Supporting Cites & Insights
Linking to Previous Issues
PDF, Typography, and All That
Other Stuff
How can I support Cites & Insights: Crawford At Large?
- Tell other people about it.
- Link to it, if you run an appropriate site.Write about it, if you have an appropriate forum.
- Buy C&I books!
- Invite me for particularly interesting speaking invitations such as state library conferences (within my speaking limits: eight trips a year with some exceptions).
- If you're a YBP Library Services customer, mention that you appreciate their sponsorship.
- If you want to use part of this in a noncommercial publication or site with attribution, go ahead (see the Creative Commons license). It's nice to let me know, so I can give you my mailing address for a copy. I can probably send you a Word copy of the portion you want. (Or use the HTML version; it's just Word-saved-as-filtered-HTML.)
- If you're a publisher and think I should be considering your magazine, newsletter, or whatever for mention in Cites & Insights, send me a free subscription. Send e-mail to waltcrawford [at] gmail.com for an address.
Can I link directly to specific issues?
- Yes. The address pattern is http://citesandinsights.info/civNiM.pdf, where "N" is the volume number and "M" is the issue number.
- The first issue, December 2000, is at http://citesandinsights.info/ci2k12.pdf.
- You can always substitute "cical.info" for "citesandinsights.info" to save typing.
Why are issues PDF rather than HTML?
- Issues are too long to read comfortably at the computer--typically 20 to 28 pages, two columns each, with each column wide enough for a screen.
- The two-column print format yields a reasonably compact print version. A screen-optimized HTML version would be much longer. (A reasonably-formatted HTML version of a 20-page issue would use around 34 print pages.)
- I care about typography and the PDF package retains the typography of the original.
Don't you dislike PDF as a single-owner proprietary format?
Yes. But I really care about typography.
Acrobat Distller lets me use the typefaces I like and know that you'll see the same typefaces on your copy--and I didn't have to switch from TrueType to PostScript.
It's a compromise between my open-format principles and my desire to distribute this newsletter looking the way I want it to look. Life is full of compromises.
And, as should be obvious from other pages, I've compromised even more:
HTML is now available for some, but not all articles. For a discussion of that decision and what "selective" means in this case, see Cites & Insights 5:5 (Spring 2005) or Bibs & Blather from that issue.Anything new happening with C&I in this regard?
Well, yes, there is. As of April 2008 (v. 8 i. 4), I'm using Word 2007 and Microsoft's free download for PDF production, rather than Word 2000 and Acrobat 7.
I can see that Word 2007 handles spacing better than Word 2000 (when you convert an existing document, it comes back taking up less space--and a LOT less disk space), and that the PDF converter does a faster, cleaner, smaller job. And I think the HTML's a little better...
I'd like to link to Cites & Insights from [a Weblog, a list message, a database of electronic journals, another journal, a set of links, whatever...]. Is that OK?Be my guest, either to the home page, to specific issues, or to those articles that are available in HTML.
How will you decide how long to continue doing this (and how much effort to put into it)?I'll base continued effort on a combination of factors:
- Apparent readership (high enough to keep going for some time yet).
- Feedback--letters to the editor, subscriptions to CICAL Alert, comments, whatever.
- Personal enjoyment and satisfaction. While effort is certainly involved, this zine is usually fun to do.
- Other avenues that use material that would otherwise appear here.
- Financial situation: Whether I have income that justifies spending the time on this.
I anticipate doing this for at least ten years total, maybe more, but that's not guaranteed.
There's reason to believe that archives will be maintained indefinitely--or at least well past the shelf life of the content herein.
Are these really Frequently-Asked Questions?
Think of "FA" as "Fully-Answered."
I have another question that you didn't answer here.
Send me e-mail: username waltcrawford domain gmail.com.
Updated March 20, 2008