The comma placement is deliberate. May’s been a somewhat slow month for posts here (although still ahead of my original two-a-week estimate), certainly much slower than April. And some posts might leave readers thinking that I’m sitting here brooding, waiting for comments, and essentially doing nothing but fretting over C&I.
Gone missing or worse, in other words.
Fortunately, that’s not true. Oh, I’d still love to see some sponsorship, and I still invite comments, and I’m still not quite sure how C&I is going to look in the future…
But, in fact, I haven’t been blogging because I’ve been active–making much faster (and, I think, better) progress on my next “real” book than I anticipated.
Part of that progress, oddly enough, will yield a self-pub. book in the very near future, one that might herald one aspect of C&I’s future. More about that when it happens. It’s something I thought about doing a long time ago, but at this point the self-pub. becomes part of the professional book preparation (in an odd way), which makes it well worth the effort.
Otherwise…well, I really should use the ALA conference scheduler, I suppose, and draw up a skeleton schedule for the time I’ll be in New Orleans–that’s just a month away! I know I’m looking forward to it (and, oddly enough, to the red-eye and the several hours I’ll be at SFO before the red-eye: I’m leaving from the brand-new Terminal Two, and that alone should be worth a couple hours of exploration); I don’t know what I’ll be doing. Yet.
I don’t believe we’ll have a 10th anniversary C&I gathering, since–other than one local offering to find a location–there has been precisely no indications of interest in such a gathering. I assume the Bloggers Salon is defunct, which is a shame, so I’m not sure where I’ll run into people (maybe the LITA Happy Hour, if I go–but I’m no longer a LITA member either), but I’ll certainly be spending a fair amount of time in the exhibits. (And, should vendors be so inclined, which they usually aren’t, I’d certainly look at reception invitations favorably.)
Anyway: Onward, upward, sideways–this project is going very well.
Walt,
There is nothing wrong or even illogical with the supposition that the reader commentary and C@I sponsor that that you seek is yourself. Actually you may well have such a commanding grip on the destiny of research libraries that you would be smart to be your own closest reader.
I am struggling to understand implications of share print repository for print monographs and wonder if your new book will look directly at displacement of library interest in collection maintenance.
Gary, see ya’ in New Orleans
Gary, Very kind of you to say so–but I don’t believe I have any effect on the destiny of research libraries whatsoever. As for sponsorship, that’s spelled $pon$or$ship, and somehow I don’t see any revenue in sponsoring my own publication myself. That is, of course, what I’m doing (since there are small but real costs involved in the publication)… And, since I haven’t had a paid speaking engagement since 2009, C&I as a draw for other activities is also a non-starter, apparently. I don’t see that changing.
As for shared print repositories: Well, as ways to handle some of large library collections, they’re not at all new–UC had a shared regional facility in operation when I worked there, in the 1970s. As the only place print resides? I can only hope that doesn’t happen.
Neither of the books I’m working on has anything to do with collection maintenance. The one I’m working on at the moment is about no-cost/low-cost library support for micropublications (not microform publications but extremely short-run books); it’s a set of tools and techniques, primarily.