LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Cites & Insights 8:6, June 2008, is now available for downloading.

The 28-page issue is PDF, as usual, but (since My Back Pages is missing) all segments are also available as HTML separates at the Cites & Insights homepage.

The issue consists of:

• Bibs & Blather: Quick Updates: Limits and Slouching - A brief reminder of a timely essay, and a progress report about where things stand on the possible 2007-2008 liblogs project.
• Perspective: On Wikis and Transparency - Transparency is great, as long as you're aware of it. MediaWiki makes your wiki (and most other wikis) very transparent to outsiders. A good thing, but do pay attention.
• ©3 Perspective: DRM and ISP Surcharges - Comments on the slow death (?) of DRM for purchased audio downloads--and the latest plan to assure Big Media of ongoing profitability.
• Perspective: On Semantics, Reality, Learning and Rockstars - "Reality" in this case: When is a book not a book? Discover the connections between these four mini-perspectives and win yourself a virtual candy bar!

Cites & Insights 8:5, May 2008, is now available for downloading.

This 28-page issue (PDF as usual, but each essay is also available in HTML form) includes:

• Bibs & Blather: One Book at a Time - A year's experience with self-publishing.
• Perspective: Offtopic or Not? Mill Creek & Libraries - Do 50-movie (and 100-movie and 250-movie!) packs make sense for public libraries?
• Making it Work Perspective: Changes in Liblogs: Slouching Toward a Study - How have 227 liblogs changed between 2005/2006 and 2007? Notes toward a possible study of 500+ blogs.
• Net Media Perspective: Citizendium and the Writer's Voice - Notes on Citizendium and how it's developing--and why I disagree with one fundamental tenet of both Wikipedia and Citizendium.
• Offtopic Perspective: 50 Movie Hollywood Legends, Part 1 - From the sublime to the ridiculous, from Good News to The Fat Spy, two dozen movies with big-name stars.
• Retrospective: Pointing with Pride, Part 1 - Looking back at "the 1s"--the first, 11th...91st issues of C&I.

Cites & Insights 8:4, April 2008, is now available for downloading.

The 28-page issue is PDF as usual (or not as usual--I'm now using Word 2007 and Microsoft's free PDF-output download), but HTML separates are available from the C&I homepage

The issue includes:

• Bibs & Blather - a very short introduction to the issue and what got left out.
• Library Access to Scholarship - Harvard and Institutional Repositories
• Old Media/New Media Perspective: Thinking About Kindle and Ebooks
• Making it Work Perspective: TechNos and TechMusts

By the way, if you know anyone who's been getting issue alerts via email, let them know they need to sign up for C&I Updates or Walt at Random; Topica no longer accepts my posts (and entirely lacks help/contact info).

Cites & Insights 8:3 (March 2008) is now available.

This is the centenary issue--#100--a nice round number that I'm a little
surprised to have achieved. Naturally, that milestone affects the issue--but not as you might expect.

The issue's long--36 pages--and PDF as usual, although all but the last section (My Back Pages, always exclusively PDF) are also available in HTML form from the home page.

This issue includes:

• 100 Reasons for Doing Cites & Insights - an introduction
• Trends & Quick Takes - ink costs, life without software, the significance of good sound and more: six trends, ten quicker takes.
• Perspective: Tracking High-Def Discs - including a prediction for the
  likely winner in the format war.
• Making it Work - the biggie: 19 pages devoted to aspects of making libraries better, including reading (reader's advisory, slow reading, etc.), philosophy, hassles, balance, and "Library 2.0 debased."
• Interesting & Peculiar Products - flashy labels, green PCs, supercheap laptops and more: 19 items in all.
• My Back Pages - 16 mini-perspectives, none of them terribly serious.

Cites & Insights 8:2 (February 2008) is now available.

