Sunday, November 29, 2009

But Still They Blog now available

But Still They Blog
But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009 is now available--at a special early-bird price through the end of the ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting (January 19, 2010 or thereabouts).

This 319-page trade paperback provides a sweeping look at liblogs (blogs created by library people but, generally, not blogs that are official library publications), with trends, facts, figures, graphs, and profiles for each of 521 liblogs.

What's Here


The liblogs included here (you'll find the whole list in the sidebar) appear because:

  • They're in English.

  • They began in December 2008 or earlier.

  • They have at least some relevance to libraries and librarianship, although that point gets stretched in a few cases.

  • They had at least three posts during March-May 2007, March-May 2008, or March-May 2009.

  • They were available on the web in the summer of 2009 (even if they'd ceased).

  • They were known to me--either because they were listed in the LISWiki list of blogs or the LISZen list of blogs or because they showed up in one of a hundred or so blogrolls that I checked.

  • They were "visible"--in this case, having a Google Page Rank of at least 4 in either early fall 2008 or early summer 2009.


That final criterion was used deliberately to narrow this study's focus slightly from the 2007-2008 study (which continues to be available, The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look.). I'd hoped to get down to 400-450 blogs, making analysis easier and the book shorter. I didn't manage to do quite that well, although the list of 607 blogs from the earlier study did come down to 480 (there are 41 new blogs).
If you're wondering: Only 50 liblogs were eliminated because of their low visibility. The others were either non-English [19], defunct (that is, no longer viewable in August 2009 and with no clear trail to a new URL or blogname) [15, plus three that now require passwords], or didn't have at least three posts in March-May 2007 or March-May 2008 [37]...or, in three cases, really didn't have any posts that had anything at all to do with libraries.

What's Discussed


I'll be doing a series of posts and articles over the next few (many?) months noting some of the metrics and offering some of the content, but here's the gist:

  • The first chapter discusses the age of liblogs, blogging platform used, and currency as of September 30, 2009 (how long it had been since the most recent post).

  • The second and third chapters discuss posting frequency and changes in frequency.

  • Chapter 4 considers the length of blogs--and, more interesting, the average length of posts in blogs (and the changes in both of those metrics).

  • Chapter 5 deals with conversations: Number of comments per blog and per post and changes in conversational intensity (number of comments per post).

  • Chapter 6 considers standouts and standards--blogs that score consistently across multiple metrics or multiple years.

  • Chapters 7 and 8 consider patterns of change across three key metrics (frequency, average post length, average comments per post) for 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 respectively.

  • Chapter 9 considers correlations and averages, including averages for a very large subset of the liblog universe that might be considered "typical."

  • Chapter 10 considers why people blog and how blogs change.

  • Chapter 11 discusses stopping and pausing.

  • Unlike last year's study, this book distributes blog profiles throughout the chapters, typically including a profile when the blog shows up as noteworthy in one particular dimension. The final chapter includes profiles for "the rest of the liblogs"--50-odd blogs, some of which are indeed noteworthy for content but don't happen to stand out in metrics.

  • There's an index of blogs (with all mentions) and bloggers (only when they're actually named). The page on which the blog is profiled appears in boldface in the index.


Special Pricing


From now until the end of the ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting (roughly January 19, 2010), But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009 will be available for a special introductory price:

  • The 6x9 trade paperback costs $29.50. (Lulu Media Mail shipping is now a flat $3.99 for all paperbacks, at least in the U.S.)

  • The book is also available as a downloadable PDF for $20.00


Those prices will go up $5.50 and $5 respectively after Midwinter.

Reduced Prices on C&I Books


Prices on all other Cites & Insights Books have also been reduced, effective immediately:

posted by waltc at 12:08 PM