I’ll keep it short this time—and I’m leaving out The Compleat Give Us a Dollar…, v. 1 and v.2,, um, compleatly. Those two—which combine all the commentary, graphs and tables that were in Give Us a Dollar… and its complements and extensions, are certainly available, but only as ebooks (vol. 1: libraries by size; vol. 2: libraries by state) or site-license ebook (vol. 1 only). They’re not available as print books because they have lots of multicolor graphs and would be very expensive as print books. Well, not as expensive as the traditional books I’m seeing that analyze library expenditures—not by a long shot—but that’s a different story. So far, nobody’s purchased either book at all, so they don’t really exist as books yet.
The inCompleat Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four: Public Library Funding and Benefits in 2010 removes the multicolor graphs from the other two books and combines them into a single volume—increasing page size to 8.5″ x 11″ and making the graphs and tables correspondingly bigger (also using a larger set of fonts for the text and tables).
It’s a handsome big book—425 pages, 8.5″ x 11″. It’s not available as an ebook (buy the two Compleat… volumes instead). The cover is, you guessed it, big top and bottom wraparound strips consisting of a mosaic of larger images from library websites. Actually, the two strips are the original strips from which $4 to $1‘s two strips were trimmed and reduced in size. It is, if I may say so, snazzy. The type is big and easy to read. The charts and graphs are big and easy to read.
And so far, I’m the only one who has read them. Sort of a shame, that. It will continue to be available for some time to come at a mere $26.99.
Crawford, Walt. The inCompleat Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four: Public Library Funding and Benefits in 2010. 2013.
You know, I was just about to sign off with “And that’s it for now…”—but it’s not. I missed one, possibly because I’m working (or will be soon) on an update, and that one may be—depending on how you measure it—the second most successful Cites & Insights Book I’ve done. We’ll get to that.
