Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large
ISSN 1534-0937
Libraries · Policy · Technology · Media

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Selection from Cites & Insights 9, Number 10: September 2009

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Perspective

Academic Library Blogs: A Limited Update

In 2007, when I completed the study of public library blogs (see Public Library Blogs: A Limited Update), I did a similar study of academic library blogs—those officially associated with academic libraries.

As with public library blogs, I published the results in a book that was, in retrospect, poorly conceived. The book, Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples, will go out of print soon (it’s still available from Lulu.com and Amazon, at least through September 30, 2009, for those in search of a rarity). The first portion—the part devoted to metrics and overall comments—appeared in the May 2009 Cites & Insights (volume 9, number 6, citeandinsights.info/civ9i6.pdf).

Where Are They Now?

If the book had been more successful or I had found sponsorship, I believe it would have been interesting and valuable to follow the progress of these blogs over time. While no study of blogs can be comprehensive, the 2007 study was a broadly representative sample of active English-language academic library blogs.

I wasn’t quite ready to give up on that data without one more look—and it’s possible to do a limited update without too much effort. That’s what I’ve done (with all web research taking place July 26, 2009), and here are the results.

Survivors and Currency

All 231 blogs in the 2007 study originated in 2006 or before—and each blog had at least two posts during the March-May 2007 study period, with at least one post in two of the three months.

Here’s the situation in July 2009:

· Fourteen of the 231 blogs—6%—have disappeared. Of those, 11 yielded 404 pages, two couldn’t be reached or showed a server error and one was explicitly deleted.

· Five others couldn’t be analyzed. In one case, the archive is broken. In another, the blog closed in June 2009, linking to a personal blog cleansed of all official posts—and with all prior posts deleted. One blog showed no posts or any way to find archived posts. One appears to have posts—but the screen flashes for half a second, followed by a forced redirect to a splash page, with no way to return. And one has posts, but the posts don’t have year dates.

· That leaves 212 (92%) that still yield visible, dated posts—although not always at the same URL. Eighteen of the 212 have new URLs or titles, usually with links from the old archived blogs, sometimes only findable through searches (in three cases, the URL redirect is so fast and so transparent that you’d barely note there is a new URL).

For the 212 with visible, dated posts, I looked at currency as of May 31, 2009.

Of those 212:

· Eleven (5%) had posts on May 30 or 31.

· Forty more (18%) had posts on May 28-29; thus, 24%--just under a quarter—had posts within the most recent half week.

· Twenty-three (11%) had a post within a week but not half a week. That’s a total of 74 (35%) updated within the week.

· Thirty-seven (17%) more had a post within two weeks, and 44 more (21%) within May. That’s a total of 155 (73% of blogs with visible dated posts, 67% of all blogs) with at least one post within the month. Let’s call those “active blogs” (although you might reserve that term for the 111 having at least one post in the second half of May 2009).

· Twenty-eight more had a post in March or April; using a 90-day cutoff, that yields 86% (or 79% of all blogs) that could be considered semi-active.

· Extending the period to 120 days, Technorati’s generous cutoff for “active,” yields six more blogs.

· Fourteen blogs had not been updated within 120 days but had been updated within a year—that is, sometime since May 31, 2008.

· Eight blogs had a post sometime between May 31, 2007 and May 31, 2008.

· One blog had its most recent post within the earlier study period, between March 1 and May 31, 2007. In all, that’s 23 blogs (10% of the total population) that appear entirely moribund but with visible archives.

Here’s a quick comparison with December 2008:

· In December 2008, 72 of the 231 blogs (31%) were robust; May 2009 was a little better with 74 (35% of visible blogs).

· In December 2008, 59 were active but not robust; that was down considerably, to 37.

A more meaningful comparison may be with the 2007 study, since I can compare frequencies:

· In 2007, 138 (60%) of the blogs averaged at least one post per week. In 2009, that was down to 89 (42% of visible blogs).

· In 2007, another 56 (24%) averaged at least one post every other week. In 2009, that was down to 38 (18%).

I described active and robust blogs as being in “pretty good health,” a description that fit 194 or 84% of the blogs in the 2007 study. Only 127, or 60% of visible blogs, fit that description in May 2009.

