The changes can be summarized as Simplify, Amplify, Clarify and Compare.

Simplify

I now believe that I included too many different metrics and too many divisions for key metrics in the current version–”too many” in that they may obscure the overall picture of America’s public libraries, but also in that the sheer number of tables and length of the book may intimidate some potential readers/users. I also believe that, while theoretically desirable, basing divisions purely on reality may not work out as well as I’d like.

Here’s what I have in mind for a new version, subject to revision:

• Spending brackets: Reduce from the current 10 to, probably, five–in part because it’s possible to make charts with five lines that can be read in black-and-white (using different line dot-and-dash combinations), while I don’t think that’s true for 10. The brackets would probably be based on the median per capita spending and would be something like this: A. <1/3 of median. B. 1/3 to 2/3 of median. C. 2/3 to 1 1/3 of median. D. 1 1/3 to twice median. E. More than twice median.
• Size (LSA) brackets: Reduce from the current 18 to, probably, nine, with one bracket each for libraries serving fewer than 1,000 people and those serving at least 100,000, and seven others based on actual distribution (looking at roughly 1,000 libraries per section).
• Other metrics: Include circulation per capita (reducing current nine brackets to maybe six), reference per capita (reducing from ten brackets to maybe six), patron visits per capita (reducing from nine to maybe six), program attendance per capita (reducing from eight to maybe six), PC use per capita (reducing from eight to maybe six) and visitors per hour (reducing from nine to maybe six). Omitted from detailed metrics: hours open (but see below), total PCs, PCs per thousand patrons and circulation per hour.
• I’d still have the benefit ratio, probably calculated very similarly, used as appropriate.

The overall net effect is that a given library would be comparable to around 200 other libraries for spending. or around 166 for other metrics. And that most graphs would involve around 1,000 libraries (but I’d probably remove the top 10% from some graphs.)

Amplify

The new version would be amplified from the current in several ways:

• I would not exclude libraries with very low funding, those with very high funding, and those with less than 0.25 FTE librarian. I would still exclude territorial libraries, closed libraries and libraries with no reported operating expenditures.
• The new version would include graphs as well as tables, as appropriate.
• Rather than peculiar “combined tables” showing quartiles for given metrics at different expenditure levels, there would be single tables, one for each metric–and I’d use the extra space to add 10%ile and 90%ile to the current Q1 (25%ile), median (50%ile) and Q3 (75%ile) figures. That would offer a much better picture of what’s out there, while still ignoring extreme cases.
• I would include correlations as appropriate (as I do in GPLB).

Clarify

The current version is, how you say, light on textual commentary. Once you get past page 21, it’s basically nothing but tables.

Which, as a pure tool, may make sense–but is a little overwhelming.

The new version will include some commentary, pointing up noteworthy items in the tables and graphs, providing at least a little textual clarity.

Compare

The current version looks at one year. While I do suggest that it’s likely that more money would yield better and more numbers, I don’t have any hard evidence for that.

The new version would compare 2010 and 2011 figures (and would include only libraries present in both years). It would also attempt to show correlations between changes in spending per capita and various other metrics. I would probably include changes in total open hours here.

Oh, and one other change–if this happens at all and if it makes sense:

I’d split the state-by-state sections out into a separate book, and those sections would include some comparisons to overall figures that aren’t there now. That would make the separate book an interesting overview of differences in metrics across the nation.

Best guess as to length (the current book is 262 pages; Graphing Public Library Benefits is 222 pages): Somewhere around 150-200 pages, ideally closer to the first, for the main book; probably around 200 pages, maybe more, for the “Viewing the States” book.

Price would be $9.99 for PDF, whatever it works out to for paperback (probably around $15.50 if it’s 150 pages, around $16.50 if it’s 200 pages), $40 for site-license or state-license (for the state-by-state) ebook version without usage restrictions.

The Survey

No, I still don’t know whether it makes any sense to try a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo campaign to prefund this book, possibly with a stretch goal of making the PDF version free. I also still don’t know whether I’d do this. Since the new figures should show up in July, I’m coming close to a decision.

If this helps you think about these issues, you can still respond to the survey.

Here’s the survey. Five simple questions, anonymous, shouldn’t take more than a minute or two.

Here’s the background post.