The 24-page issue (PDF as always, but all articles are also available as HTML separates) includes:

• Announcing Academic Library Blogs: 231 Examples - The latest from Cites & Insights Books, a $29.50 289-page paperback that complements Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples. Included are brief notes, the list of academic institutions represented, examples of blog coverage for both books, the announcement of $20 PDF downloads for those who just can't stand print books--and a few notes on the status of Cites & Insights Books.
• Trends & Quick Takes: Trends and Forecasts - Time to look at some pundits' scorecards and forecasts, along with some of the trends from the LITA Top Tech Trendspotters, with some of my comments interleaved.
• Bibs & Blather: Midwinter Musings - Notes on a much warmer Philadelphia Midwinter, along with a special essay based on an odd but not unique occurrence: "Leadership and Initiative: The Case of the Empty Chairs."

For perhaps the first time, the January issue that begins a new volume of Cites & Insights is available in...January.

Cites & Insights 8:1 (January 2008) is now available for downloading

The 30-page issue (PDF as always, but HTML separates for each essay are also available) includes:

• Announcing Cites & Insights volumes 6 and 7 in book form

Cites & Insights Books at Lulu.com (http://lulu.com/waltcrawford/) now offers these volumes in paperback form, $29.50 each, with a bonus in each case (and full-color cover photos). The bonus for Volume 7 is Cites on a Plane, the phantom issue from January 2007. For Volume 6, it's a brief preface including "where are they now?" notes on liblogs studied in 2005 and 2006 that have either moved, changed names or apparently gone silent.

• Bibs & Blather: Thinking about Leadership

Some thoughts after a few weeks working on the PALINET Leadership Network, including my current take on "Who's a leader?"

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

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.

Cites & Insights 7:12, November 2007, is now available for downloading.
The 28-page issue is PDF as usual (HTML versions of most essays are available at the home page). It includes:

• Bibs & Blather
  

Thanks! - A note about my new position as Director and Managing Editor of the PALINET Leadership Network (and why there was no liblog extravaganza this year).

• Following Up & Feedback

A tiny section correcting two name problems and listing the publishers who've disowned PRISM.

• (C)3: Balancing Rights

"Sometimes They're Guilty," a review of and commentary on the first RIAA suit to go to jury trial.

• Trends & Quick Takes

Nine trends (including a librarian winner of the Ig Nobel for Literature--and no, the article isn't at all a joke) and eight quicker takes.

• Net Media: Thinking about Blogging

The biggest chunk of this issue--ten thousand words considering general blogging issues and library-specific blogging issues from October 2006 until recently.

• Interesting & Peculiar Products

Six products (including a variety of views on a certain high-profile Apple product that appears to excel at everything except its supposed primary function) and a dozen Editors' Choices and other winners.

• My Back Pages

Six snarky little essays. As always, this one's only available as part of the whole issue.

I've revised the Word template for the HTML essays to be a little more "printlike." If you find that it doesn't work for you, let me know: I might change it back. If you don't notice a difference, that's OK too.

Cites & Insights 7:11 (October 2007) is now available.

The 30-page issue (PDF as usual, but HTML separates of each essay are
also available) includes:

• Announcing Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples - a new book that every public library (and library school) should own.
• Bibs & Blather - Incidents and Sideshows: the accidental theme of most of this issue.
• Library Access to Scholarship - PRISM: Enough rope? (Will AAP come to regret the new "partnership"?)
• ©3: Balancing Rights - SFWA Takedowns: A Copyright Incident
• Making it Work - Library 2.0 discussions (and another sideshow)
• Net Media Perspective: Tracking High-Def Discs - The Battle Continues

Cites & Insights 7:10, September 2007, is now available for downloading.

The 26-page issue, PDF as usual with most essays also available in HTML form, includes:

• Bibs & Blather - A new book is on its way, Public Library Blogs: 252 examples.
• Making it Work - Successes and failures in changing libraries
• Following Up and Feedback - Extending the conversation for eight or nine previous essays, including substantial new sections adding to "On the Literature" and "On Authority, Worth and Linkbaiting."
• Net Media: Wikipedia and Other Wiki Notes
• Trends & Quick Takes - Four trends (including notes on Second Life) and seven quicker takes
• Interesting & Peculiar Products - Two products and seven editors' choice/roundup notes.
• My Back Pages - six mini-rants.

