LISNews: Librarian News

I've been staying out of the s**storm surrounding Michael Gorman's intemperate LJ op-ed piece, partly because I think some people would assume that whatever I said was an indirect attack on bloggers, partly because there's been a lot of intemperance on both sides (as well as some lovely, thoughtful essays and opinions, including one from Blake) within the Web4Lib and LITA-L group conversations. (I haven't gone to ./ or any of the other non-library areas in which this is being discussed, and don't plan to, thank you very much. Life really is too short.)

"Yeah, Walt, but you must have a reaction to Gorman's generalizations." Sure I do. Consider that most of what I make available for public consumption--publish, if you will, not including this blog lite--bypasses editorial control and traditional publishing, putting me pretty squarely in that ignorant semi-literate group of folks with nothing worthwhile to say. (I love good editing, and get it from my editors at eContent and Online, and certainly used to get great, hardnosed editing at American Libraries--but this year, even including a forthcoming Library Technology Reports issue on Policy and Library Technology, I'll publish about 40,000 words through traditional means, about 220,000 in Cites & Insights, and next year's likely to be about 14,000 traditional, about 220,0000 C&I, where there's no editorial oversight other than my own.)

My other reaction to Gorman's "satire"?

That's the contest: Name Walt's blog.

If I started up a real weblog (not just this blog lite), combining quick thoughts that might eventually turn into columns or C&I fodder, library-related (and policy-related and technology-related and media-related) stuff that would never make it into C&I, and some of the personal oddments hat come up, what should I call it?

Assume for the moment that I'll use some comment-friendly, printer-friendly software that's free, and that it would be hosted at LISHost, unless the "free and easy for idiots like me to use" need conflicts with that hosting.

Assume that it won't have daily posts and won't have loads'o'links, and that I'll be as open to comments and "conversation" as possible (but forbid anonymous comments), while necessarily retaining the right to delete spam and viciousness.

What would you call it? (And, for that matter, what hosting/software methdology should I use?)

Prizes for the best suggestion(s):

• An autographed copy of either Being Analog or First Have Something to Say, your choice.
• A DVD copy of an independent movie named after one of America's heartland cities, that movie having spawned an indie festival. Yours to keep, pass on, destroy...

If I get one compelling title suggestion and a separate wholly satisfactory software/hosting suggestion, a separate prize for the second suggestion would be an autographed copy of First Have Something to Say--or your choice of either book if the title winner doesn't want Being Analog.

Full disclosure: I am not committed to starting such a blog. I may well come to my senses. But Gorman's thoughts are pushing me in that direction, a direction I've been considering for some time in any case. (Yes, aggregators have something to do with that: I believe that they make "non-daily" blogs more feasible.)

Entries as comments here or as email to me, either wcc at notes.rlg.org or waltcrawford at gmail.google.com. Contest deadline March 12, 2005. No prizes if there's no suggestion that I find compelling.

3/14 addition: The contest is closed. Guess I should say that here as well.

I've concluded that there are two winners: Tangognat and Daniel.

Unfortunately, I won't be using the winning response--because it's already used by at least two other weblogs. Too bad, but I'd just as soon not add to the confusion by creating one more "Something to say" blog.

If/when my weblog does show up, the likely title is one that (according to Google) is not used anywhere on the open web--a title that appears within this set of comments, but as one of my responses. (And if one of you starts a blog with that name before I do, I'll take that as a sign from Gaia that I really should give up on the idea. Sort of like an earthquake swallowing up the proposed ISP, but non-destructive. Or maybe just as some reader being a smartass.)

Cites & Insights 5:4, March 2004, is now available for downloading. 22 pages, PDF as usual.

Taking Seth Finkelstein's suggestion on tabloid-style marketing to heart, here's what's included:

• Did NIH back down to Big STM--or was this a reasonable compromise?
  Library Access to Scholarship
• Who gets first-name treatment in C&I?
  Bibs & Blather
• You call this a community?
  Perspective: The Dangling Conversation
• Does anyone care about multichannel sound or ethics?
  Following Up
• Chills, thrills, public-domain flicks
  Offtopic Perspective: Family Classics 50 Movie Pack, Part 1
• Is a short story a book--and would you read Moby Dick on a cell phone?
  Ebooks, Etext and PoD

Beginning with this issue, Cites & Insights uses Adobe Acrobat 7 to support text-to-speech and bookmarks. You'll need at least Acrobat Reader 5, and 6 or 7 for the accessibility and organization bookmarks (7 is faster than 6).

