Remember this post, all of–what–two days ago? Which was “an update to “The new project: update 1,” which was an update to “We grow too soon old..”?
Toward the end of the post, there’s a section “What’s next?” beginning with this paragraph:
Right away, nothing at all–I’m going to do some other work.
Then I say that I’ll probably pick up directories from LibWorld, eventually…and maybe even try some liblog blogrolls to see whether they yield anything.
Well…what hasn’t really happened is “some other work.” That’s not quite true. I’ve dealt with a number of small projects, household chores, discussing a Big Trip (one night, two days, but it’s a start), etc…
The other work that’s still being neglected? Writing stuff for the September Cites & Insights. I haven’t done any of that since the August issue came out, which was almost three weeks ago. And, for some reason, I’m resisting starting again, even as I get some great new possibilities for essays.
Maybe it’s a summer slump. Maybe it’s distraction. Maybe I just need a longer break from that particular style of writing.
Oh, I will be starting some other writing–definitely, probably Monday, maybe even earlier. But, you know, the September issue could come out as late as August 31…or, for that matter, as late as September 30. (Or I could have a nice chunky issue that y’all might find worthwhile and that really doesn’t require any new writing…)
Anyway, instead of forging ahead with other writing, I did look through the book for liblog directories, and found fewer than I remembered. I picked up those plus Libdex (almost forgotten but not quite gone). Sorted the 681 candidates, checked for duplicates and blogs already covered, resulting in 275 possibilities. I knew that a big chunk of those were Iranian, and that probably very few of the Iranian blogs were in English…so, instead of setting it aside, I decided to give it a “what the heck” hour or so this morning.
I’m done–and the whole 275 probably took less than 3.5 hours total (maybe 4). I got a slightly better yield than I expected, actually: 49 new liblogs (most of them for the broad look, not the deep look; most of them Australian) and 223 more exclusions (mostly Iranian–and, I think, more disappeared blogs than non-English blogs). I also looked at the Google Directory of personal library & information science blogs; I don’t know how many are in the directory, but exactly one [1] of them was new to me.
The status
So, as of now, the broad look includes 1,071 liblogs, and I have a list of 720 others that appear in one directory or another but are either defunct, non-English, official, or not a liblog at all.
Now to spend the weekend doing, well, weekend stuff [farmer’s market, mowing, vacuuming, reading, eating, walking over to buy some olive oil from the nearby producer, with luck deciding on a trip date & making reservations…]. And the week ahead getting a strong start on a project that I’ll talk about when it’s done.
Eventually–after the project is at a pause stage and I’ve decided what to do with C&I for now–I’ll come back to this and decide whether to try 50-100 blogrolls, and whether or not to add the GPR 3 blogs with 2+ current posts to the deep look pool.
At a later eventually, sometime this fall, I’ll start the data massaging and writing.
One thing I’m sure of: Whatever results from this process will not include writeups or profiles of individual blogs. If you want those, you need to buy But Still They Blog (and maybe The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008). Oh, and if I publish portions of BSTB in C&I (one option for September, if I want to stick with other writing even longer), those portions will not include profiles.
Now, off to the weekend. Enjoy yours!