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 7:9 (August 2007) is now available for downloading.
It's an odd issue: Four somewhat overlapping Perspectives and an Offtopic Perspective.
The 26-page issue (PDF as usual, but each Perspective is available as an html separate from the homepage) includes:

• Perspective: On the Literature

I believe that gray literature--blogs, this ejournal, a few similar publications and some lists--represents the most compelling and worthwhile literature in the library field today...

• Perspective: On Authority, Worth and Linkbaiting

Yes, it's the dreaded Britannica Blog essay. Yes, I'm late to the game. No, this is not primarily about Michael Gorman, although his blogging (his blogging!) plays a crucial role in the discussion. There will be no fisking here, tempting though it might be—either of Gorman's posts or of some over-the-top responses...

• Perspective: On Disagreement and Discussion

Are librarians willing to disagree with one another?
What a silly question. Of course we are (I'm counting myself as a librarian for this discussion). Consider some disagreements I've chronicled and taken part in here and in my blog, just for starters....

• Perspective: On Ethics and Transparency

How much do you need to know about who I am and how I deal with issues, people and organizations that might relate to my writing? What do you need to know about my ethical standards? How much disclosure assures adequate transparency?

• Offtopic Perspective: 50-Movie Classic Musicals, Part 2 - including Rhythm and Blues Review, Till the Clouds Roll By, All-American Co-Ed, Hi-De-Ho (an hour of Cab Calloway: how can you go wrong?), Royal Wedding...and a whole bunch more.

Not included in this issue: Perspective: On Clever Names for Perspectives. And the Bibs & Blather has appeared instead as an absurdly long post at Walt at Random.

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large v.7, issue 8 (July 2007) is now available for downloading.

The 26-page issue (PDF as usual, but essays other than My Back Pages are available in HTML form) includes:

• Perspective: Pew Do You Trust? - "Pew Internet & American Life owes me an apology."
• ©1: Term and Extent - PermaCopyright and other extremes, including my Modest Proposal for permanent copyright for truly original works
• Making it Work - Commentary on personal balance and library service balance.
• Interesting & Peculiar Products - Six products (and product groups) and another six Editors' Choices/Best Buy roundups.
• Library Access to Scholarship - more of the "opposition literature" and notes about money.
• My Back Pages - seven snarky little mini-essays, exclusive to whole-issue readers.

Two quick notes: This was all written before ALA Annual (but with some touchup work and copyfitting done this week)--and there's nary a word about my own future plans.

In plenty of time for ALA Annual--but also for those of you not going to DC in a few weeks, Cites on a Plane 2: This Time It's for Keeps is now available for downloading.
This 44-page issue is Cites & Insights 7:7, Mid-June 2007. (The seventh issue of the seventh volume: A lucky issue?)
Like COAP, COAP2 is much larger than a regular issue and is largely composed of old material.
Unlike COAP, COAP2:

• Includes a fair amount of new material, something like 35-40% of the issue.
• Will stick around permanently (or as permanently as C&I itself)
• Has a single theme!

Indeed, it's a "conference issue"--all about Conferences & Speaking.
After a brief introduction, the issue includes four sections:

• Coping with Conferences
• State Conferences and Others
• The Speaking Life
• Conference-Speaker Arrangements

There is an HTML version available from the home page--but please do not print out the HTML version in full, as it will use a lot more paper (58 pages as compared to 44 pages for the PDF, in an informal FireFox print-preview test).

I had planned to repost my Walt at Random post here--the one about my availability for a new position after September 30, 2007.
Blake beat me to it, for which I thank him.
If you're wondering about juicy details about the termination: Don't. There aren't any. I continue to believe OCLC's doing interesting things, and would be happy to be part of those efforts if an appropriate job was available.