This issue also has a few more test HTML files--the selective form that may or may not continue. These particular files should be stable indefinitely. Go to the home page to check them out.

And now that it's clear that I really, truly suck at creating tabloid-style headlines, don't expect to see them again.

The next issue of Cites & Insights may be out today. Or maybe tomorrow. Or maybe a week from now...

After finding out that Acrobat Reader's text-to-speech feature is only available for PDFs created with Acrobat 6 or above (I assume that's right), I decided to upgrade. CompUSA.com did remarkable work: I ordered online on Monday (a holiday), and the package was here yesterday, using the cheapest delivery method.

So I installed Acrobat 7 Standard Upgrade. Tried it out via the button in Word, reconverting the current issue as a test. Worked fine--only now I see I should make a small change in the C&I template so the automatic contents/bookmark panel makes a little more sense (right now, all you get are subheadings--never article titles: easy enough to fix).

Then, sigh, thanks to bad old habits dating from every computer up to this one--where disk space was always at a mild premium, I said, "Oh, Acrobat 7 works great. I can uninstall Acrobat 4."

Which I did.

Now Word only works in safe mode (where, of course, the "Create PDF" button isn't available). And Acrobat 7 can't convert a Word file because it immediately activates Word (to read the template, presumably), which immediately fails...

So here I am. I've found the Acrobat 4 CD (after some searching--it's been five years, after all). I've checked Adobe's website, which has a fix (for a related problem) that might work. Otherwise, I'll reinstall 4, see if that works...

Short version: Cites & Insights 5:4 is through copyfitting (eliminating orphans at the ends of paragraphs, general cleanup, and cutting down to some even number of pages--22 in this case). Once I have Word and Acrobat working together again, I'll fix the titles, generate the PDF, update the associated web pages, maybe run off a few HTML samples to extend that test, and update the web site.

With luck, that happens today. With bad luck, it takes days, weeks, months...well, no, not months, because if I spend more than two more hours screwing around with this, I'll just reinstall Word, which should break any links with Acrobat, and start from there...but that means re-revising normal.dot and all that stuff. With good luck, I can start Word in safe mode, identify a phantom acroxxx4.dot add-in, uncheck it, and proceed. Or, second best, reinstalling Acrobat 4 will allow me to proceed without effectively wiping out Acrobat 7.

Yes, I think improving accessibility is a good thing. Just don't ask me about that belief right this morning...

Quick added comment, Wednesday evening:

• The advice on Adobe's website didn't help.
• Reinstalling Acrobat 4 didn't help.
• "Reinstalling" Acrobat 7--which was intelligent enough to suggest that I wanted a repair install--worked.

I'll just leave Acrobat 4 alone, thank you.
The issue is out, with bookmarks and all (but you need at least Acrobat Reader 5 to view it), and I did provide another sample of what selective HTML would include. I'll do a proper announcement tomorrow.

After looking at the 22 (23?) responses I got from the Topica posting, the 2 I got at the C&I Updates blog, and the 5 (6?) I got here--and looking at the HTML versions themselves, with my browser set so it would really be obvious if the font setting was, um, less than consistent...

• I haven't made a decision yet, and almost certainly won't in time for C&I 5:4 (since that's entering the edit-and-copyfit stages).
• I've posted a new set of html trials, using a different and even simpler methodology that I'm sure won't take more than 30-40 minutes per issue.
• Go to the C&I "All Contents" page, as before (pagination has been fixed), drop down to the bottom, and you'll find the new links.
• I'm nearly certain that these versions will display and print consistently on any Windows PCs with Book Antiqua installed (which should mean "any Windows PCs") and any browsers with font overrides in place. Mac printing should be consistent, but I have no idea what it will look like. It's still not pretty HTML, to be sure.
• If I do this, it's likely to use this methodology--and it's likely to be selective, as in: Leaving out Bibs & Blather, leaving out any article running more than 40% of the entire length of an issue, possibly leaving out articles that I don't believe make much sense out of context.