What about comments—that great promise of community involvement that never did work out for most library blogs? Dividing 2007 figures by three, we get a total of 192 comments per month—and only 86 blogs with any comments at all. For 2009, only 33 of the blogs (16% of visible blogs) had any comments at all during May—and there were a total of only 150 comments. On the other hand, for the few blogs with any comments, there were more comments per blog (per month) in 2009 than in 2007.

The Quintiles

This time around, I looked at total posts and total comments; I didn’t study length of posts or illustration counts. That yields three metrics: post count, comment count and conversational intensity. For each of those three, I provide 2007 quintiles, 2007 quintiles and change quintiles. Caveats:

· For changes from 2007 to 2009, I’ve included only the 212 blogs for which posts and comments could be counted in both cases.

· Quintile sizes aren’t always one-fifth of the blogs (46 or 47, 42 or 43 for changes) because of clusters with the same value—that is, I couldn’t break a quintile between two blogs both having 3.3 posts per month in 2007.

· The differences are extreme in 2009 because quite a few blogs (27% of visible blogs) had neither posts nor comments. As a result, Q1-Q4 are relatively small, representing segments of blogs having non-zero numbers. That’s also true for comments and conversational intensity in both years, where Q1-Q4 represent segments of the minority of blogs that had any comments at all.

Post Frequency

To make the comparison reasonable, I divided 2007 figures by three, yielding average posts per month—comparable to the one-month figures for 2009.

For the 231 blogs with posts in the 2007 study, there were an average of 2,076 posts per month—which works out to an average of 9.0 posts per blog, but the median blog had 4.7 posts.

Quintiles for 2007:

Count7	High	Low	Blogs	Median	Total
All	254.0	0.7	231	4.7	2,076
Q1	254.0	11.3	48	17.3	1,301
Q2	11.0	6.0	54	7.7	340
Q3	5.7	4.0	47	5.0	230
Q4	3.7	2.3	49	3.0	145
Q5	2.0	0.7	44	1.3	60

The 20% of blogs with the most posts represented 63% of all posts.

Compare that with quintiles for 2009, including only visible blogs, where Q1-Q4 are quarters of those blogs with any posts at all:

Count9	High	Low	Blogs	Median	Total
All	147	0	212	3	1,207
Q1	147	9	34	15.5	767
Q2	8	5	40	6	254
Q3	4	3	37	3	126
Q4	2	1	44	1	60
Q5	0	0	57	0	0

Here, the top 20% (actually 16%) represented 64% of all posts.

Standouts

Here’s the list of academic library blogs averaging at least two posts per week in May 2009—43 of them, 20% of the visible blogs. I’m including the zip code (or postal code or country abbreviation) because some blog names are a little mysterious.

Blog name	Zip	#
Swem Government Information	23187	147
Burlington Textiles Library	27695	47
Physical & Engineering Sciences News	27695	44
Homeland Security Digital Library Weblog - On the HomeFront	93943	43
Economics Library Blog	NZ	37
iPortal News	S7N 5A4	27
News from the PRI Library and Data Archive	16802	26
Flow : information for Okavango Delta planning	Botswana	25
Government Publications Library -- University of Colorado	80309	24
Law In The News	97219	23
WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library	53706	21
North Carolina Miscellany	27514	19
..STCC Library 'blog..	01102	19
Cog 'n Blog - Engineering Library news	NZ	19
K-State Libraries: Staff Bulletin	66506	18
BoleyBlogs!	97219	18
Instructional Resource Center, Ashland University Library	44805	16
MIT Libraries News	02139	15
University Centre Oldham - LRC Blog	England	15
spineless?	Scotland	14
View from the library	30102	14
What's New at the Auburn Libraries	36849	13
Ohio University Libraries News	45701	13
Library News	52242	12
K-State Libraries: Conference Reports	66506	11
Wendt Library Blog, UW College of Engineering	53706	11
Education News	30303	11
UGA Libraries News & Events	30602	10
Ball State University Libraries' News	47306	10
UBC Academic Search - Google Scholar Blog	V6T 1Z4	9
Business Blog	45701	9
ISEL Update	01003	9
ZiefBrief	94117	9
reading girl speaks	44074	9
GovBlog: UC Berkeley	94720	8
Carmichael Library's Blog	35115	8
@thelibrary	83725	8
Drake Memorial Library	14420	8
Library Log	19104	8
VT Library News	24062	8
Library News	60465	8
Library News - Georgia State University Library	30303	8
Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences News	35205	8

Changes from 2007 to 2009

Here are the quintiles (or, rather, quarters of the top two-thirds):

Change	High	Low	Blogs	Median
All	800%	-100%	212	-54%
Q1	800%	36%	39	119%
Q2	33%	-23%	37	0%
Q3	-25%	-61%	40	-40%
Q4	-63%	-92%	39	-74%
Q5	-100%	-100%	57	-100%

A fair number of academic library blogs had more posts in May 2009 than in the average month March-May 2007, but a lower percentage than for public libraries—57 in all, or 27% of visible blogs. The top group, those with at least 36% more posts in 2009 than in 2007, appear below.