Thanks!

I don’t think I’ve ever struggled with a post as much as I have with this one. I’d done three minor rewrites, each time saying “Or I could just scrap the whole thing” but not doing so. This time, I’ve scrapped a whole bunch of it.

What’s left may not make much sense unless you’re in the ALA-TT group on Facebook (which, by the way, has nothing to do with ALA) or unless you saw a certain high-profile blog post and were able to make an unnamed connection. I feel I was badly misquoted in that post–but the writer didn’t actually use my name. So I’ve scrapped most of what I was going to say but will leave portions.

Although, try as I may, I still can’t see how “I can’t believe people still choose to use Microsoft” as a complete statement from someone who hadn’t been in the thread before, tossed into a thread on a new iOS version, is humor. Or is not an attack on people (which, by the way, probably include most Mac owners–e.g., anyone using Office for the Mac or Word for the Mac) who “choose to use Microsoft.”

Anyway, shorn of most of the discussion and the names involved, here’s what’s worth saying:

There’s nothing wrong with loving Apple products, if you’re one who extends love to things other than people and perhaps pets. Enthusiasm is a good thing.

I do not understand, and do not appreciate, how it is that loving Product A makes it commendable or even OK to diss those who choose to use Product B.

I like Honda Civics a lot. In my lifetime, that’s all I’ve driven as a primary car–and the one time we purchased something that wasn’t a Honda, we were deeply disappoint. If I was given to loving object, I could say that I love Honda.

But, you know, it would never occur to me to say “I can’t believe people still buy Toyotas.” Or GM, or Subaru, or BMW, or whatever.

The point at which a preference for A turns into the felt need to put down those choosing B–with the exception of sports teams, where the corporate structure seems to rely on this silliness–is the point at which fan turns into fanatic. There’s at least one broad strain of fanaticism that says “our way is the only way and those who feel differently are wrong (and maybe should be punished).” I don’t much care for it.

The post in question–the one that I’ve decided not to name explicitly or discuss in detail–also gets into tools vs. emotions; the person seems to think you should be emotional about (that is, love) your computer.

Here I plead guilty. I’m a tool-user. I like Word a lot because it’s an exceptionally flexible toolkit; ditto Excel. I like that Windows lets me use any of half a dozen different ways to do something, whatever suits my own habits at the time. I don’t gaze in awe at the desktop or have any desire to stroke my notebook. I use it. A lot. I never worry that what I do with my computer might not be “worthy” of Windows or Gateway. It’s a tool (actually a toolkit).

But, you know, if you love your Mac, that’s OK. I know people who use Macs and iPads and iPhones as tools. They’re good tools. For some people, they’re better tools than Windows PCs or Android-based tablets (of which I happen to have one, a Kindle Fire HD 8.9–I find it a good tool, also, but don’t love it) or Android phones. And that’s their choice. If they develop a more emotional relationship with their Apple devices–well, again, that’s their choice.

I honor their preference. I don’t feign lack of belief that they could make such choices.

I couldn’t do as much writing as I do without Word (and, having tried it, I don’t think LibreOffice would work nearly as well for me). There is no way I could be doing the large-scale analyses I’ve done of public and academic libraries without Excel’s speed, flexibility and feature set. I find Windows a welcoming environment for me.

Of course my computer is my primary creative tool–but it’s still a toolkit, a means of producing something, whether it’s a post, an article, a book, a presentation or a tweet. My computer is a means: the end is the actual expression.

As for love? I love my wife (of 35.5 years so far, and shooting for many more). I love our cats. I tend not to love objects–in fact, I like Honda Civics, I don’t actually love them. I am, admittedly, not the world’s most emotional person. I do not love my 5-year-old cheap Gateway notebook, but it sure has been a good toolkit!

Oh, and for those who did read the other post: I never ever said that Mac fans are EVIL. I would never say that. Not even in jest. Here’s what I said:

…good to be reminded that it’s EVIL to criticize Apple fans, but it’s perfectly OK to trash any of us who prefer Microsoft. Thus it has always been; thus it will always be.

If you can turn this into a statement that Apple fans are EVIL, you’re a more clever reader than I am. Just as, if you can turn “”I can’t believe people still choose to use Microsoft,” all by itself, into humor, you have a much keener sense of humor than I do.