Given those notes, your opinion as to whether it's worth doing or not is still solicited--and if you haven't change your mind since commenting on the other trial, you don't need to comment again; I'll consider those comments in my final decision.

Once again, an important reminder: The PDF version will continue to be the most readable, most attractve, and most complete version of Cites & Insights.

I posted the "soft trial" piece here on Monday morning, reaching people directly and via RSS. Five people have commented in two days.

I posted a similar piece on the C&I Update blog on Tuesday,presumably reaching people mostly via RSS. One person has commented in one day.

I posted a much shorter piece on the Topica mailing list last night, reaching people via email. So far, 18 people have commented in 12 hours.

I already had a Perspective written on "conversation" and various internet tools (and claims as to how they support). This datapoint will probably modify that Perspective slightly.

I'm toying with making some articles in Cites & Insights additionally available in very simple HTML form.

I'm not sold on the idea. The reasons I give in the FAQ for using PDF continue to be valid. The trial run I'm mentioning here even validates one of them: despite using the most space-efficient (and somewhat hard to read, since the lines are so wide) HTML options, the articles combine to require more than twice as much paper as the issue does: 50 pages as compared to 24. (Yes, some of that's because of repeated headers and footers, but I'm not going to put articles out there without the surrounding material.) I also think the HTML form is a whole lot less readable and attractive, at least for print readers.

But I'm willing to give it a try, if I can do it without significant software investment or needing to take more than an extra hour per issue doing my least favorite part of C&I--that is, screwing around with HTML and postings to get the word out.

The methodology I used for this trial does appear to take about an hour to handle a typical issue's worth of articles, and used the cheapest software I could find that would handle copied Word text reasonably well. (It was a $5 CD-ROM that turned out to be a little more than just a web editor. If I turn this trial into a real feature, I'll mention that story in Bibs & Blather.) "About an hour" is without attempting to turn any URLs into live links, fix any cases where I've inserted a blank to make a URL break lines, or really do anything other than copy, paste, and mass-replace typeface indications.

Anyway: If you're interested--I'm only going to publicize this here and at the C&I Updates blog--here's what you do:

Go to the C&I Tables of Contents form, click on 2005, go down to the latest issue. You'll note that each article name is a livelink. Try a couple of them.

Let me know what you think: Is this--

• Pointless?
• Pointless unless I make the separate articles a whole lot nicer?
• Worth doing without any extra tweaking?
• Worth doing, but you'd suggest a tweak or two that won't require real work on my part?

Comments either here or to me, wcc at notes.rlg.org. Comments by this Sunday, please: If I decide to do this for real, I'll try to back-convert this year's issues before 5:4 comes out (late February), then back-convert each previous volume--selectively--over the next month or four.

Modified to correct links...

Just for fun (I need it right now!):

There's no entry under my name in the English Wikipedia. I can't think of any reason that there should be. (Pretty certain I'm not going to show up in any traditional encyclopedia, either! My inclusion in certain Marquis publications is a source of bemusement on my part.)

On the other hand, there is a page for Walt Crawford in the Deutsch/German Wikipedia. Created by one of my readers & correspondents. (My mother's parents were both born in Germany, but I know the correspondent didn't know that. My reading ability in German consists of cutting-and-pasting into Google Translate and trying to interpret what comes out.)

No deep significance. Deliberately.

No, I'm not hoping that a Wikipedian goes and creates a page: To the extent that there are biographical pages, I'd guess there are several hundred thousand living Americans who should get priority, quite apart from all the dead ones and all the non-Americans.

OK, here's what I wrote in the latest Cites & Insights--word-for-word (it's easy to select text from a PDF and copy it, particularly if it's on one page--and the CC license means that any blogger or whoever could legitimately quote it). Note that it was part of a multipart comment on postings in the Walking paper blog, thus the subheading and date (directly from that blog):

---------Beginning of copied section----

Rss hub-bub, January 19, 2005

This time Schmidt’s just asking for trouble. Noting enthusiasm in the blogosphere about one library vendor adding RSS to one of their extended products (and the predictable “every library and every vendor should be doing this right now� responses from more excitable bloggers), he quotes part of one comment on one post. That comment, from an employee of another library automation company, notes that when that employee has suggested RSS feeds, the general response is “where are the customers who want this?�

He has a point that is sometimes difficult to remember. There are still many, many people [who] aren’t familiar with RSS. Ask your neighbor what “Really Simple Syndication� is. 98% of you will come back having received strange looks, and maybe 1% of you (likely less) will have the correct answer. [Footnote: The missing 1%? You’ll come back with a black eye.]

