LISNews: Librarian News

The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look is now available!

This 285-page 6x9 trade paperback looks at 607 liblogs (nearly all English-language) and, for most of them, how they've changed from 2007 to 2008.

Eleven chapters consider the universe of liblogs (that is, blogs by "library people" as opposed to blogs from libraries):

• Age, authorship, country of origin
• Number of posts during a three-month period (and change in that number from 2007 to 2008)
• Total word count and average post length (and change)
• Total comments and comments per post (and change)
• Total figures (illustrations) and figures per post (and change)
• Patterns of change from 2007 to 2008
• Correlations between pairs of metrics
• A look at 143 blogs from 2006 through 2008
• Interesting subgroups (national, authorship, type of librarian)
• The visibility issue
• Liblogs and the larger blogosphere

The final chapter, just over half the book, provides a brief objective description and available metrics for each blog. The book includes many tables and a fair number of graphs. There is an index of blogs and authors. -- Read More

The Title Page and Indexes for Cites & Insights Volume 8 (2008) is now available.

The 16-page PDF consists of a title sheet for the volume (both sides) and a 14-page set of indexes (one index covering articles and songs cited, the other covering books, blogs, topics, authors, etc.)

No HTML version is available, since the indexes specifically refer to page numbers that would be irrelevant in HTML essays.

That completes Volume 8, if you're looking to bind it.

I believe a paperback version of the entire volume will be available, but not for a few weeks.

It's only taken eight years for C&I to actually appear monthly--that is, for a volume to have only a dozen issues.

Cites & Insights 8:12 (December 2008) is now available for downloading.

The 22-page issue is PDF as usual (a nice compact PDF, as are all the other 2008 issues now that I've regenerated them with Acrobat 9), but you can also get HTML versions of most essays. (Most headings below are live links.)
Bibs & Blather

Advance notice of a special offer: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 will be available soon (late November or early December if all goes well), and will have an early-bird special price of $22.50 until January 15, 2009--at which point it will go to $35.00. (If there's an Amazon version, that will start out at $35.) The book will be announced on Walt at Random as soon as it's ready.

Also: News about disappearing books, notes on potential sponsorship for future research, and this warning: If you're one of the dozens (I can dream) of institutions that binds C&I, hold off--the title sheet and index will be ready in another week or two. (There will probably also be a paperback version of the whole volume.)

Perspective: Writing about Reading

The heart of the issue. An extended essay on NEA's latest sky-is-falling report--and on "stupidity and Google." -- Read More

Cites & Insights 8:11, November 2008, is now available for downloading.

The 26-page issue (PDF as always, but with HTML versions available from links here or at the Cites & Insights home page) includes five essays:
Bibs & Blather: Books and Blogs

Mostly updated versions of Walt at Random posts--library blog books going out of print soon, a progress report on The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 (with more progress since the post) and notes on Technorati, blogs as a whole and the liblog landscape.

Making it Work: Libraries and the Social Web

Notes on aspects of social-web applications in libraries beyond blogs and wikis.

Perspective: How Common is Common Language?

An original "research" project: What happens when you try 300 everyday sentences against Google--and when you try just the first eight words of each sentence? The answers may surprise you.

Library Access to Scholarship: OA Controversies -- Read More

Cites & Insights 8:10, October 2008, is now available.

The 28-page issue is PDF as usual, although HTML versions of each essay are also available from the Cites & Insights homepage or via the links below.

This issue includes five essays:
Trends & Quick Takes

Improving patents, the future of the internet, why I give Pew such a bad tome, the HD watch, the purloined bibliography and invisible gifts, plus five quicker takes.

Interesting & Peculiar Products

Six of them--including a hockey-puck home theater PC and a digital projector that throws a 98"-diagonal image from 15 inches away--and six Editors' Picks and Group Reviews

Net Media/Making it Work: Blogging about Liblogging

A range of posts and commentary about liblogs and library blogs, some up to a year old, all worth noting.

Offtopic Perspective: 50 Movie Western Classics, Part 2

From the sublime (The Outlaw) to the ridiculous (Gone with the West), with spaghetti westerns, singing cowboys and much more in between--including Bill Shatner playing an arrogant, sexist, tinhorn ruler who doesn't happen to be on a starship but is instead a half-Comanche bad guy (White Comanche)--and Shatner also plays his sort-of-good-guy twin. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. -- Read More

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 8:9 (September 2008) is now available.