Here’s what I said at the time:

I’ve done about 1/6th of the work toward what could be a great premium for such a campaign, if the campaign makes sense at all–an idea I’d mentioned earlier (in conjunction with a now-abandoned plan for future external measures of library social network activity), to wit:

A Library Is… (working title, subject to change), a collection of the slogans actually used by (some) public libraries. (So far, I’m finding that about 20% of the libraries checked have such slogans, once you exclude “Serving X since [date]” and “Welcome to your library” and the like. That percentage may go down–I’m starting out by checking the easy ones, libraries with web addresses in the IMLS 2010 report. I’ve checked about 1,650 libraries so far, yielding a little over 300 slogans/mottoes. I’ll probably check 3,000 or so before deciding whether to do the book.)

The book would be entirely derivative and serve only for inspiration and perhaps amusement. It would be an exclusive edition (probably PDF and paperback), available only as a premium, and not offered for sale separately. Premium levels could include PDF, paperback, signed paperback, and possibly–if I include library pictures–color paperback, signed color paperback, or even signed hardcover.

A Quarter Through…

I’ve now finished checking libraries with web addresses in the IMLS database (and rechecking about 10%-20% of them, where the web address is obsolete or doesn’t work)–around 2,400 in all, I think.

Going back and deleting closed libraries and libraries in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, I have 6,755 left to do, so I’m a little more than a quarter done, somewhat less than a third.

I’m going to pause for a few days–to write the first chapter of that up-in-the-air book, to finish a C&I essay, to collect some survey responses about this (I’ll post a link to the survey probably tomorrow).

Clearly Feasible

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

• Omitting signed epigraphs and mottoes/slogans such as “Welcome to the library,” “Serving [location or counties],” “Serving [location] for [years],” “Serving [location] since [date],” “Your library available anytime anywhere” and similar mottoes, with a very few exceptions where the nature of the modified motto makes it unusually interesting (e.g., a claim to be the oldest publicly funded library, a library that serves more than one state, a library with what feels like a clever downplayed claim), I come up with 441 mottoes/slogans (and very brief mission statements highlighted on the website) so far.
• Are there repetitions? Yes–but probably not as many as you’d think. A casual runthrough finds about 16 libraries using slogans that some other library also uses. That’s about 4%: Not bad!
• The range is interesting, as are quite a few of the mottoes or slogans.

I wouldn’t project that the rest of the scan would yield 1,240 mottoes or slogans–not even close. For one thing, I’d guess around 10%-15% won’t have websites or Facebook pages.

The total could easily be more than 1,000 slogans and mottoes, including–say–800 unique cases (that is, a LOT more repetition than I’ve found so far).

I’m still not sure how I’d organize the book (which would consist of a very brief introduction and a whole bunch of slogans/mottoes identified by library, city, state and 2010 LSA, set as hopefully-attractive separated paragraphs, not just continuous text).

I think the results would be interesting to some. Or not.

Worth doing?

If I finish the scan (done as an intermittent process when taking breaks from something else, which is how I’ve done it so far: 100 libraries a day is pretty easy, as that’s less than an hour’s total work) and prepare the book–which might or might not include little pictures for included libraries–here’s how it would be used:

1. It would not be available for sale separately. At least I don’t think so.
2. It would be a premium, in PDF form and possibly in paperback or hardback (or paperback or hardback with color pictures, a much more expensive proposition to do), for one or more fundraising campaigns.
3. It could be a thank-you, in PDF form, for those contributing at least $35 to Cites & Insights.

So far, I haven’t thought of other possibilities.

I guess the question is: Is this an amusing and interesting idea–a little book of library mottoes–or is it just plain stupid?

(Little book: I figure 7 mottoes per page in a reasonably attractive well-spaced arrangement.)

As noted, I plan to prepare a little survey on the interest in funding a future Give Us a Dollar… and, slightly separately, the interest in (or dislike for!) this little book. Meanwhile, comments are open.

Fair use

By the way, I do not plan to ask any of the libraries for permission to use their mottoes and slogans (or, if I use them, the pictures from their websites). I regard that as eminently fair use–a nominal portion of a website that’s free in any case, with no negative impact on a library’s ability to raise money from its motto, and somewhat transformative by the context of hundreds of other mottoes.