You won’t get RSS in online catalogs until vendors
know that patrons are using it—and, by the way, you probably won’t get it if you’re not willing to pay for it. Sure, it has valuable library roles—-but what portion of the community will take advantage of the feeds? Maybe, as Schmidt suggests, this is one of those cases where the library mentors the patrons—“guiding them through technologies they might benefit from
learning about.�

He also notes that, if RSS takes off in a big way,
it’s likely to be ruined—“If not by some new fangled spam, then it’ll be by the abundant adverts and few full-content feeds. It could be rendered as painful to use as email.� I’ve wondered about that, and noted with a small sense of irony that the RSS feed from one of the top library promoters of RSS feeds is now partially
broken (by my standards): It’s no longer a fulltext feed, for financial reasons. (And, earlier, notes that he only encountered the comments because he clicked through to the site.)

Interesting stuff. So your library would just as
soon drop its new title lists and substitute an automatically generated RSS feed? You tell your patrons, “Oh, we don’t send that email any more. All you have to do is add our new title RSS feed to your aggregator.� What reaction will you get?

I live in a very high-tech community, on a block
where most homes are owned by two parents, both of
whom work in Silicon Valley. If I went around asking neighbors about RSS, I’m sure I’d get more than 1% success rate—but I’m also sure it would be a lot less than half.

(Last-minute addition: See TRENDS & QUICK
TAKES in this issue. The latest Pew Internet & American Life study on blogging suggests that Schmidt’s “98%� figure is right on the money.)

----------End of copied section--------

Why quote that 500+-word section? Because Jenny Levine (who has a considerably larger readership than I do, either here or at C&I) spent 1500+ words flaming me for things I don't believe I said (and, in the process, offering some genuinely useful suggestions of how RSS might be worthwhile in a library setting, to more than the 2% of American adults who apparently use aggregators). And because another blogger pointed to that entry without comment. And because Karen Schneider today spent yet another 800+ words applauding Jenny's post.

Clearly I must be biased against RSS: That's why I created a blog whose sole function is to serve as an RSS (actually Atom) feed. That's why I read Jenny, Karen, and 100 or so other bloggers via Bloglines.

This seems to be yet another case where raising any doubts whatsoever about a new technology--or, for that matter, commenting on the doubts raised by someone else (as I was here)--constitutes an attack on that technology. (I call it the "DR school of argument," and no, I won't expand those initials.)

Blah.

Quick addition: Now yet another blogger has contributed to the piling on--this time without even reading my original comment (apparently), but instead trusting that Jenny L. must certainly have reported what I said correctly. The "conversation" just gets better and better.

Update 2/9/05, noonish: A conversation of sorts has taken place on most of the sites involved here. One, however, remains pure monolog: It's now been more than 24 hours, and while the original flame has been updated, my comment has not been posted (it requires signoff by the blog owner). Ah, the community! Ah, the conversation! Somehow, I'm reminded of the last line of in last night's Gilmore Girls. (Arcane reference deliberately left unexplained, just to bedevil both of you reading this--and no, we didn't discover GG until last spring. We're now watching Season 2 on DVD while also watching Season 5 on TV. Other than a little cognitive dissonance, no problem.)

Closing note, Thursday, February 10:
47 hours on the unposted comment; I'm giving up. Meanwhile, I think this particular flamefest has gone on long enough--and have said so in a comment at Shifted Librarian. Jenny and I will clearly continue to disagree; the Perspective that may grow out of this won't be about the original controversy; and life goes on. I won't delete this entry because...I don't believe in mucking with the record.

I don't currently listen to "podcasts" (and am still not sure how they differ from previous web audio streams, except for the In name)--much as I don't listen to audiobooks.

And that's me.

I also would be unlikely to start doing podcasts, because speaking isn't normally a way I organize what I want to say (when I do a speech, there's almost always a full-text written version, even if I vary from it a lot).

And that's also me.

