What I wonder is … does it matter that librarians are writing more on blogs than in print? That by the time our ideas are in print, they are almost old news? Who is the audience for print library literature, anyway? Is it those of us in the biblioblogosphere? Is it those of us who want more detail than our old eyes can read online? Is it those of us who don't read library blogs but need (arguably) to keep up with what the young'uns (and I mean young-at-heart, creative, if you will, rather than age-young) are thinking and doing?

I imagine that the readership profiles are very similar for blogs and for the “print” literature, much of which is available online–at least for subscribers. Readers of blogs probably also read journals and readers of journals probably also read blogs. Rather than a question of print vs. blog, I think it is a question of edited and distributed by a third party compared to (not versus) the self published. Edited publications have a gatekeeper, either an editor or an editorial board and referees, and the gatekeeper decides what gets published. Bloggers themselves make those decisions about their own work. Either way, quality varies!

One difference is longevity. The tried-and-true print journal is archived by and in libraries. We don't yet have that sort of dependable system for archiving e-journals. However Portico and LOCKKS are addressing this problem. We do not yet, however, have the large scale system for preserving e-journals, blogs, and other born digital works equivalent to the widely distributed system we have for archiving print journals. Until we do, perhaps we should hope that authors who produce works that will stand the test of time will submit those to journals, especially those that still produce a print edition, and that their work will be published there. It may, of course, be hubris for an author to assume higher work should enjoy that sot of longevity. The print journals has shown considerable staying power, although that is waning in favor of electronic journals.

Will the journal, as has many have predicted, disaggregate and lose the value of journal title as brand and implicit indicator of authority? If so, the differences between blog posts and journal articles will diminish, with the role of the editor continuing to distinguish one from the other.

P.S.: Stephanie, I had to do some digging to find the line you attributed to me in your July 17, 2007 post. I finally found it on my laptop in my notes for my opening statement at the Candidates' Forum during the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle. My notes include: “Today some librarians publish in blogs rather journals, create communities of interest on Yahoo, and produce specialized conferences on the Web.” I know that If you heard me at any of the 40 groups I visited during Midwinter, you may have heard me say it then. So, maybe I am the one who should be humbled when I “try to help patrons who don't remember where / when they read something.”

I did not post anything here between late May and July 10. The last post in May discussed the RIAA's use of colleges and universities as their copyright enforcers. I wrote that post in a hospital room as my wife slept after being admitted in the early afternoon. More than ever she needed an advocate as I witnessed errors by the nursing staff, errors with her and also with another patient. These things mattered a great deal. Dealing with bureaucratic bungling kept me at the hospital till midnight one night; I was unwilling to leave until I knew the staff had corrected the problem. Family mattered a great deal for the nine days she was in the hospital.

Eight days after coming home, she was back in the hospital. Two days later she had some serious surgery, an option that had been held as a last resort since mid-March. Family mattered then, too. Our son and his girlfriend were with my wife and me when she went into surgery and when she came out of recovery. We are very optimistic, even on the brink of being confident, that she has finally turned the corner in this long illness that has sapped her of her strength, necessitated daily injections, and been very scary at times. Family mattered five days after she had surgery and our older daughter came to care for her mother. We had we made plans weeks earlier for her to be with her mom for a week so I could go to the American Library Association conference in Washington. Little did we know that part of that time she would be attending her mother in the hospital once again.

My wife's short-term recovery from the surgery was unexpectedly and blessedly swift, a real turning point. Family mattered the next week when she and our daughter joined me in Washington for a day just so they could come to the ALA inaugural banquet. She rallied her strength and walked in at my side when I was introduced as president-elect. I am sure that more than half of the applause that greeted us was for her.

Actually, I have my hard drive back in my laptop. From July 3 through late yesterday I had a loaner hard drive. On July 3 my laptop repeatedly froze as soon as I entered my password. The university Help Desk staff worked on it all day. They replaced the BIOS. They ran diagnostic and repair utilities. A dedicated technician stayed late with me to isolate the problem. By swapping hard drives between two identical machines we were able to conclude that the problem wasn't in my laptop hardware but in one of the many drivers and applications that launch at start-up. He was able to move the files I most needed to my network storage, install the other machine's hard drive in my laptop, and move those most needed files to that drive. I had to use the less-than-friendly Outlook Web interface and I discovered just how much I depend upon customized tool bars, shortcuts, and my Merriam-Websters 11th Collegiate Dictionary. It was a very tedious process for a technician to identify the offending software and delete it from start-up.

I serve as my university's registered DMCA agent. This gives me opportunities to educate students on this issue–but only one at a time and then only after the RIAA or SONY or whoever has alleged copyright infringement by a student. I believe it was last summer that I received a DVD in the mail from a group (it may have been the RIAA) with the recommendation that I use it to educate our students on this issue. I looked at it and threw it in the trash. It used scare tactics such as a student expressing regret for illegal downloading because it got him into legal trouble and his legal debts forced him to drop out of college. It also showed downloaders being led away in handcuffs! Nowhere did it mention that our copyright system is more subtle, more ambiguous, and less constricting than as presented in this video.

I mentioned this to Dr. Kirwan and quoted Sir Philip Sidney's “An Apology for Poetry,” his famous essay published posthumously in 1595. Sidney wrote that “Poetry … is … a speaking picture, with this end: to teach and delight.” Surely this dual purpose can be imputed to the “speaking pictures” produced by movie studios and recording companies! And just as surely these entertainment industries have the resources to produce lessons about intellectual property (including fair use) that delight as much as they teach. Dr. Kirwan reported that another “educational” DVD is headed to my mailbox this summer, presumably one without images of handcuffed students.

In other words, not only is the entertainment industry expecting universities to act as their police and disciplinarians, they also want us to be their propagandists. No matter how balanced a view of IP this new production gives (and I expect it to be one-sided), a stand-alone didactic video is not going to get the message across. The movie industry is very adept at product placement. Maybe it can devise ways to place meaningful, helpful information about copyright in their myriad productions. They certainly haven't tried. It might even improve the quality of many of their products–especially the summer blockbusters and would-be blockbusters that students heading to college in the fall will be watching.

Not until the third week of April or so did I realize that not only does my wife have to recover from her serious illness, but I also have to recover those parts of my life that I put on hold for well over a month. Those parts include the mundane such as spring yard work. They also include reassuring, even comforting, routines such as cooking a dinner rather than benefiting from the incredible generosity of friends and neighbors that has filled a freezer with more meals than we have been able to eat. A steady stream of family members who have come to assist have provided me with welcome opportunities to put together Sunday feasts. And the suspended parts of my life include the professional–such as keeping with my routine of recent years of participating in ALA's annual Legislative Day. And such as participating in the annual copyright issues conference sponsored by the Center for Intellectual Property of the University of Maryland's University College.

The increase in participation, even though it is an increase of only 2.11%, is heartening. The more members who participate in our democratic process, the better! Again, I offer my thanks to every ALA member who voted in the election and I doubly thank all who voted for me for vice-president/president elect! Not until today did it occur to me that I might live a Chicago native's fantasy–to win an election in a Chicago-based organization…and an honest one at that!