Walt Crawford has published the results of his measurement of the library blogosphere [PDF]. He uses an interesting method -

…The next step was to consider “reach” beyond apparent Bloglines readership, particularly because Bloglines numbers can be tricky.

I calculated a “Reach” figure based half on apparent direct readership (Bloglines times 4), half on a weighted average of reported links, where weighting was proportional to the overall numbers: Reach = (4 * Bloglines) + (0.67 * Google) + (0.16 * MSN)+(0.02 * AllTheWeb).

The fact that such convuluted methods have to be used to even begin to guess at measuring the blogosphere points to the fact that we need tools, and fast.

Subscription numbers in Bloglines, as Walt notes, are innacurate because Bloglines is still just a proprietary tool. Alternatives like Feedburner claim to be more accurate, but few people use them because it requires you to republish your feed through a third-party service, and who knows how long those services will last. For actual hit data, often the only true picture comes from analysis of log files, and even they are widly innacurate at times. And for those who don’t have their own site (who are using Bloglines, Blogger, or some other non-owned service), there is no access to this data.

Such figures, like circulation numbers in libraries, need further analysis. But we need the tools to do it first.

For the record, my score from Walt’s study was -

The other item of note in this month’s Cites and Insights -

I’m reading less professional material than usual during the summer, and “serious” blog entries seem to have declined substantially. Many of you have the good sense to take unplugged summer vacations; others are too busy relaxing to spend precious time reading long essays on copyright balance or the perils of futurism. Maybe in the fall?

To me this points to the continued dominance of US-based blogs in the library blogosphere. We need more voices from Latin America, from Asia, and from Africa. Even Europe is under-represented in the library blogosphere (excluding the wonderful BiblioAcid). The digital divide rears its head here, obviously. I was reading the latest IFLA RSCAO (Regional Standing Committee for Asia and Oceania) newsletter recently where some of the reports were from events held more than a year ago. Though I didn’t even notice the dates because what was reported was still timely, as I hadn’t read it elsewhere.