One early library-related podcaster has/had a blog that lapsed into inactivity. He's now doing a stream of podcasts. Apparently, talking through what he has to say is more natural for him than putting together blog entries or written journals.

And that's him.

Some librarians are excited about podcasts, both because they find audio speech a good way to take in information and because they believe it might be another way for libraries to spread the word.

And that's them.

If you're looking for an attack on podcasts, you've come to the wrong journal. Different people have different preferred learning styles or, for that matter, taking-in-entertainment styles. Different people have different preferred creation/organization styles. This is a case where "YMMV" becomes the heading I've used once or twice in C&I: "The way we're wired."

I've wanted to try speech-recognition software--but realized that I'm more likely to sit down and write through something than I am to sit down and talk through it (when it's something that belongs in print, that is). That's my style.

Of course, if we had highly accurate multivoice speech recognition software and, conversely, human-sounding text-to-speech software (which we may have, for all I know), people could mix-and-match to suit their own preferences: I could read these podcasts as text, and people could listen to Cites & Insights (which I believe they can anyway: I certainly don't disable TTS in the PDF files, although as a dumb XP user I also don't get how to start TTS).

Anyway, I think this falls into "to each their own"--and, to be sure, accessibility. My preference for text over speech as a source method is just that: Mine. I do not claim universality.
If podcasts work for you and yours, great.

I've always been astonished at the sheer number of Googlebot hits at Cites & Insights--averaging 30 a day for a site that has new content around once every four weeks.

(I eventually realized that Googlebot may be crawling the entire site each time, so that it's really more like 60 hits done once every couple of days...still quite a lot.)

In previous statistics, Googlebot was always way out ahead of any other spider.

That's no longer true. Beginning last December (I think), and continuing strong since then, there's a new champion for hyperactivity: Inktomi Slurp.

Actually, for the month of January 2005, Googlebot's third. Here's what I see:

• Inktomi Slurp: 1420 hits
• MSN Robot: 479 hits--yes, MSN is getting serious about search
• Googlebot: 446 hits

After that, it drops rapidly: Gigablast Robot with 85, Turnitin Robot (!?!) with 75, FAST Enterprise Crawler with 68...and 40-odd others, down to SKIZZLE! Distributed Internet Spider and seven others with one each.

In all, spiders seem to account for just over 10% of the hits--but, fortunately, only about 1.5% of the unique visitors.

Cites & Insights 5:3, February 2005, is now available for downloading.

The 24-page issue (PDF as always) includes:

• Ethical Perspectives: Republishing and Blogging--(no, it's not about the Webcred conference)
• The Library Stuff: two articles and a cluster of five blog entries worth reading and thinking about
• Trends & Quick Takes: 11 items in all, including a different look at Pew's blogging numbers, patent holding companies, an OPAC wiki, and lots more.
• Perspective: Wikipedia and Worth [Revisited]--how one little op-ed draws a book's worth of flames and comments!
• The Good Stuff--seven articles worth reading
• Session Reports from ALA Midwinter 2005: ACRL Current Topics Discussion Group and ALCTS Electronic Resources Interest Group

Additional session reports from ALA Midwinter are still invited, as are other program and conference reports. See the reporting guidelines.

For those of you also on the Topica CICAL Alert list...well, the Spring 2003 issue was a good one too. Sorry about the fumblefingered URL!

I just looked at the ads running to the left of this journal. First said, "What the hey?"

Then came the shock of recognition: To a bunch of online supply houses, "ALA" stands for Alpha lipoic acid, whatever that might be.

Heck, Blake, if you make a buck from ridiculous acronym linkages, more power to you. Don't think I'll be ordering any of that stuff, though.

In my "this isn't a weblog" tradition of truly random-but-interesting postings, here's one.

There's a weblog with a daily "new and improbable research" posting, courtesy of the Annals of Improbable Research, the "science humor" magazine that administers the Ig Nobel awards and is a successor to the late, lamented Journal of Irreproducible Results. (The site, Hot AIR, also lets you subscribe to the pure-text monthly mini-AIR, if you're so inclined.)

If you've heard of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists(TM), that's an ongoing AIR project.

Anyway ("Get on with it!"), one recent entry was about a psychologist (I believe) who has a 55-page curriculum vitae. The sheer length of the CV was repeated: 55 pages!

