"Abandon all technology and live in the woods for a week and see if it's your laptop you miss most." Bob Seidensticker, "Future Hype: The Myths Of Technology Change"
The PowerPoint presentation entitled "How Libraries Can Survive in the New Media Ecosystem" did have one surprising message: "Many Americans would just as soon turn their local libraries into museums and recruit retirees to staff them." I do not agree; I believe that libraries give a great return on the tax dollar, and the taxpayers actually appreciate this. As long as we keep returning $6 worth of services for every $1 of taxpayers' money we don't have to fear being turned into a museum that is staffed by retired volunteers. Besides, as one who is approaching retirement age myself, I can tell you that many retirees would not have the physical stamina to staff a public library. We have some pretty dedicated volunteers, but even the most stoic among them limit their volunteering 2 or 3 shifts of 2 to 3 hours each week. To provide the 10 hours a day 40 hours a week 7 days a week service our community is accustomed to getting at their local public library, you're going to have to find some pretty robust retirees. Librarians have been fighting this stereotype for years, though, so it's really no surprise to see it cropping up again, only this time in response to the digital revolution.
I was intrigued with the title, "Fiction Reading Increases for Adults." It's true! The U.S. Census and Dana Gioia, who has headed up the BigRead for the past 6 years, both confirm that Americans are reading more! Even more astounding, the biggest increase has been in the 18-24 age group! Shall we attribute any credit to the advent of the graphic novel? Or the Manga craze? Oh wait, here's a clue: "Internet reading was included in the 2008 data."
This trend was reiterated in the article, "More American Adults Read Literature According to New NEA Study." This writer also notes that the U.S. population now breaks into two almost equally sized groups – readers and non-readers.
"Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?" attempts to distinguish between Internet reading and reading a book. The assertion is that Internet reading is easier, because you can search for your terms and retrieve your information in nuggets rather than read a constant stream of information, some of which will be irrelevant. Those of us who have survived college classes learned the art of retrieving nuggets of information a long time ago. One does not necessarily need to read the ENTIRE book to obtain the pertinent details. So what's new? Nothing, really. Reading is reading is reading.....etc. I personally believe that there is a place for both online information/reading as well as traditional reading from the book. If I'm trying to find out about a new concept I may search online to get the quickest and simplest idea of what it is. If it interests me, then I may opt to read about it in depth. I may even check out a book from my local library!
So next I tried DailyLit and I LOVED IT!!! I've had James Patterson's latest Cross Country on hold since January, and I'm still #15 in line. DailyLit gave me the first 5 pages for free, and it is as good as Patterson gets. Will I ever tire of Alex Cross? Probably not. I can purchase 159 installments (pages) for $9.99. After a little rush of excitement, however, disappointment came with the realization that some of my other favorite authors (Grisham, Connolly, Cornwell, Reichs) were not listed in DailyLit. I found three short stories by Poe in 7 installments for free, and posted this to my Facebook account. Then I took a couple of surveys and learned that my nickname should be PJ and I am lively, charming and usually the center of attention. Haha so you see how serious the Facebook crowd is?
Next I tried "What Should I Read Next?" After typing in Cross Country by James Patterson, I instantly retrieved a list of 10 books. The first on the list however was Janet Evanovich's Plum Spooky. Now I haven't read Plum Spooky, but my guess is that it's funny. James Patterson's books are never funny. Hmmmm. This deserves a closer look. Perhaps I'll read Plum Spooky and see if it's anything at all like Cross Country. To be continued....
Next I explored an online book club, Unbound Reader and BookGlutton. You can read a book online by yourself or along with others. You can make comments as you read the book, which can then be kept private or published and shared with others. If you choose to share your thoughts, others can comment back. Sound pretty interesting. I am interested in the comments option. But who will serve the cucumber sandwiches?
Next I tried BookVideos.tv and I also LOVED this one! I've always enjoyed meeting authors. This is the next best thing to meeting them in person. If my computer was able to play the entire video without stalling, that would be nice, too. Lucky for me I always have a book near the PC to read in case the program stalls. I learned this trick during a webinar that I took for library training. After spending the better part of an hour gazing at the frozen talking head of the workshop presenter, hoping the video would start rolling again, I decided never to put myself through that again. It's back up books for me!
The next thing I tried was Open Culture. Again, I LOVED it! There are free online courses here from prestigious universities like Yale, UC Berkeley and MIT. This is such a good deal, I posted it to my Facebook page. Hopefully some young friends will take advantage of this opportunity. There are also another 1/2 dozen more free Italian podcasts to be listened to. I will definitely be visiting this again. Remember, I'm still working on my Italian skills.
So just when I thought things couldn't possibly get any better, I find Bookbrowse! Readers' reviews and ratings, along with a short synopsis and thumbs up/down from the critics make this a wonderful source of reader's advisory. I've already placed two holds as a result of my short visit to this site. This should definitely be listed in the hotlinks from the library's webpage. Although I hesitate to give up my best reader's advisory friend NoveList, I am wondering if Bookbrowse is a worthy competitor!
I've been adding my own book reviews to MySpace for some time now. I feel very isolated, like maybe I'm the only one of the millions on this site who likes to read. So imagine how delighted I was to discover that Facebook has "Books We Read" for the readers among us. Awesome! I've signed up and listed 5 or 6 of my favorite books. We'll see where this leads.
Storyline is great!!! Real actors read children's books in streaming video. I have only just begun to explore this site. If it is as good as it appears to be, I will recommend it to my children and grandchildren, since I seem to recall that there are never enough adults around to read to kids when they are little!
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