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large v.7 issue 6 (June 2007) is now available for downloading.
The 26-page issue (PDF as usual, but HTML separates for each essay are available from the home page)
includes:

• Bibs & Blather - On Being Wrong (and more)
• Making it Work - library resources, innovation, futures and more
• Trends & Quick Takes - three essays and six quicker takes
• Net Media Perspective: Civility and Codes: A Blogging Morality Play

Given how much I've heard OpenOffice 2 touted as a much better way to produce good HTML than nasty ol' Microsoft Word, I've included an experiment on the home page:
The hyperlinks are, as usual, to Word 2000 "filtered HTML" files. But there's another set of hyperlinks below, to OpenOffice 2 HTML files generated from the same Word file.
It's not really a fair comparison--after all, Word 2000 is two generations and five years out of date, where OpenOffice 2 is the absolutely newest version as of mid-April--but I'd be interested in the comments of HTML gurus (send 'em to waltcrawford@gmail.com) There will probably be a Walt at Random post later...

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 7:5 (May 2007) is now available for downloading.

The 26-page issue is PDF as usual, but you can get HTML separates of most essays from the home page.

NOTE: If you have any websites with links to the old C&I site, please change them. That site will disappear fairly soon.

This issue includes:

• Bibs & Blather - On being cited, introducing a new section, and a belated followup from Richard Entlich (with apology)
• Old Media/New Media - Updates on the health of four old media
• Offtopic Perspective: 50-Movie Classic Musicals, Part 1 - no West Side Story, but Reet, Petite and Gone is hot stuff.
• Interesting & Peculiar Products - four segments plus 15 roundups in seven categories in the new "Editors Choices and Best Buys" segment (replacing "PC Progress")
• Making it Work - A new section, continuing the conversations about libraries, social software in libraries, balance... (and incorporating The Library Stuff)
• Net Media: The High-Def Disc Saga Continues - still not time for most libraries to start buying Blu-ray or HD DVD, but lots of news.
• My Back Pages - six grumpy little essays.

And don't forget to visit Cites & Insights Books to buy Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change.

A little Friday grump here rather than on my main blog...

I've been seeing various posts (and a really pointless video) about Shutdown Day, which is tomorrow.

I use my PC at home for about an hour a day most days. Sometimes less. More on some weekend days. Some days not at all. When I travel--on business or pleasure--I do so without PC, notebook, PDA, smart phone...

Can I do without the PC for a full Saturday? Sure. Since I've just published a book and an issue of C&I, it would be easy.

Will I? Probably not. I don't see any plausible motive to leave the PC off all day. There's nothing on the "movement's" webpage that suggests any social good to doing without computers for a day. Other things take precedence over PC tasks on weekends anyway. Always have unless I'm actually on deadline (which I try to avoid at home).

Here's an idea: Do without electric lights for 24 hours. I've done that, the day of the '89 earthquake if no other. Or let's make it easy: Do without power tools for 24 hours. Do without, oh, I don't know, adjectives for 24 hours. (That might be tough.)

I do see the point behind the annual TV "boycott" move--but, even though we don't watch much TV, I've never participated. PCs? They can be time-wasters, but that's not inherent. Heck, reading mediocre books could be considered time-wasting, and I haven't heard about any "Don't read mediocrity for 24 hours" movements.

PCs are tools (or toolkits). I don't see a "put away your screwdrivers for 24 hours" movement. So I don't see much point in this one either. You can count me out.

Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large volume 7, issue 4 (April 2007) is now available for downloading.

This 24-page issue (PDF as usual, but the essays are available as HTML separates) features the first Cites & Insights book: Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change.

Essays include:

While I did read this in a blog entry that purported to be a report of a keynote, I'm stating up front that this must be a mistake or a strawman.

Or maybe just a joke that was taken seriously.

Supposedly, someone said that every library should employ a developer.

Every library. Consider the size and staffing of, oh, every small and rural library in America, a few thousand of them.

Bwahahah...

I won't name the person who supposedly said this because it's so unbelievable.