So, being in a silly mood, I clicked on the link and browsed through the CV. It's not every scientist who lists "Most productive X, 1990-1994" as one of their honors--or maybe it is. Nor, I suspect, do all prolific academics include separate lists of all the journals they've published in, with symbols denoting high-impact journals...

What I noticed right off the bat was that this academic provides each bibliographic citation in full form, repeating their name in each case, in fairly large type, and with plenty of white space before each citation--in a nice, single-column format with good wide margins.

Which is great--particularly if you are prolific (which this academic certainly is!) and want to make a point of just how prolific you are, based on the weight of your CV.

It also suggested to me that, in the unlikely event that I was ever going to go for an academic career (which, given my grand total of one BA and no higher degrees, even if the BA is from the world's second best university, seems like a pretty absurd goal), I've been doing it exactly the wrong way.

Which is to say that, if someone really wants to review my CV, I want to conserve paper--and the current version is 17 pages long. I get there by:

• Using a two-column format for speeches and publications
• Using small type for speeches and publications
• Only including author information for multi-author publications
• Leaving no vertical space at all before citations, using a hanging-indent style to separate them
• For multiple publications within a single periodical in a single year, stacking the citations to minimize redundant information.
• Leaving out all "internal" work, even if it results in generally-available publications (that is, I don't include any articles for RLG Focus and the like, much less internal committee reports). (Confession: That's more because I've never kept records, particularly from UC days, tnan it is nonexistent modesty.)

How long would this CV be if I adopted this prolific academic's conventions? I have no intention of trying--that would be work--but I'd guess at least 34 pages. No additional info, but a lot of additional paper.

On the other hand, I could do a properly academic CV, listing only book chapters, scholarly monographs, and refereed papers. That would be real short! (I think there have been three refereed papers, certainly no scholarly monographs, and no chapters in what I'd consider to be scholarly monographs.) Two pages would probably do nicely. I'm persistent; I'm not scholarly.

Now, as to a resume: I have no idea how to prepare an appropriate one. If I ever go job hunting, I'll have to beg for help.

This isn't my informal notes on sessions during the ALA Midwinter Meeting. (As soon as I finish this, I start writing those for internal use; if there's enough that I think are worth spreading further, I'll include them in a forthcoming C&I.)

Instead, it's a substitute for the Bibs & Blather about the weather and overall situation I did after Philadelphia--since I don't plan to do such a whine this time around.

First, the weather. Cold by my wimpy California-native standards: Certainly. How could it not be? Too cold, as it was the last day I was in Philly: No. The only time it got down to the teens was the day I was leaving, and at 4 a.m. I was too numb to feel it on the short walk to a cab.

That's partly because you could get to and from most meeting-heavy hotels and the conference center without going outside. I was at the Sheraton (good room, great bed, the less said about the restaurant the better, lounge prices as ludicrously high as I expected--somehow, paying the price of a bottle for a glass still bothers me just a little); you couldn't get closer to Hynes without camping out in Prudential Center, but the Westin and Marriott were also accessible in shirt sleeves if you were so inclined.

It's also partly because it just didn't get quite as cold and windy on most days. I found myself forgetting a cap and sometimes not bothering to put on gloves and scarf. That included some 4-6 block walks--and I didn't do any 3-mile hikes. As with Juneau in March (during AkLA in 2003), this was tolerable. (The jetways when changing planes in Chicago may have been the coldest part.)

I hear it was one of the better-attended Midwinters in recent years (13,000?), and that sounds about right. Our booth staff say it was active; it felt busy but not overwhelmingly crowded; most sessions I attended had more people than I would have expected.

It was also one of the most interesting Midwinters I've been to in years--and I went to more non-LITA discussions than usual. (I'm not suggesting a connection; I don't think there is one.) I believe that any attempt to curtail focused discussions further than the current "no programs except ALA-wide sponsored events" would be a serious mistake; there was a lot of vitality at this session in addition to 2500+ committee meetings, and I believe that's good for the field.