The 26-page issue (PDF as usual, but HTML versions of the individual essays are available using the links below or at the C&I home page) includes the following five essays:
Bibs & Blather: Projects and Rejects

40% less self-indulgent than the five-part post! Some new information! Otherwise, it's largely the same material. If you feel you already know all this, skip right on over to:

Perspective: Updating the Book Discovery Projects

Microsoft dropped its project--and in the process released all limits on 300,000 scanned books and gave the scanners to its partners. That and lots more in this multipart roundup.

Perspective: On Conferences in a Time of Limits

Why do we go to conferences--and will conferences change significantly thanks to high travel costs? Some semi-informed musings and non-predictions.

Old Media/New Media -- Read More

Cites & Insights 8:8, August 2008, is now available. The whole issue is PDF, but individual essays are available in HTML from the C&I home page or the article links below.

The 28-page issue includes:

• ©4: Locking Down Technology - A number of skirmishes in the ongoing battle for full copyright maximalism, including strange lawsuits and even stranger threats.
• Perspective: On Numeracy, Naivete, Google & Pew - Did your newspaper say that Pew says 21% of atheists believe in God? Read on...
• Library Access to Scholarship - A range of interesting items, one newsworthy--and, by the way, the PALINET Leadership Network has a brand-new cluster on open access.
• Making it Work - A slew of comments on possibility and reality--or, if you prefer, pragmatism.
• Retrospective: Pointing with Pride, Part 4 - A few gems, including "Living with Contradictions" from way back in 2001.

Cites & Insights 8:7, July 2008, is now available.

The 26-page issue is PDF as always, but most essays can also be downloaded at the Cites & Insights home page or from the links below.

This issue includes:

• Bibs & Blather - Why there isn't a nine-year cumulation of Top Tech Trends--and wondering about "free" and the worth of creative work.
• Trends & Quick Takes - four trends (including ongoing notes on high-def discs) and four quicker takes.
• Perspective: One, Two, Some, Many: Search Results & Meaning - And that's the short title! Notes on the apparent meaningless of large open web search engine result counts.
• Interesting & Peculiar Products - fourteen products and eleven group reviews and editors' choices.
• Retrospective: Pointing with Pride, Part 3 - third in the series of centenary celebrations.
• My Back Pages - Exclusive to the PDF version, as always: eight mini-rants.

Cites & Insights 8:6, June 2008, is now available for downloading.

The 28-page issue is PDF, as usual, but (since My Back Pages is missing) all segments are also available as HTML separates at the Cites & Insights homepage.

The issue consists of: -- Read More

• Bibs & Blather: Quick Updates: Limits and Slouching - A brief reminder of a timely essay, and a progress report about where things stand on the possible 2007-2008 liblogs project.
• Perspective: On Wikis and Transparency - Transparency is great, as long as you're aware of it. MediaWiki makes your wiki (and most other wikis) very transparent to outsiders. A good thing, but do pay attention.
• ©3 Perspective: DRM and ISP Surcharges - Comments on the slow death (?) of DRM for purchased audio downloads--and the latest plan to assure Big Media of ongoing profitability.
• Perspective: On Semantics, Reality, Learning and Rockstars - "Reality" in this case: When is a book not a book? Discover the connections between these four mini-perspectives and win yourself a virtual candy bar!

Cites & Insights 8:5, May 2008, is now available for downloading.

This 28-page issue (PDF as usual, but each essay is also available in HTML form) includes:

• Bibs & Blather: One Book at a Time - A year's experience with self-publishing.
• Perspective: Offtopic or Not? Mill Creek & Libraries - Do 50-movie (and 100-movie and 250-movie!) packs make sense for public libraries?
• Making it Work Perspective: Changes in Liblogs: Slouching Toward a Study - How have 227 liblogs changed between 2005/2006 and 2007? Notes toward a possible study of 500+ blogs.
• Net Media Perspective: Citizendium and the Writer's Voice - Notes on Citizendium and how it's developing--and why I disagree with one fundamental tenet of both Wikipedia and Citizendium.
• Offtopic Perspective: 50 Movie Hollywood Legends, Part 1 - From the sublime to the ridiculous, from Good News to The Fat Spy, two dozen movies with big-name stars.
• Retrospective: Pointing with Pride, Part 1 - Looking back at "the 1s"--the first, 11th...91st issues of C&I.

Cites & Insights 8:4, April 2008, is now available for downloading.

The 28-page issue is PDF as usual (or not as usual--I'm now using Word 2007 and Microsoft's free PDF-output download), but HTML separates are available from the C&I homepage

The issue includes:

• Bibs & Blather - a very short introduction to the issue and what got left out.
• Library Access to Scholarship - Harvard and Institutional Repositories
• Old Media/New Media Perspective: Thinking About Kindle and Ebooks
• Making it Work Perspective: TechNos and TechMusts

By the way, if you know anyone who's been getting issue alerts via email, let them know they need to sign up for C&I Updates or Walt at Random; Topica no longer accepts my posts (and entirely lacks help/contact info).

