survey is for a magazine publisher - suelibrarian

I don't know, the banner ad said, "Are you a librarian?" And the questions were very librarian-specific. Any ScienceBloggers around here than can provide more details? - John Dupuis

I got to a question related to whether I would consider purchasing a particular magazine then got out of it. - suelibrarian

It's the publishers of Seed Magazine that sponsor ScienceBlogs, so it's not surprising that they'd try and push the mag. I answered that we subscribe to the magazine so I guess that's why they didn't ask me to subscribe for my library. - John Dupuis

No idea. We are just bloggers - do not know what is happening at the Seed offices. But this sounds interesting. - Bora Zivkovic

But I think I see what you mean -- the survey is designed as a marketing tool to librarians rather than an attempt to gauge what librarians think about the ScienceBlogs site. Certainly when I clicked on the large flashing banner I was thinking the latter. - John Dupuis

large flashing banner? Time for an XKCD reference http://xkcd.com/570/ :P - suelibrarian

I'd forgotten about that one! It's always time for an xkcd reference. - John Dupuis

I saw the banner again today, and it isn't actually flashing. I only remembered it as flashing. It says, "Are you a librarian? Click Here." I actually feel a blog post bubbling up comparing publishers who see librarians as partners in disseminating scholarship/information versus publishers that see librarians as signers-of-cheques. - John Dupuis

i just can't bring myself to be offended by this survey. seems reasonable to me. dunno. - Christina Pikas

also not offended. my (new) library doesn't subscribe to Seed, and maybe it should. I'm happy enough to think about it. Also, Seed supports ScienceBlogs, so ... that's good. I am interested in the relationship between librarians & publishers tho. - Stephanie_GoBigBlue!

I'm not offended, just bemused. I like Seed magazine and I really like ScienceBlogs and am happy to support both. On the other hand, I think that marketing to librarians can also mean listening to librarians and using a survey as one and not the other sends a message. If I do do a post, the purpose certainly wouldn't be to criticize Seed or any other publisher directly. I see it more as an issue of how librarians are seen -- as "keepers of stuff" or collaborators in disseminating scholarship, which can include the keeping/collecting/organizing/buying of stuff. These considerations are barely relevant in relation to a publisher of one popsci magazine but thinking more about the survey did get me thinking about the broader issue. Frankly, it's all suelibrarian's fault as none of the above even occurred to me at all until her comments ;-) - John Dupuis

oh dear- sorry. I got into the survey from your original survey monkey link not from the site so I wanted to point out to others what the survey was about. - suelibrarian

and I have been thinking too- about how much of what we actually do is acting as intermediaries between the vendors and our clients. This is even down to our classes which can be to teach our clients how to deal with vendor databases or bib software that have horrible UI. - suelibrarian

Yeah, I posted: http://jdupuis.blogspot.com/2009... - John Dupuis