Blog	Zip	%
University Centre Oldham - LRC Blog	England	800%
tclibrary Blog	55404	800%
IU Medical Library News	46202	400%
Kresge Library News	48109	400%
Hyde Collection Catablog	02138	350%
Ohio University Libraries News	45701	333%
Burlington Textiles Library	27695	315%
Get It At Gutman	19144	275%
BoleyBlogs!	97219	238%
UBC Academic Search - Google Scholar Blog	V6T 1Z4	238%
ISEL Update	01003	238%
UNLV Libraries News Blog	89154	200%
AIDallas Library	75231	200%
Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences News	35205	167%
What's up at Lemieux Library	98122	140%
Levy Library	10029	133%
Carolina Blawg	27599	125%
Northeastern State University Libraries -- What's New at the Library	74464	125%
reading girl speaks	44074	125%
North Carolina Miscellany	27514	119%
Homeland Security Digital Library Weblog - On the HomeFront	93943	119%
Hardin News	52242	110%
BU Library News & Exhibits	13902	100%
Business Blog	45701	80%
E. H. Butler Library Blog	14222	75%
Alkek Library News	78666	71%
LaGuardia Community College Library Media Resources Center Blog	11101	71%
Law Library Blog	V6T 1Z4	71%
Connections	49001	64%
What's New at the Auburn Libraries	36849	63%
School of the Coast and Environment	70803	62%
Library News - Georgia State University Library	30303	50%
Science News	30303	50%
CPCC Libraries Blog	28235	50%
Ryerson Library News	M5B 2K3	50%
Langsdale Library News	21201	38%
Flow : information for Okavango Delta planning	Botswana	36%
National Art School Library	AU	36%
..STCC Library 'blog..	01102	36%

Comments

Blog it and they will respond? That was never a reasonable assumption for library blogs, and it hasn’t worked out very well in practice.

In March-May 2007, only 86 of 231 blogs—37%—had any comments at all. Dividing by three to reflect a typical month, we get 192 comments for the whole set of blogs (roughly one-third as many as for public library blogs). The “quintiles” for 2007:

Comm7	High	Low	Blogs	Median	Total
All	22.0	0.0	231	0.0	192
Q1	22.0	2.7	21	3.7	131
Q2	2.3	1.3	21	1.7	36
Q3	1.0	0.7	23	0.7	17
Q4	0.3	0.3	21	0.3	7
Q5	0.0	0.0	145	0	0

In this case, the Zipf formula does apply: the 20% (roughly) of blogs with the most comments, which is more than the first “quintile” here (it’s the combination of Q1 and Q2) include 87% of all comments.

“Quintiles” for 2009, including only visible blogs:

Comm9	High	Low	Blogs	Median	Total
All	45	0	212	0	150
Q1	45	6	9	6	105
Q2	5	3	5	4	19
Q3	2	2	7	2	14
Q4	1	1	12	1	12
Q5	0	0	179	0	0

Only 33 of the 155 blogs with posts in May 2009—22%—had any comments at all. The dozen blogs with at least four comments during the month—6% of the universe, roughly one-third of those with any comments—had 79% of all the comments.

Standouts

The dozen blogs with at least four comments:

Blog	Zip	#
North Carolina Miscellany	27514	45
GovBlog: UC Berkeley	94720	11
Ryerson Library News	M5B 2K3	11
UBC Academic Search - Google Scholar Blog	V6T 1Z4	8
..STCC Library 'blog..	01102	6
K-State Libraries: Staff Bulletin	66506	6
spineless?	Scotland	6
Carmichael Library's Blog	35115	6
CSB/SJU Library Blog	56374	6
Auraria Hot Topics	80204	5
WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library	53706	4
@thelibrary	83725	4

One note on comments: A couple of academic library blogs aren’t sufficiently protected from spam comments. Those spam comments (cleverly done, but clearly existing to promote other websites) were ignored in these counts.

