Selection from Cites & Insights 11, Number 1: January 2011

Bibs & Blather

The Liblog Landscape 2007-2010

The most comprehensive study of liblogs (and, I suspect, the most comprehensive study of blogs in any specific field) is now available and discounted through the end of ALA Midwinter 2011. You can order it now at www.lulu.com/content/9829119.

The Liblog Landscape 2007-2010 looks at every English-language liblog (blog by a self-identified library/archives/museum person, or blog about library/archives/museum issues, that isn't an official blog offering an institution's or groups views) that had a presence on the open web in early summer 2010 and at least one post before June 1, 2010.

That’s 1,304 liblogs from more than two dozen countries.

Even though this book does not include profiles for individual liblogs (unlike The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008, now out of print, and But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, still available), it covers so much ground and with so much analysis of the recent history of English-language liblogs that the book is still a fairly thick paperback: 241 print pages (including 4 pages of front matter and a 20-page index of blogs).

The book looks at key metrics for March-May 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010: Primarily number of posts, average length per post and average comments per post, as well as changes in those metrics and patterns of metrics, but also total length and total comments.

The book also discusses overall lifespan, number of posts and posts per month for most of the blogs—and other secondary metrics such as software, country in which the blog was (apparently) written, when blogs began and how current the most recent post was (as of May 31, 2010).

On sale now

The 241-page 6×9″ (trade) paperback, on 60# cream book paper, costs $35.00, or you can buy the PDF download for $22.50. From now through the end of ALA Midwinter 2011, both versions have an early-bird 25% discount for a final price of $26.25 (plus shipping and handling) paperback, $16.88 (no shipping or handling) PDF.

But wait! There’s more…

I didn’t include individual liblog profiles this time around because the book would have been far too thick (at three profiles per page, that’s another 430+ pages!) and because the profiles are too much work for the limited audience. But the profiles are also interesting. So here’s an offer:

For each copy sold, I’ll post four individual blog profiles on Walt at Random…doing them in absolute alphabetic order.

“Absolute alphabetic order” is the sort order Excel provides including initial articles, punctuation and all.

So if the book sells 326 copies, I’ll post all the profiles…sooner or later.

Part publishing

Portions of the book have appeared or will appear in Cites & Insights, but Chapter 1 and the index will not appear in C&I. Chapter 2 (in draft form) appeared in the December 2010 C&I. Chapter 3 appears in this issue. Additional chapters may appear in future issues, depending on a number of factors, including the continued health of C&I itself.

The Way We Blog

A few Walt at Random readers may remember that I used The Way We Blog as a working title for this project at one point.

If there seems to be serious interest in the ongoing history of liblogs, at the moment a very big “if,” that title and approach may be used for a five-year version adding 2011 data. “Serious interest” involves some people buying the book.

Cites & Insights 10 in Book Form

The paperback version of Cites & Insights 10: 2010 is now available for purchase through Lulu at www.lulu.com/content/9687359. The 419-page 8.5 × 11" paperback includes all twelve issues, the indices and an overall table of contents.

All print volumes of C&I are priced at $50 paperback, $40 PDF, but there’s a 20% discount on print volumes of C&I through the end of ALA Midwinter 2011, so the paperback currently costs $40 and the PDF currently costs $32.

I produce these at least in part because it’s the easiest and cheapest way to have a high-quality bound volume for my own use. I think they’d be great for library school libraries and possibly collections on experimental publishing, but if I got even five sales for a given volume, I’d be astonished–and pleased.

The cover is based on a photograph taken by Linda A. Driver off Moorea in 2001.

Comments should be sent to waltcrawford@gmail.com. Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large is copyright © 2011 by Walt Crawford: Some rights reserved.

All original material in this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/1.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

URL: citesandinsights.info/civ11i1.pdf