Michele, I think there are two threads going on. One is looking at the 
gender make-up of the c4l community. But I was hoping to be able to 
compare that to the gender makeup of the library techie community in 
general. Because if we find that c4l is -- randomly -- 42% female, we 
don't know whether that is representative of the actual workers in 
libraries. In fact, by definition, it only represents c4l, and it's not 
terribly meaningful if we can't compare it to something. It means 
something different if 42% of techie workers in libraries are female, 
and it means something else if 75% of techie workers in libraries are 
female.

And then, once all of the numbers are in, you have to figure out if it 
means anything at all, but we can worry about that later.

kc

On 11/27/12 11:23 AM, Michele R Combs wrote:
> I'm not sure that would work.  We aren't interested in library staff, we're interested in the CODE4LIB community, yes?  My manager doesn't know all the lists I subscribe to, or the communities I consider myself a member of, so I don't see any way for a library to report reliably on behalf of its staff.  Pretty much by definition, if you want to know demographics for a community, you have to ask the members directly.
>
> Not to mention the question of including and "other" option for gender -- a library isn't likely to be able to determine that for its staff :)
>
> Michele
>
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Joe, what I was hoping for was not a survey where individuals report
>> on themselves, but a statistical sample of libraries where the library
>> reports on its staff. That avoid the "self-image" issue, and the
>> selection that individual reporting on self entails.

-- 
Karen Coyle
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