Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Cites & Insights 10:2 available

Cites & Insights 10:2 (February 2010) is now available.


The 32-page issue (PDF as usual, with individual articles available in HTML, using the links below) includes:

T&QT Perspective: Trends & Forecasts (pp. 1-16)


A heaping helping of trends, forecasts, ghosts of trends past--and deathspotting. (No, this roundup does not include the Midwinter LITA Top Tech Trends--or any other trendiness actually appearing in 2010. Maybe later.)

Perspective: Music, Silence & Metrics (pp. 16-25)


Are the loudness wars mushing up your music? Maybe so. I report on the problem with excessive dynamic compression, some steps being taken to identify and combat the desire of producers to MAKE IT ALL LOUD, and two sets of real-world metrics. If you ever really listen to music, you should care about this issue.

Offtopic Perspective: Mystery Collection Part 1 (pp. 25-32)


Notes on the first six discs in the 250-movie, 60-disc Mystery Collection, including half a dozen Bulldog Drummond flicks, three Dick Tracy--and eight Sherlock Holmes. Here's a mystery: Will I keep doing C&I long enough to review this entire set? That would take us into Volume 14...

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Cites ON a Plane 2010: Pre-Midwinter non-issue available

That's right--here's another non-issue for your reading pleasure to and from Midwinter, with (almost) no new material:

Cites ON a Plane 2010


Stuff That Originally Appeared in Cites & Insights - 50 pages
Perspectives ON...


Note: The links in the bullets are to the original essays, all of which appeared in 2007 and 2008. The essays in Cites ON a Plane 2010 (PDF as usual) have had URLs removed and in some cases been trimmed slightly to make them fit.

Caveats and New Material


While 25 sheets (50 pages, printed duplex) is nothing compared to the paper you'll cope with during Midwinter, this non-issue is primarily intended for ereading. It has bookmarks for the essays and subheadings (but no table of contents), and it does reflow (although how well it reflows...well, that's up to your PDF reader). It supports Adobe Reader's text-to-speech capabilities (strange as they are).

But then, 25 sheets isn't all that much...

This non-issue will disappear on or about January 19, 2010. It might be included in the book version of Volume 10, but it might not (50 pages is a significant chunk of an already-thick volume).

The new material in the issue consists of an introduction and one, count it, one paragraph added as a postscript to the first essay. Here they are, for those of you who wonder but who really aren't planning to download the whole issue:

Ceci N’est Pas Une Édition


Cue Magritte, not spinning in his grave. This is not an ejournal. More precisely, this is not an issue of Cites & Insights and doesn’t carry an ISSN, proper date, volume and issue number, or masthead.

Other than this introduction, footers citing the source of each essay and one very brief update, this is entirely selected reprints—on the theme of the second word of the issue’s non-title: ON.

No table of contents. No HTML separates (those are all readily available). Just a chunk of plane reading (and I’ll try to make sure the PDF is reflowable, although I don’t have a lot of control over that)—albeit in the new typography.

The non-issue will disappear as soon as I return from the 2010 ALA Midwinter Meeting. It may be included in the trade paperback Cites & Insights 10: 2010.

Why? Well, Cites on a Plane 2007 seemed to get a lot of downloads, so I thought I’d try it again. Total prep time was under three hours, so…

Postscript to the first essay (On Conferences in a Time of Limits):


“I’d be surprised if ALA Midwinter and ALA Annual don’t shrink somewhat, although ALA Annual attendance varies so widely that ‘shrink’ may be hard to measure.” Count me surprised by record attendance at the 2009 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. I believe we’ll continue to be in a time of limits, and it’s certainly true that some conferences have shrunk or disappeared. Otherwise, it’s too early to comment.


When will the next real issue emerge? Shortly after Midwinter. Probably very shortly after Midwinter.