Cites & Insights: Index toVolume 7 available--but also a print version

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,

• Library 2.0 for Short Attention Spans

or what you get when you ask Word XP for a 10% summary of the Library 2.0 special issue and half-issue followup essay.

Note: If there's enough interest in having other print volumes of C&I, I'd certainly consider it, probably working back from Volume 6, possibly including a special prefatory essay in each volume.

What's "enough interest"? Indirectly, if Volume 7 sells at least 50 copies over the next six months, I'll take that as indication of some interest. Directly, if ten people send me email or leave comments saying "sure, I'd buy Volume X for $35," I'll consider it--but not until after Midwinter 2008.

And if nobody buys Volume 7 at all? Well, here's the truth: I need a bound copy of each complete volume. The only place I know of to get a set of printouts bound at a reasonable price no longer offers perfect binding, and I'm not that fond of the Velobind results (although it's better than spiral binding). When I added up the total cost of reprinting the issues on good paper, even with the relatively low per-page costs of my new Canon MP610, plus Velobind costs...it turns out that, at my lower author's price, the Lulu perfectbound paperback won't cost me much more and should look a whole lot better and be easier to use in future years. If some of you find the book version worthwhile, so much the better.

Cites & Insights 7:13 Available

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.

Note: While this is the final issue for 2007, it is not the end of Volume 7. There will be the usual volume index and title sheet, for those who might be binding C&I as a print publication. When? Hard to say; see Walt at Random for reasons why.