Between my headache issues and a crazy speaking/writing/teaching schedule, it is unlikely that I will be able to publish a comprehensive list of results for the 2007 Survey of the Bibilioblogosphere for a while. However, to whet your appetite, I thought I’d post some interested facts that I learned from the survey.
1. 839 people filled out the survey, compared to 165 in 2005. Of those, 460 started blogging between 2005 and 2007! Only 242 of the respondents have had their current blog for over two years. WOW!
2. Back in 2005, only 19% of bloggers were public librarians while 44% were academic librarians. In 2007, that gap is closing. Now, 33.6% of all library bloggers work in academic libraries and 29.3% are public librarians.
3. A full 23.5% of bloggers blog anonymously. Countless others likely blog pseudonymously, but I stupidly forgot to include that as an option. Women are more likely to be anonymous bloggers than men (based on their representation in the blogosphere). 37.1% of anonymous bloggers work in public libraries and 7% are school librarians, greater than each of their representations in the blogospherse as a whole. Anonymous bloggers also tend to be less happy with their jobs on the whole, only 27.1% are definitely happy with their jobs.
4. People seem to be flocking to the major players in the blog software market. In 2005, 44.5% of bloggers used Blogger, 20.7% used WordPress, and 11.6% used Movable Type. In 2007, 46.2% of librarians use Blogger, 33.3% use WordPress and only 4.1% use LiveJournal. No others got more than 3% of the “market share.” Anonymous bloggers are much more likely to use Blogger (59%) as are women (53%). Men are more likely to use WordPress (45.5%).
5. Is blogging good training for professional publishing? 54% of bloggers have published professionally, and 73% of bloggers who’ve had their blogs two or more years have published.
6. Want to be happy? Well, you may want to become a school librarian, work in a law library or work for a consortium or library system, because those three got the highest scores for job satisfaction. Corporate and public librarians had the lowest levels of job satisfaction. The positions that seem to produce the least amount of satisfaction (based on the people who answered the survey) were access services, circulation, cataloging, collection development, web development and instructional/emerging technologies. Strangely, people who are not satisfied with their job are more likely to get paid to blog (6.2% versus 4.3% of the general survey population). They are also less likely to consider themselves leaders in innovation at their place of work (59% versus 71% of the general survey population). Interestingly, there’s only a small difference between people happy with their jobs and people who are unhappy with their jobs in terms of openness to change and tech-savvy. Fortunately, 76% of all respondents are either pretty happy or definitely happy with their jobs. 🙂
7. The number of women blogging is growing faster than the number of men. In 2005, female bloggers made up 57% of the blogging population and males made up 43%. Now, 66% of all library bloggers are female. and 34% are male. Of course, since women make up approximately 80% of the population of librarians, they are still underrepresented.
8. 37% of all libloggers are over 40 up from 28% in 2005. The blogosphere is getting more diverse. It’s a good thing.
Hope this satisfies your data-jonesing!
Very interesting survey, Meredith. Thanks!
Thx indeed!
Interesting stats!