Lisle wrote that she would like to know more about the age distribution of librarians who write blogs.
I wish Walt could somehow have done a breakdown by blogger age, though I know it would be fairly impossible.
There are a lot of things I’d like to know about too, like where are bloggers in their careers, what sort of library they work in, do they mostly live in cities or in rural areas? So I think I’m going to design a survey on Survey Monkey to find out all that and more. Please comment on this post and let me know what sort of stats you’d like to learn about the biblioblogosphere and I’d be glad to add your questions to the survey. I’ll probably put it out in the world Wednesday night or Thursday morning, so get your suggestions to me quickly!
Brainstorming…
Could we learn anything from “what library school did you go to?” Which I suppose would need to be an open-ended question because it would take a long time to put all the choices in a survey question. Although you might be able to make a reasonable guess at the top 5 and put those as choices, then let the rest of us put “other” and write it out.
Might as well do gender since it’s been a blogosphere issue of late.
Something that tries to get at job role–are bloggers electronic resource librarians? catalogers? reference librarians?
I think job roll is good; I’d also like to see the representation of managers and administrators. Type of library. Professional association affiliations. If I think of anything else, I’ll let you know! THANKS for doing this!
Instead of *where* they earned their Master’s (after all, bigger schools are better represented), I think *when* they earned their MLS/MLIS would be meaningful. Age is related but does not tell the whole story. I also second the type of library and function in library.
OK, this sounds frivolous but how about Myers-Briggs? I have a completely unsubstantiated feeling that those of us on the vanguard of library innovations tend to similarities in some part of our MB profiles. Probably the NT part….
And seeing that is hard to capture…wonder if there’s questions to ask about comfort with change and being a square peg in a round hole and all that. Age, library school and date of degree are factors, to be sure, but seeing I am almost 50, went to a Canadian library school (and I’ll bet you Americans know little about our schools’ reps) and graduated in 1986, I don’t think these will be telling in and of themselves.
I think the larger issue professionally is what characterizes the disruptive innovators and how such people are valued and exploited (in only the best sense).
Very interesting ideas. Especially Alane’s, though I will have to think about what to ask to get some idea about a person’s comfort with change. If anyone can think of a good question for that, let me know.
When they got their MLS! Good point, especially in librarianship which is so often a 2nd career!
I’d also be interested to learn if people have degrees in addition to the ML(I)S, which might add something to the whole when did you get your degree/is librarianship a second (or third. . . or fourth) profession for you, etc.
Also–though I’m not sure how you’d ask this in a meaningful way–I’d be really interested to hear about people’s linking practices. I guess some of these questions were on the MIT Bloggers’ Survey that many of us took. Do you link chiefly to other LIS blogs, to other non-LIS blogs, to outside news sources, to studies? And (this is the hard part) why do you link? To back up your argument? To position your argument? Because you admire the post you’re linking to? Because you’re trying to get your blog noticed? Do you link more to short, “hey look at this neat thing!” type posts or more to longer, more reflective ones? I’m curious because I wonder if learning something about people’s linking practices would tell us something about why some blogs are linked to much more than others.
I was actually thinking of trying to make up a little survey like this myself, so if it doesn’t fit into what you’re doing, I may just do that. Thanks for plunging into the fray!
I would be interested in knowing where people graduated from. I’m with Mona, also – I’d like to know when they graduated. How about asking how many blogs they write in? I’d also be curious to know whether or not they have a background or degree in another area. (This might be interesting in terms of the “career change” idea.)
On a totally frivolous note, I’d like to know how many bloggers are Buffy fans. 🙂
Laura, the linking practices survey sounds like an excellent idea – you should do it!
Meredith:
One thing that I would be interested to find out is – as you alluded to – the number of people who read library blogs vs the number of people who write library blogs. Blogs seem to be getting evaluated by the number of citations they recieve, and by doing so we’re only counting the opinions of those who also blog themselves. What is the percentage of people who read library blogs, yet don’t write themselves? If the number is significant, we’d have to question the validity of counting citations to evaluate blogs.
Also, I’d be interested to find out a breakdown of the above by library type. It seems that there aren’t nearly as many corporate librarian bloggers as there are public or academic – is this because corporate librarians are only reading blogs but not writing them, or is it because they aren’t part of the ‘blogosphere’ entirely.
Aghhh! Age discrimination! Maybe….I am so clued out of TV that I am not sure if Buffyism is actually an age thing…I do know it’s definitely a medium thing. Haven’t watched TV in literally decades. Watergate trials?
And I’ll be boring on this…where people graduate from only has relevance when you know what the relevance is. What if I graduated from a library school in Brazil? We know diddley about what that info means.
Me, if I was venturing back in library management, I would be looking for demonstrated evidence of innovation, keeping up, embracing of change/new stuff and so on….demonstrated being the key word here. Reading Wired doesn’t count (although I know none of the senior librarians who reported to me in the olden days read Wired).
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