Help the Library Society of the World send Walt Crawford to the ALA!

Help the LSW send Walt Crawford to the ALA!

Walt Crawford, as some of you might know, studies blogs, specifically those that are library/librarian related. He also produces Cites & Insights, which is an ongoing serial containing his thoughts regarding blogging and librarianship. He's been kind enough to include this blog in his studies, and I've mentioned him in the past.

Just one thing.

Walt lost his job recently, and wasn't sure he'd be able to make the trip to the American Library Association annual meeting in Washington, DC this summer. (Yeah, both the Medical Library Association and ALA are meeting there this year).

So the folks at Library Society of the World are trying to get the word out and provide a way to send Walt to ALA. So far they've raised enough money to get him there, plus some lodging, but they need to send him back to California when it's finished, too. Here's how you can donate:

• via PayPal (account: newrambler at gmail dot com)
  
• by cheque (made out to: Laura Crossett, Send Walt to ALA Fund, PO Box 85, Meeteetse, WY 82433)
  
• directly to Walt via the PayPal button on Cites & Insights
  

Anything else left over will help keep Cites & Insights going. Thanks Laura, for the links and information, and to birdie from LISNews for the link to her post.

Interested in librarian weblogs? Here's your book!

The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look by Walt Crawford

I've mentioned this before. It's a look at various blogs written by library people and analyses how various metrics change over time. It looks at over 600 blogs from 2007-2008 and for 143 it also includes change from 2006 on. This blog happens to be one of those. I plan on getting the book once I can. It lists for $35 but is currently on sale at Amazon.com for only $27.76 (and thus qualifying for free shipping). I hope the sale stays through to the latter part of March. Anyway, I've seen some of the author's past work and I'm interested in how this came out. If you are as well, be sure to buy the book or at least check out his blog at Walt at Random: The Library Voice of the Radical Middle.

It's out!

Walt Crawford's book The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look has been published and is available for purchase. The book looks at 607 liblogs, as Crawford calls them--blogs posted by 'library people' rather than by libraries--and compares various statistics from 2007 to 2008. And you know what? This blog is one of them! The book grows out of Crawford's work with his Cites & Insights online magazine.

Find out whether your blog is included in an online listing.

For more about the book, check out his entry on LISNews. From now through January 15, 2009 is available for $22.50 plus shipping. After that, it'll be $35.00. I'll definitely have to order the book as soon as I can.