Comments on: Survey of the biblioblogosphere

By: lis.dom » survey madness

lis.dom » survey madness — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 00:31:30 +0000

[...] Meredith has put up her survey of the biblioblogosphere, which I just took. A number of people have commented on it already; while I would have probably asked some slightly different questions and asked some questions slightly differently, since I did not go to the work of putting the survey together, I am not going to complain. Anyway, if you are in any way a library person and you have a blog, head on over and fill it out. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, and the more respondents it gets the more interesting the results will be. [...]

By: Dave Hook

Dave Hook — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 22:26:49 +0000

Maybe he’s thinking that Canadian urban areas report their populations using metric numbers.

As far as regional distribution goes, a far bigger debate is what constitutes Central Canada vs Eastern Canada, since we here in Canuckistan can’t even agree on that one. But I think that we’re really really over-analyzing things here.

By: Rochelle

Rochelle — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 21:01:21 +0000

I’m fairly sure a large urban area in Canada is exactly the same as a large urban area in the US. I mean, is 6 million fewer in the US than it is in Canada, or what?

By: Meredith

Meredith — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 16:24:51 +0000

Richard, I guess I wasn’t really thinking about size as much as about the sort of things one would find in large urban areas versus small rural areas (such the sort of educational institutions, cultural institutions, technology infrastructure, libraries, etc.). In rural Vermont, we don’t have any big Universities, but in most big cities (whether Montreal or Chicago) there are plenty of good-sized academic institutions. I just wanted to see if having all of these things at one’s fingertips makes a person more inclined to blog. But maybe that’s impossible to gauge in my survey, because obviously there will be more librarians in places with larger population densities than in rural areas. This isn’t a study I’d publish in a peer-reviewed journal — it’s just to satisfy my own curiosity and maybe the curiosity of others too.

By: Richard Akerman

Richard Akerman — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 15:48:47 +0000

Neat survey.

One comment: you need to define the size of cities you expect. “Large Urban Area” for Canada is “Small Urban Area” for USA. Even within Canada, what is Large vs. Small will be matter of opinion.

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 00:48:08 +0000

Fun survey, though I would have dispensed with the regions and given folks states to select.

By: Meredith

Meredith — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 12:59:26 +0000

Like I said earlier, I knew that my list was not exhaustive nor all inclusive. That’s why I put the “other column”, so that anyone with another position that I didn’t mention could write it in there. And that’s what people have been doing, including at least two school librarians. Are there a lot of school librarian bloggers? I’ve only seen one or two, and I’d be very interested in reading others if you’d like to send me the links.

By: Laura

Laura — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 10:01:35 +0000

Why did you leave school libraries off the survey? You got quite specific about academic libraries, but school libraries were no where. There are quite a number of us, you know…

By: walt

walt — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 00:52:33 +0000

I took the survey–and I’ve joined the other bloggers pointing people to the survey. My apologies for the snarky tone of my first comment. Good luck with the survey; I look forward to seeing the results. Even if I still don’t think I live in the Southwest…

By: Amanda Robertson

Amanda Robertson — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 23:36:55 +0000

I think you did a pretty good job with the survey to begin with, especially if its your first one. I got some experience with survey-creating in library school myself, and its impossible to make it perfect. I did utilize the space to describe my possition – I actually had to shorten my response because I ran out of room.

As for the administrator question, my situation is fairly unique even among special librarians. There aren’t many that work alone and yet have an administrator.