Finally, for now, a couple of words about socializing and introverts like me. I've learned not to reception-hop (it's hard on the system); this time I went to one reception where I knew I'd be at home on Saturday (ALA Publishing), one on Sunday (YBP Library Services), and that was it--but I also spent way more time than I'd planned with the PLA Bloggers. The reason that 1 hour turned into 3 was simple: They're really interesting people, most of whom I'd never met before. It was worth the effort to come out of my shell; keeping up with, being informed by, and enjoying the company of yet another younger generation was a big part of what made Midwinter great. [No, Steven C., I'm not going to use the o-word. Y'all made me feel welcome and younger.]

Just a reminder for those who're about to head off to Boston (or who already have), and particularly for those new to the field and hoping for "more information on the programs at ALA."

With one exception--the ALA President's Program--there are no formal programs as part of the ALA Midwinter Meeting. Note that final word: By ALA policy, Midwinter is a business meeting, not a conference.

Sure, there are loads of educational opportunities, in addition to exhibits and a couple of thousand committee meetings: Dozens (hundreds?) of discussion groups (or, within LITA, interest groups); various sessions held by affiliated and unaffiliated organizations (e.g., NISO's standards briefings, OCLC's lunch, RLG's various information sessions...); various other presentations arranged by ALA offices; etc., etc..

But formal programs with set speakers and full descriptions in the official program? Not allowed--again, except for the ALA President.

I would note that, IIRC, one candidate is pushing to make Midwinter even more of a "pure business" meeting, pledging to not hold a President's Program at Midwinter and to try to forbid interest groups and discussion groups from holding themed discussions. If I do recall correctly, it's fair to say that this candidate won't be getting my vote. I think that goes way too far. (I may have misunderstood some stuff that was going on, and this may have nothing to do with any ALA candidate, so I'm not naming names.)

For some of us, Midwinter is a more valuable meeting than Annual, but it's valuable for different reasons. Trying to shut it down or make it nothing but a bunch of commitee meetings would be a really bad idea, IMNSHO, as well as being a significant financial hit for the organization.

Nonetheless, if your primary interest is formal, organized programs where you know the speakers and topics in advance, then--other than the extra-cost preconferences and workshops--Midwinter isn't the place to be.

Cites & Insights 5.2, Midwinter 2005, is now available for downloading.

This 22-page issue (PDF as always), with a fresh new look (dating back to 1919), includes:

• Trends & Quick Takes: The hazy crystal ball, a roundup of projections regarding technology (including library tech trends), plus a few quicker takes
• Bibs & Blather: Why the Midwinter Issue? Why this issue's ready now--and some notes about the format changes. (My alma mater has great taste in typefaces!)
• Interesting & Peculiar Products: DualDisc (DVD Audio reborn?), more on the OQO, "iPod's big brother," and more.
• Looking Back 2: Trends and Perspectives, 2001-2004: The rest of the retrospective, covering the first 56 issues of Cites & Insights

Noting the story on Will Eisner's passing, I'll mention another passing in the past couple of days that seems to have drawn a lot less attention:
Frank Kelly Freas, one of the great science fiction illustrators.

Sadly (in my opinion), the press coverage that I have seen--a brief obit in the local paper--focused more on his role in creating/refining Alfred E. Neuman as a cover illustrator for Mad Magazine in the late 50s/early 60s than on his ten Hugos (20 nominations) and stunning body of science fiction (and fantasy) illustration, and his work for NASA.

Here's the posting I just sent to four lists, and will also be suggesting as a story--but here, it has HTML!

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large, a free web-based journal of libraries, policy, technology and media, is now accepting and inviting program and conference reports in areas appropriate for C&I's readership.

It's a chance to be published in a widely-read venue, with as little editing as possible, with a byline--and in a timely fashion (aiming for 2 to 6 weeks between receipt of reports and publication).

Full details are at the Reporting page of C&I

If you're not a C&I reader, take a look at one or two issues (http://cites.boisestate.edu/ will lead you to all of them); it never makes sense to contribute to a publication you don't read or understand!

And if you're unsure whether a program or conference is "appropriate," or have questions that the site doesn't answer, just drop me a line: wcc@notes.rlg.org

Thanks--and I look forward to seeing, editing, and publishing your reports!

Subrandom? Well, heck, if you thought this was a great year, more power to ya! (And throw a chunk of that greatness at Doctors Without Borders, American Red Cross International Response Fund, or something of the kind!)

Minor thoughts and discoveries on a slow morning, the day after polishing off a big time-sensitive "own time" project...

