similar metrics (omitting illustrations metrics) but covering more time.
  • More focus on groups of blogs.
  • Similar backend, but maybe with subjective notes on some blogs?
  • Maybe—maybe—survey for internal measures and comments, but that adds a lot of extra work.

    • Notes

    While The Liblog Landscape isn’t exactly setting the PoD world on fire, it’s still selling—six or seven copies in February, which means it’s now passed Academic Library Blogs in sales.

    On the other hand, at the rate it’s selling, it will never reach 100 copies, much less the 200 copies that would constitute reasonable success. This might also be a project that requires sponsorship to work. I believe the material would have readership in the high hundreds or, more probably, low thousands (the lead essay in the February C&I, on blogging, is getting a lot of downloads)—but it’s not clear that more than a handful of people (or libraries or library schools) will pay for it. (I haven’t yet sent out review copies; if I do, it’s unlikely any reviews—with one possible exception—would appear before June or July. If any appear at all: First Have Something to Say went essentially unreviewed despite a slew of review copies and a major library publisher.)

    Quick evaluation

  • Level of effort: Fairly high to very high.
  • Value added: Existing database and sheer persistence.
  • Upfront risk: Mostly time (but I think I’d need review copies)
  • Value to the field: Relatively low, apparently.
  • Monetary rewards: Relatively low, apparently.
  • Personal rewards: Fun to do—maybe the most fun to do of this group—but discouraging if it doesn’t pop. (If it’s not reaching people, why bother?)

    • Comments?

    In the interests of a silly but amusing experiment, I am obliged to note that this post has nothing whatsoever to do with Kindle 2, Amazon, text-to-speech, 23 things or Authors Guild. It also has no specific references to Kansas or Nebraska.

    Creative Commons License
    This work by Walt Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

    This entry was posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Books and publishing, Liblogs, Writing and blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

    2 Responses to “3. The Liblog Landscape Revisited”

    1. Elisabeth Eilir Rowan says:
      February 28, 2009 at 10:08 pm

      Just wanted to let you know that when I can scrape up some extra money I do plan to buy the book–and not just because my blog is one of the ones included. I think what you did was really interesting and a great look at library blogs. It may just need more exposure. Good luck.

    2. walt says:
      March 1, 2009 at 12:59 pm

      Elisabeth: Thanks. I may yet send out some review copies.