The Public Library Blogs book was such a roaring success, I couldn’t help but be inspired to do a similar book covering academic library blogs.
Nah, that’s ridiculous.
On the other hand, I’ve always sensed that I have a much larger readership among academic librarians than among public librarians—which may make sense, given that I always worked for or on behalf of academic libraries, even though my heart may have always been with public libraries. So either I thought this one might do a little better or I was just deluded.
In any case, the methodology was similar to the other book and I included pretty much the same metrics—again, with most of the book consisting of individual profiles. I also made a few comparisons between academic library blogs and public library blogs. E.g.:
- Academic library blogs had even fewer comments than public library blogs
- Academic library blogs had more frequent posts than public library blogs, but slightly shorter posts.
The project was interesting. The 279-page 6″ x 9″ paperback reached a few libraries. (Worldcat.org shows 22 libraries holding this book as of December 15, 2013.) The first few chapters appeared in the May 2009 Cites & Insights, with a limited update that November.
Crawford, Walt. Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples. 2008 (pbk.).