Changes from 2007 to 2009

I forced the value “1000%” for any blog that had comments in 2009 and didn’t in 2007. On the other hand, if a blog had no comments in either year, there’s really no change. Here are the “quintiles,” with notes following:

Change	High	Low	Blogs
All	4400%	-100%	212
Q1	4400%	1000%	11
Q2	650%	80%	11
Q3	50%	-95%	11
Q4	-100%	-100%	58
Q5	0%	0%	122

What this table shows:

· Eight blogs that didn’t have any comments in March-May 2007 did have at least one comment in May 2009 (recorded as 1000%). Three other blogs (North Carolina Miscellany, GovBlog UC Berkeley and Ryerson Library News had more than ten times as many comments in May 2009 as in the average 2007 month.

· Although not clear from this table, 17 blogs had at least as many comments in 2009 as in a typical 2007 month.

· Five blogs had comments in both 2009 and 2007, but had fewer comments in 2009 than in 2007.

· 58 blogs had comments in 2007 but not 2009.

· 122 blogs had no comments in either year.

Conversational Intensity

A secondary metric: Number of comments divided by number of posts. Quintiles for 2007:

CI7	High	Low	Blogs	Median
All	2.20	0	231	0
Q1	2.20	0.36	22	0.57
Q2	0.33	0.19	21	0.26
Q3	0.18	0.12	22	0.14
Q4	0.10	0.01	21	0.04
Q5	0	0	145	0

Very few library blogs averaged even one comment per post in 2007—five of them, four fewer than in 2009. There were no blogs with lots of comments per post in either case, but the most intense blog for 2009 at least exceeded three comments per post (admittedly on only three posts), as shown below:

CI9	High	Low	Blogs	Median
All	3.67	0	212	0
Q1	3.67	1.00	9	1.00
Q2	0.89	0.33	10	0.46
Q3	0.32	0.19	7	0.25
Q4	0.18	0.04	7	0.14
Q5	0	0	179	0

Standouts

The nine blogs averaging at least one comment per post in May 2009:

Blog	Zip	CI
Ryerson Library News	M5B 2K3	3.67
North Carolina Miscellany	27514	2.37
GovBlog: UC Berkeley	94720	1.38
Auraria Hot Topics	80204	1.25
CSB/SJU Library Blog	56374	1.00
livelibrary	67042	1.00
Western Kentucky University Libraries Blog	42101	1.00
Digitization Projects at UNLV Libraries	89154	1.00
K-State Libraries: Kudos	66506	1.00

Changes from 2007 to 2009

Finally, here are the quintiles for changes in conversational intensity between 2007 and 2009, using the same rules as for changes in comments themselves:

Change	High	Low	Blogs
All	4713%	-100%	212
Q1	4713%	1000%	12
Q2	700%	8%	16
Q3	-11%	-90%	5
Q4	-100%	-100%	57
Q5	0%	0%	121

What this table says:

· Q1 includes four blogs with more than ten times the conversational intensity in 2009 as in 2007—and eight more with comments in 2009 but not in 2007.

· The second group, Q2, includes 16 blogs with more conversational intensity in 2009 than in 2007 (there were none with “true 0%” changes).

· The third, Q3, includes five blogs that did have comments in both periods, but had lower conversational intensity in 2009.

· The rest either had comments in 2007 but not in 2009 (Q4) or lacked comments in both studies (Q5).

· As with comments themselves, it may be noteworthy that only 29 blogs out of 231 studied—or out of 212 with countable posts in both years—had comments in both years.

Conclusions

Most academic library blogs that were fully operational in 2007 are doing OK in 2009—but quite a few are nearly moribund and posting in general has declined by more than half.

Comment counts didn’t decline that much—but there were very few comments and very few blogs with comments in 2007, even fewer in 2009. For many academic library blogs, that’s not surprising—they serve functional roles that wouldn’t call for responses. There’s not a lot else to say.

I hadn’t started a list of “intriguing” academic library blogs in 2007. The comments at the end of this article include pioneering blogs and a few standouts in 2007 for post frequency, comments and average length of posts.

Source Data

The spreadsheet including raw data for this study, tables used here and a list of library names by zip code is available at http://waltcrawford.name/aclibblogs95.xslx (no hyphens in the URL). It doesn’t carry an explicit license, but as far as I’m concerned, anyone can use it at will, for commercial or noncommercial purposes, with credit for my work if that’s appropriate.