Cites & Insights 8:3 (March 2008) is now available.

This is the centenary issue--#100--a nice round number that I'm a little
surprised to have achieved. Naturally, that milestone affects the issue--but not as you might expect.

The issue's long--36 pages--and PDF as usual, although all but the last section (My Back Pages, always exclusively PDF) are also available in HTML form from the home page.

This issue includes:

• 100 Reasons for Doing Cites & Insights - an introduction
• Trends & Quick Takes - ink costs, life without software, the significance of good sound and more: six trends, ten quicker takes.
• Perspective: Tracking High-Def Discs - including a prediction for the
  likely winner in the format war.
• Making it Work - the biggie: 19 pages devoted to aspects of making libraries better, including reading (reader's advisory, slow reading, etc.), philosophy, hassles, balance, and "Library 2.0 debased."
• Interesting & Peculiar Products - flashy labels, green PCs, supercheap laptops and more: 19 items in all.
• My Back Pages - 16 mini-perspectives, none of them terribly serious.

Cites & Insights 8:2 (February 2008) is now available.

The 24-page issue (PDF as always, but all articles are also available as HTML separates) includes: -- Read More

• Announcing Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples - The latest from Cites & Insights Books, a $29.50 289-page paperback that complements Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples. Included are brief notes, the list of academic institutions represented, examples of blog coverage for both books, the announcement of $20 PDF downloads for those who just can't stand print books--and a few notes on the status of Cites & Insights Books.
• Trends & Quick Takes: Trends and Forecasts - Time to look at some pundits' scorecards and forecasts, along with some of the trends from the LITA Top Tech Trendspotters, with some of my comments interleaved.
• Bibs & Blather: Midwinter Musings - Notes on a much warmer Philadelphia Midwinter, along with a special essay based on an odd but not unique occurrence: "Leadership and Initiative: The Case of the Empty Chairs."

For perhaps the first time, the January issue that begins a new volume of Cites & Insights is available in...January.

Cites & Insights 8:1 (January 2008) is now available for downloading

The 30-page issue (PDF as always, but HTML separates for each essay are also available) includes:

• Announcing Cites & Insights volumes 6 and 7 in book form

Cites & Insights Books at Lulu.com (http://lulu.com/waltcrawford/) now offers these volumes in paperback form, $29.50 each, with a bonus in each case (and full-color cover photos). The bonus for Volume 7 is Cites on a Plane, the phantom issue from January 2007. For Volume 6, it's a brief preface including "where are they now?" notes on liblogs studied in 2005 and 2006 that have either moved, changed names or apparently gone silent.

• Bibs & Blather: Thinking about Leadership

Some thoughts after a few weeks working on the PALINET Leadership Network, including my current take on "Who's a leader?" -- Read More

The Index to Volume 7 of Cites & Insights is now available for downloading. This 19-page document combines a title sheet and 17-page indexes, for those wishing to prepare a bound volume.

On the other hand, why bother?

For the low, low price of $35.00 (plus shipping), you can acquire Cites & Insights 7, 2007 in paperback form, including full-color cover. (Two library-related photos, one from Alaska, one from Hawaii.)
But wait! There's more! The book version of C&I includes an exclusive bonus, not available anywhere else (as far as I know): Cites on a Plane, the phantom 38-page non-issue that was only available for two weeks in January 2007. It's not in the index--but it is in the book.

What's in COAP? Five moldy golden oldies:

• Perspective: Predicting the Future of Academic Libraries
• Net Media: Analogies, Gatekeepers and Blogging
• Perspective: You Just Can't Comprehend
• Trends & Quick Takes: The Long Tail's Thick Head
• Perspective: [40 of] Seventyfive Facets (the 40 actually written for Issue 75)

and an interesting example of Microsoft Word's artificial stupidity at work, -- Read More

• Library 2.0 for Short Attention Spans

Cites & Insights 7:13, December 2007, is now available.

This 22-page issue--PDF as usual, but each essay is also available in HTML form, is another All-Perspectives Issue:

• Bibs & Blather Perspective: On Charting New Courses

In which I write off five decades in library automation with a 1.5-page non-memoir, summarize the start of an ongoing career in another 1.5 pages, and discuss new directions and what they may mean for the near-term future of Cites & Insights.

• Following Up: On the Literature

Various threads on the state of the professional literature of librarianship.