If some copyright-oriented librarian thinks I’m wrong…well, the comments are open and my email continues to be waltcrawford@gmail.com

Since that post, there’s been only one additional email or comment–and it’s a comment on the post from someone whose opinion I respect. I’ll quote it here in full:

I was pretty down with this until I got to the page count. Also, I expect “Excel” will drive off a lot of people. But 200 pages about statistics is a hard sell.

The “Excel” part, which only appears in chapter titles in the Librarian’s Extension portion, is more-or-less essential–that whole section is about how to use the tools you’re most likely to be familiar with to derive useful information from the very large datasets on public and academic libraries produced by IMLS and NCES. Those datasets aren’t in Excel form: They’re Access databases (or flat files that I find impenetrable).

I’m assuming that a lot more library folk are comfortable with Excel than are comfortable with Access. I’m guessing (I haven’t tested) that a lot of what I suggest doing would be much more cumbersome in Access. (I don’t have Access: I’d have to see whether LibreOffice Database could handle it.) The only real option here is to use LibreOffice/OpenOffice, and I’d guess–perhaps incorrectly–that librarian familiarity with Excel exceeds familiarity with the LibreOffice spreadsheet by a quite substantial factor.

It’s the first and third sentence that gave me pause–because I’m pretty sure Laura’s not alone there. Let me put on my Gramps on the Rocking Chair persona for a moment here:

Back in the day–when I wrote my first 10 published books, basically 1984 to 1992–the typical professional library book, as I understood it, was around 100,000 words, which translated to 300+ pages at 6″ x 9″. That’s a length I was reasonably comfortable with–as were, presumably, those reading or at least buying the books.

I don’t think that’s the case any more for nonfiction books that aren’t Big Scholarly Tomes. More recent books have generally included length limits in the contracts, ranging from 75,000-80,000 words down to 30,000 words. If I’m writing a book now, I’m likely to aim for around 50,000-60,000 words (or word-equivalents for heavily tabular or graphic books). Times change–but I still think of books much shorter than around 200 pages as being not quite books. That’s my problem.

OK, gramps, off the lawn. Back to my aging-but-not-quite-over-the-hill persona.

What I read into that comment is that I should aim for around 150 pages for the combined book, less than that for either portion. (What I actually said was “<200 pages” for the combined book, “<150 pages for general part, <100 pages for librarian supplement” if I split them out.)

Doing the whole thing in 150 pages would be difficult–not just because I’m a wordy bastard. The book seems to me to require a fair number of examples–graphs and screenshots. Specifically, calling out problems with statistics and graphs is really hard to do without showing some typical problems (or simulations of those problems). Each graph is at least 1/3 and probably 1/2 of a 6×9 page to be effective at all. The second part will need tables and partial screenshots to work at all, I think.

Can I do that in, say, 100 pages of actual text? Probably so–for the first part. For the whole thing? I’m not sure. If it’s too terse, it won’t be usable. If it’s too verbose, it won’t be used. If it’s either one, it won’t be as interesting as it could be.

Where things stand now

There’s another key element in the second paragraph above:

Since that post, there’s been only one additional email or comment

So I can project potential sales of seven. Or seventy. “Or 700″–but projecting 100 times as many sales as there have been expressions of interest is, shall we say, way out of line with my experience on recent self-pub books. At best, 15:1 or 20:1 seems plausible.

Much as I think this book/these books could be useful to others, they’re not exploring new ground for me (unlike Give Us a Dollar… and The Big Deal… and, in fact, most of the self-pub books I’ve done). That is, I won’t know a lot more at the end of the project than I will at the beginning.

Given that, potential sales of 70 copies makes no sense at all. Potential sales of 105 copies (15:1) isn’t much better. Potential sales of 140 copies? (20:1) Marginal in terms of effort and impact, at best.

My sensible side says there’s just not enough interest to make this worth doing.

My other side keeps wondering whether I could do a good enough job that it would get the word-of-mouth marketing that self-pub books really require (unless you’re ready to spend serious dough).

I think where things stand is that I might try writing the first two chapters and see whether they point to something I’d be proud of and believed would both be short enough to appeal to people and useful enough to satisfy them and me.

In other words, this one’s still way up in the air.