Pioneers

The cutoff for this list is 2002, because too many academic library blogs began in 2003 (18 more).

WVU Libraries News

University Libraries, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506. While one other blog shows archives back to 1998, that one didn’t become a blog until 2007. This one apparently began, as a blog, before the turn of the century. It shows up as the News section of the library website. Posts are signed; longer posts (and the posts here in 2007 were fairly long) require links for the full story.

Activity in May 2009 is just a little greater than in March-May 2007: Three posts for the month as compared to seven for the quarter. Posts are still varied, with some of them fairly long. No feverish activity, but a steady flow all these years.

Library News - Georgia State University Library

Georgia State University Library, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia 30303. Another one that appears to date back before the turn of the century—and one of almost two dozen library blogs in 2007. A fairly typical news blog, notable primary for longevity, with 16 posts in March-May 2007.

Going back in May 2009, what you get is “University Library Blogs”—the specific News blog was folded into a new blog with a migration to WordPress. That overall blog shows 16 posts in May 2009—roughly one every other day. Other blogs have been pared down to a set of eight subject blogs with varying levels of activity.

..STCC Library 'blog..

STCC Library, Springfield Technical Community College, Springfield, Massachusetts 01102. The blog began in January 2002 and was active in 2007, with 42 posts and seven comments in March-May 2007.

Well now! In May 2009, there were 19 posts and six comments—a significant increase in both activity and community response.

Hardin News

Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242. The blog began in August 2002. While most posts had comments closed, one of the ten March-May 2007 posts left them open for feedback on how to improve the library—and got a healthy five comments on the post.

The blog’s still active, with seven posts in May 2009 (and no comments, as you’d expect). Hardin’s also tweeting.

In the Spotlight

Northwestern University Library, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208. This blog was a pioneer, starting in January 2002, but wasn’t all that active in March-May 2007, with three posts.

It’s still around, with three lengthy and interesting posts in July 2009, two posts in June 2009 and one in April—but, as it happens, there were no posts in May 2009. Posts are frequently essay length.

iPortal News

University Library, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A4. This indigenous studies blog began in August 2002 and was very active in March-May 2007, with 73 posts (most quite short).

It’s a little more active in May 2009, with 27 posts—not quite one a day, but close. It’s clearly a well-maintained portal, most days providing an annotated link to some story related to indigenous issues.

Library Newsletter

Library and Learning Resources, Empire State College, Saratoga Springs, New York 12866. Begun in October 2002, this blog isn’t enormously active but offers a stream of news, research tips and resource comments. There were 16 posts in March-May 2007.

That was down to two in May 2009, and only a couple since then, most of them resource-related.

MIT Libraries News

MIT Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139. Begun in January 2002, this blog was quite active in March-May 2007, with 56 posts in all. It was also one of the most visible library blogs, with subscriber numbers similar to those of an A-list blogger.

The blog wasn’t quite as active in May 2009, with 15 posts (down 20%), but it’s still a source of varied, well-written, signed posts by a range of writers.

Science News

Georgia State University Library, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia 30303. Another early arrival among Georgia State’s panoply of blogs, this began in December 2002. It wasn’t hugely active in March-May 2007 (eight posts).

May 2009 saw four posts, and this seems to be a healthy ongoing blog.

Other Standouts

These blogs are among those with the most posts, the longest posts, the most comments or the highest conversational intensity in 2007. They’re arranged alphabetically. (I omitted one or two blogs where “long posts” were really unannotated lists of new books.)

BRAIN_blog

Library@Mohawk, Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology, Hamilton, Ontario L8N 3T2. In 2007, this blog specifically said “every two weeks” and had some of the longest essays of any blog (averaging 872 words).

Those long fortnightly posts on a variety of topics appeared into April 2008, followed by one post in November 2008—and then nothing. There’s no active link to the library website from the blog; searching for the library yields “The BRAIN,” the library’s website, which does not have a link to the blog. For now, at least, it appears to be gone.

Children's Literature at the Education & Social Science Library.

University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801. One of many UIUC library blogs, notable primarily for the length of its posts—an average of 897 words in 2007.

In May 2009, the blog was exactly as active as in March-May 2007, which is to say, one post per month. That seems to be the pattern: A monthly essay highlighting one particular aspect of children’s literature in a carefully-prepared annotated bibliography.

