If you haven’t yet grabbed a copy (or even if you have) of Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples and/or Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples by walt Crawford, you might want to check out a really neat series of posts over on Walt’s Blog. Walt “does the quintiles” providing information on the quintiles for each metric within each book. Up first, the public libraries:
Blogging libraries: Doing the quintiles
Public library blogs: Illustrations per post – the final quintile
Public library blogs: Number of illustrations
Public library blogs: Comments per post
Public library blogs: Comments on posts
Public library blogs: Average post length
Public library blogs: Total words
Public library blogs: Posting frequency
Soon: The quintiles for the academic library blogs. Same metrics, different results.
And if you have grabbed a copy…
Then you’re one of the chosen few (64 to date, in the eight months it’s been out, including at least 20 in libraries [Worldcat.org], which is where I’d expect most copies to be).
Thanks for the post, Blake.
The academic quintiles should start today. (An ultra-exclusive group of 17 have copies of that book, but it’s only been out since January.)
The academic text
Eventually that will be 18. I had to choose between buying a text on Greenstone and that. I chose your book and will wait to get a Greenstone text.
Now I have to wait a couple weeks for such to arrive after manufacturing and shipping. I just got the order put in. POD takes time and Media Mail is not exactly the quickest way for things to ship.
I should note that the audio engineer for LISTen actually created an art book which can be found also on Lulu at http://www.lulu.com/content/2056656. The book has been a hit with some art faculty in Cleveland, I have learned. The artist whose works are featured also likes the way things were portrayed.
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Stephen Kellat, Host, LISTen
Thanks
In my experience, actually, Media Mail seems to be faster than any reasonable alternative (e.g., UPS)–but I suspect that depends heavily on the local post office. (Mountain View has a GREAT post office.) But you’re right: it will take a week or two.
I’ve wondered about Lulu’s art books. I assume they do as good a job with coated-paper full-color as they do with regular text (and they do a fine job on full-color covers), but haven’t tried any.
It is a very faithful reproduction
We got nervous here prior to releasing that book on Lulu. After we bought a proof, we saw how nice it looked. That text was intended to be a trade paperback rather than a thick tome to go on a shelf and be forgotten.
The biggest issue is what the content producer puts into Lulu. Lulu merely produces copies of what it is given. The input into the system still determines the output to a large extent.
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Stephen Kellat, Host, LISTen
As it should be
Well, yes: I’ve been satisfied that what you get out of Lulu is what the author puts in–albeit on better paper than I’d be able to provide on my own. I just haven’t seen the full-color books, but presumed they were equally high quality. It is, indeed, a little nerve-wracking to wait for the first proof copy…
But better than getting your box of author’s copy of a regular trade paperback and finding out that they’ve screwed up the cover on an entire print run. Hasn’t happened to me, but has notoriously happened to one of the bright lights of librarianship (the printer’s fault, not the publisher’s, and they redid it).