Have Your Librarian Buy My Outrageously Expensive Book
It was quite considerate of this blogger to share with his readers news of his soon-to-be-available book, and to show deep concern and remorse for their inability to purchase it because a print copy for individuals costs a mere $180. Not to worry if you can’t afford it he tells his readers. He even suggests they’d be crazy to buy a copy at that price. But there’s an easy solution to this problem. It’s found right in the title of the blog post: Tell Your Librarian. That’s right folks. Just march on over to the library and tell your friendly neighborhood librarian to purchase a copy today. But wait. There’s more. Your librarians will be overjoyed to learn that my publisher actually has multiple pricing schemes for my outrageously expensive book, meaning they can spend even more of the limited book budget to add it to their collection. Just take a look at these bargains:
Fantastic. Let’s buy two of them.
The moral of this story: Everyone knows that academic libraries have deep, deep pockets, and they can be readily exploited by authors and publishers who will encourage faculty to demand ridiculously expensive books based on a pricing model that makes absolutely no sense. It may be that this book is the best in its field. I don’t know. But at this price can we afford to find out? Talk about a broken system.
Only Ten Minutes a Day?
I’ve always thought that if the academic library profession had a younger age demographic (the average age is just shy of 50) we’d have more readership at ACRLog. Just based on anecdotal evidence, many of the senior librarians I speak with are not ACRLog readers. They don’t have something against ACRLog. They just never got into the habit of reading librarian blogs. Print publications were always good enough for them. Now we may have some evidence that there’s some truth to this. According to a recent Primary Research Group study that surveyed 555 full-time academic librarians, they average only 10 minutes of blog reading a day. And the older a librarian is (I’m just basing this on what I read about the study – no way did I consider buying a copy – it’s not that important) the more likely he or she spends the bulk of their “keeping up” time with print publications. The demographics of ACRL aside (average member age is about 50), I’d like to think that we’ve been able to reach a good number of the younger demographic of our profession, the ones who are less likely to be ACRL members.
But my overall reaction to reading about this study was “you have to be kidding me”. Am I the only one who spends about 90 minutes a day with blogs, listservs, email newsletter, twitter feeds, etc., all in an effort to stay alert to what’s happening in and beyond our profession? If there was ever a time to be spending more time on keeping up, this is it.
What Do You Want Me To Write About Anyway?
I can’t even remember how long it’s been since we last did a survey to find out what you ACRLog readers really want us to write about. You no doubt gave us some good ideas which we most likely completely ignored. Write more about information literacy! What do you think this is? A library journal? Write more about tenure and titles for academic librarians! Yes, I want people intensely hating on me for the next month. Write about yourself Steven! Talk about a boring topic, and besides, other bloggers have this territory covered quite well. The problem of trying to figure out what ACRLog readers want us to write about may be solved by software – from our friends at IBM. You see, IBM had a problem. They had all these blogs for their employees to use to share important ideas about IBM. But hardly anyone was blogging and when they did hardly anyone was reading what they wrote – sounds like most blogs. As their guru put it:
The writers surveyed often weren’t sure how to interest readers, and many of their posts got little to no response. Readers, on the other hand, couldn’t find blogs on the topics they wanted to read about.
That’s a great problem find – how do you match what the readers what to read with the bloggers who are writing about that stuff – or put another way – how do you create the blogs that have the stuff the readers want. Being IBM, they created some new software to solve the problem.
So Geyer and his colleagues built a widget to bring these two halves of the problem closer together. Readers use the widget to suggest topics they want to read about, and they can vote in support of existing suggestions. Those suggestions then get sent to possible writers, matching topics to writers by analyzing his social network connections and areas of expertise. The researchers found that writers were most likely to post on a topic suggested by a sizeable audience, and that audience members followed up by read posts on requested topics.
I really like this idea. So much so that I just submitted a request to ACRL for funds to buy it from IBM. While I’m waiting for approval on that request, I guess we’ll just continue to write about whatever we want. But if you do have a good idea for a topic or you want to write a guest post for us – just use “Story Idea” link on our home page to let us know the blogging topics you’d like your favorite bloggers to blog about.
I spend more than an hour a day reading and updating from blogs, rss feeds etc. I am fortunate that I have the professional time and space to do that I guess, but I consider my employer is also getting a better educated and up to date information professional as a result – so it’s a win/win situation. Keep writing.
I love ACRLog and read it at least weekly. I also spend about one hour or so per day reading library related blogs, rss feeds, etc.
BTW, I am age 49, but still “new” to the profession (in about 5 years)–I wonder if the over 50 demographic started in the field in their 20s and this is why they read more print than online. I am finding it’s not so much your chronological age that determines the format you are comfortable with–it’s when you were educated in the profession. There are exceptions to the rule though.
I too wondered if those reading the ACRL blog via RSS feed were at all captured in your readership stats. If I have to go beyond my inbox to read something I tend to forget – but I’m a regular reader of the feed in my inbox! Also a plus, I can download the email messages to my itouch and read them offline on the bus on my way to work in the mornings… (age 26; 3 yrs in academic librarianship)
I’m a newly graduated LIS student trying to break into the world of academic librarianship. I’m having an extremely hard time getting interviews, so I would love a little real-world advice. Most of my classmates are still unemployed, so I know there are many of us out there who love some first-hand advice on getting a job and what being an academic librarian is really like.
That’s just what I’d like to see anyway.
I was surprised by the 10-minutes-per-day figure as well. I can easily spend an hour to 90 minutes going through my rss feeds. And I don’t read that much in print either. Age 41, 13 years in the profession.
I have enough interest and identified blogs, lists, etc. to spend an hour a day or more, but as the director of a small academic library (2 librarians; 2 staff), I simply don’t have time. At this point, getting ready to leave for 2 days vacation, I already have over 500 unread emails, all but a small handful from email lists. I wish I had the luxury of doing that much professional reading, but there is far too much actual work to be done in a small organization. I realize I am the exception, not the rule, for academic librarian positions, but there are a number of us in this position. I schedule 1 hour per day, but am lucky to average probably 30 minutes. age 46, 7 years in profession
Two years ago, I was a selector for books in the fields of chemical engineering and biological engineering. The average price: $190.
I fall into the 10 minutes a day category. I’d love to have 90 minutes a day to check out blogs, etc., but my job just keeps me too busy to do that. Often times I find myself checking things out after other librarians in my institution call attention to something – and I’d guess they each have about 10 minutes a day for this. I actually read this posting after a co-worker emailed me and asked if I could imagine having 90 minutes a day free to do this. I can’t. I fall on the younger end of the spectrum – mid-30’s.