• Trends & Quick Takes Perspective: On Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax

With the help of Charles Lutwidge Dodson, a baker's dozen assorted mini-perspectives on such topics as out of print in a PoD world, disk storage "too cheap to bill," the means of creativity, the benefits of liblogs...and many more.

• Making it Work Perspective: On the Middle

If you're not 100% with us, you're against us. If you believe that to be true, you should just skip this essay altogether. -- Read More

Cites & Insights 7:12, November 2007, is now available for downloading.

The 28-page issue is PDF as usual (HTML versions of most essays are available at the home page). It includes:

• Bibs & Blather
  

Thanks! - A note about my new position as Director and Managing Editor of the PALINET Leadership Network (and why there was no liblog extravaganza this year).

• Following Up & Feedback

A tiny section correcting two name problems and listing the publishers who've disowned PRISM.

• (C)3: Balancing Rights

"Sometimes They're Guilty," a review of and commentary on the first RIAA suit to go to jury trial.

• Trends & Quick Takes

Nine trends (including a librarian winner of the Ig Nobel for Literature--and no, the article isn't at all a joke) and eight quicker takes.

• Net Media: Thinking about Blogging

The biggest chunk of this issue--ten thousand words considering general blogging issues and library-specific blogging issues from October 2006 until recently.

• Interesting & Peculiar Products

Six products (including a variety of views on a certain high-profile Apple product that appears to excel at everything except its supposed primary function) and a dozen Editors' Choices and other winners.

• My Back Pages

Six snarky little essays. As always, this one's only available as part of the whole issue.

I've revised the Word template for the HTML essays to be a little more "printlike." If you find that it doesn't work for you, let me know: I might change it back. If you don't notice a difference, that's OK too.

Cites & Insights 7:11 (October 2007) is now available.

The 30-page issue (PDF as usual, but HTML separates of each essay are
also available) includes:

• Announcing Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples - a new book that every public library (and library school) should own.
• Bibs & Blather - Incidents and Sideshows: the accidental theme of most of this issue.
• Library Access to Scholarship - PRISM: Enough rope? (Will AAP come to regret the new "partnership"?)
• ©3: Balancing Rights - SFWA Takedowns: A Copyright Incident
• Making it Work - Library 2.0 discussions (and another sideshow)
• Net Media Perspective: Tracking High-Def Discs - The Battle Continues

Cites & Insights 7:10, September 2007, is now available for downloading.

The 26-page issue, PDF as usual with most essays also available in HTML form, includes:

• Bibs & Blather - A new book is on its way, Public Library Blogs: 252 examples.
• Making it Work - Successes and failures in changing libraries
• Following Up and Feedback - Extending the conversation for eight or nine previous essays, including substantial new sections adding to "On the Literature" and "On Authority, Worth and Linkbaiting."
• Net Media: Wikipedia and Other Wiki Notes
• Trends & Quick Takes - Four trends (including notes on Second Life) and seven quicker takes
• Interesting & Peculiar Products - Two products and seven editors' choice/roundup notes.
• My Back Pages - six mini-rants.

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 7:9 (August 2007) is now available for downloading.

It's an odd issue: Four somewhat overlapping Perspectives and an Offtopic Perspective.

The 26-page issue (PDF as usual, but each Perspective is available as an html separate from the homepage) includes:

• Perspective: On the Literature

I believe that gray literature--blogs, this ejournal, a few similar publications and some lists--represents the most compelling and worthwhile literature in the library field today...

• Perspective: On Authority, Worth and Linkbaiting

Yes, it's the dreaded Britannica Blog essay. Yes, I'm late to the game. No, this is not primarily about Michael Gorman, although his blogging (his blogging!) plays a crucial role in the discussion. There will be no fisking here, tempting though it might be—either of Gorman's posts or of some over-the-top responses...

• Perspective: On Disagreement and Discussion

Are librarians willing to disagree with one another?
What a silly question. Of course we are (I'm counting myself as a librarian for this discussion). Consider some disagreements I've chronicled and taken part in here and in my blog, just for starters....

• Perspective: On Ethics and Transparency

How much do you need to know about who I am and how I deal with issues, people and organizations that might relate to my writing? What do you need to know about my ethical standards? How much disclosure assures adequate transparency?

• Offtopic Perspective: 50-Movie Classic Musicals, Part 2 - including Rhythm and Blues Review, Till the Clouds Roll By, All-American Co-Ed, Hi-De-Ho (an hour of Cab Calloway: how can you go wrong?), Royal Wedding...and a whole bunch more.

Not included in this issue: Perspective: On Clever Names for Perspectives. And the Bibs & Blather has appeared instead as an absurdly long post at Walt at Random.