Cites & Bytes @ Bailey    16057

Bailey Library, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania 16057. In 2007, this was an active blog (50 posts) with lots of comments (37 comments)—including comments I flagged as “priceless.”

The blog is still there and still offers interesting posts, but fewer of them (two in May 2009, two in June, none in July) and with fewer comments.

DACC Library BlogSpot

Library, Danville Area Community College, Danville, Illinois 61832. This blog was noteworthy in 2007 for its post length, averaging 653 words for the 14 posts in March-May 2007. It was unusual for an official library blog as a LiveJournal blog.

Posts in September, October and November 2008 continued to be long and interesting—but that was the end of it. A new blog—not referenced from the old one, and not directly available from the library’s website—began on blogspot in December 2008. (Hmm. The old LiveJournal blog was called “BlogSpot.” The new blog, at dacclibrarylines.blogspot.com, is called DACC Library Lines.) That blog, not tracked in the study because it wasn’t readily discoverable, seems to be averaging two fairly long essays each month.

Economics Library Blog

University of Canterbury Library, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. A departmental blog with lots of posts (89) and a fair number of comments (7) in March-May 2007. One of eight blogs from the Canterbury library.

This blog is more active in May 2009, with 37 posts—more than one a day and about 25% more than in a typical 2007 month—although fewer comments (none). Most posts consist of nothing more than a link to a particular journal article—giving just the journal title and article location, not the article title.

Gargoyles Loose in the Library

University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801. This one’s unusual: It’s from the University Laboratory High School Library. In March-May 2007 it was active (42 posts) and had loads of comments (61 or 1.5 per post; second highest comments in 2007).

Fewer posts in May 2009 (seven, roughly half the posting rate) and fewer comments, but on its fifth anniversary this blog is still lively, heavy with photos and interesting.

Law In The News

Paul L. Boley Law Library, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon 97219. Lots of posts—762 in March-May 2007, by far the most of any blog. Short posts—an average of 11 words, basically just enough for a headline and a link.

Still around in May 2009 and still active, but with somewhat less than one post a day instead of the eight-per-day rate of 2007. Except for one thing: Now, each post is a collection of headlines and links. If anything, this unusual linkblog is more active in 2009.

spineless?

Heriot-Watt University Library, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland. Apart from the unusual title, this was a busy blog in March-May 2007 (53 posts, 17.7 per month) with quite a few comments (20).

It still is—May 2009 had 14 posts and six comments.

Temple University Library News

Temple University Libraries, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122. Active and conversational—43 posts and 18 comments in March-May 2007, with a broad mix of posts.

The pace slowed in May 2009, with six posts and no comments, but that was an unusual month: other 2009 months have ranged from nine to 23 posts. It’s still a broad mix of informative posts.

UBC Academic Search - Google Scholar Blog

UBC Library, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4. The name’s changed to The Search Principle blog; the focus has broadened to “health libraries + web media.”

Other than sheer specificity, this blog was noteworthy for the conversational intensity in March-May 2007: 1.3 comments per post. The broader scope has resulted in more posts—nine in May 2009 as compared to 2.7 per month in March-May 2007—and more overall comments (8 as compared to 3.3 per month), although a lower conversational intensity.

UW Libraries Blog

UW Libraries, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming 82071. I’m not sure what happened here. In March-May 2007, this was an active blog (69 posts) with lots of comments (66 comments). In May 2009, it was unreachable.

There’s another blog at a different address, Dusty Shelves, that’s fairly active (eight posts in May 2009, but not included in the study). I think it’s the same blog—the archives appear to include posts from the old blog—but there’s no clear link.

WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library

UW Law Library, Uiniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. In 2007, I used the tag line “Law with a distinctive voice”—posts are signed and the librarian’s picture appears in the sidebar. There were 90 posts and 11 comments in March-May 2007, an average of one post per day.

In May 2007, the pace was down slightly to 21 posts—but with four comments, more than in the average 2007 month. Bonnie Schucha continues to write interesting, varied posts on a regular basis.

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large, Volume 9, Number 10, Whole Issue 120, ISSN 1534-0937, a journal of libraries, policy, technology and media, is written and produced by Walt Crawford, Editorial Director of the Library Leadership Network.

Cites & Insights is sponsored by YBP Library Services, http://www.ybp.com.

Opinions herein may not represent those of Lyrasis or YBP Library Services.

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