• I was going to chime in on the "countdown" (you know, ten random things about me and so on) thread on AshtabulaGuy's journal--and discovered that I couldn't do it. The travel part would be easy (or not: the Marquesas islands, the fjords of Norway, the fjords of New Zealand, the Shetland Islands, the wonderful Bardo museum outside Tunis, the nature preserves of Costa Rica, Venice, Bora Bora, Morocco...hmm, it's hard to come up with the right nine. I don't particularly consider myself well-traveled, but when my wife and I say "we've been seeing the world by cruise ship," we do mean seeing the world, not the Caribbean).
  But some of the others are just too close to home for a tired old shy type like me. And, since I've managed to get this far by not having specific goals and plans, the list of "things I want to do before I die" might be tricky. So it goes.
• I am reminded frequently just how lucky we are to live where we do. Sure, the housing's expensive. But when I'm tempted to complain about a rainy day or the temperature dropping to the low 50s at the end of December; when we revel in the quality of ingredients and cooking in even the most modest restaurants in town (e.g., the sports bar down the road we go to for $2 bowls of freshly-made soup and $4 to $6 specials); when we look at general social attitudes...well, this area looks better and better as an eventual retirement location, if we can't swing Hawaii.
• In another dire warning about how badly U.S. people do in savings, I'm reminded again that those are trick figures: Did you know that mutual funds and other market investments (including, I believe, bond funds) don't count as savings? Not that we couldn't do a lot better, but...
• It's odd to find myself an "independent" in so many policy/library issues, e.g. open access, the "information commons," ebooks (yes, I am an independent, even if some jackasses choose "Luddite" or "Darth Vader" as a preferable term), and others. Maybe I'm proud that I'm becoming more aware of subtleties and distinctions as I get older--or maybe I'm just inherently wishy-washy. I do know this: The more I know about a policy issue, the less likely I am to take a black-and-white view of it.
• While my list of people I just can't deal with has shrunk (down to 2!), the revelation that some people just aren't worth the time to argue/discuss with has been an enormously liberating one. And for those who put me in that category, you're certainly entitled.
• Re LISnews and "library news" sources: Yes, I check LISnews. I rarely contribute (other than my own stuff). Maybe that's because "library news" as such doesn't usually interest me very much. What interests me are the range of developments that affect libraries, and those either don't fall into the "news" category or are somewhat outside the traditional library press. And, of course, I believe that the "added value" in Cites & Insights is that I'm synthesizing stuff, much of which is outside the traditional library literature, and trying to suggest connections to library issues.
• Regarding the one "controversial" stance I took in C&I this year: I'm a little sad that it apparently drove away one long-time reader. I'm not at all sorry I took the stance, and I stand behind every word in the piece. Reading about the testimony of those on one side of the current court case pushes me further in that direction, if anything.

And that's enough for this last day of the year. Stay off the roads tonight (whether you're drinking or not!), stay warm, and may your next year be better than this one was--no matter how good this one was for you.

Here's the formal announcement:

Cites & Insights 5.1 (January 2005), sponsored by YBP Library Services,
is now available for downloading.

The 22-page issue (PDF as always) includes:

• Bibs & Blather: Sponsorship, notes on conference blogging, and why I'm
  not commenting on Google Library.
• Perspective: The End of the Experiment (and the beginning of the
  journal). A transitional note.
• Library Access to Scholarship: Notes on NIH's plans, the stalled
  situation in the UK, and a few short pieces.
• Feedback: Your Insights: Ross E. Riker comments on "What's Wrong With
  You People?"
• Perspective: Looking Back 1: Trends & Products, 1995-2000: An excerpt
  (and comment) from each issue of "Trailing Edge Notes" and "Crawford's
  Corner."
• Copyright Currents: What didn't happen in Congress' lame-duck session,
  plus notes on DRM developments and the RIAA.

I'm looking for program and conference reporters. See
http://cites.boisestate.edu/reporting.htm for details.

The title and subtitle have not changed. I'm adding a tagline in next issue's banner, and changing the defining comment in the masthead (that's already happened), but nothing that would affect cataloging (Gaia forfend!) has changed or will change. The change from "zine" to "journal" is pragmatic--all the more so as I'm inviting other participants, making it even less of a zine.