Thing #20 begins "With all the emphasis for online tools for learning and socializing in the library, what has happened to the book?" After the shock and trauma of Thing #19, that's exactly what I was thinking.
Before coming to work for the Library District, I worked in a bookstore for seven years. Prior to that, I was an English major with a concentration in creative writing. I'm a novelist.
Books are the whole reason I work at the Library. They are the sun around which my world revolves.
I recognize on a professional level the tremendous importance of the public library as a citizens' forum and community center, where people meet to socialize, discuss, and learn.
However, neither individual nor group interaction are appetites that libraries satisfy for me on a personal level. For me, libraries are all about books.
FUTURE OF THE BOOK
I found the FotB blog extremely interesting. It hadn't occurred to me that anyone was seriously advocating doing away with print media--for all the many reasons mentioned in FotB's blogposts.
I added the RSS feed for FotB to my Bloglines account and feel inordinately proud of myself. See? Library 2.0 is already sinking in. I am learning.
LITERACY DEBATE: ONLINE R U REALLY READING?
Interesting article. As a kid, I can remember reading cereal boxes, toothpaste tubes, magazines, comic books, and numerous instruction manuals for appliances my parents couldn't seem to wrap their minds around. I also watched quite a bit of television.
Adults sagely informed me that all these activities would rot my brain, lower my self-esteem, and result in physical ailments of every kind. Hairy knuckles and spinal degeneration were favorite predictions.
Unicorns do not have knuckles. My brain, spine, and self-esteem all appeared in good enough shape to me.
So I just ignored my elders, who didn't seem to be doing nearly enough reading themselves. Unicorns hunger for knowledge. Any kind of reading is fun to us.
I'm therefore not sure I can get all that alarmed over self-motivated kids reading six hours a day on the Internet.
I found the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus webpage hysterically funny, and the one on sasquatch even funnier. I wonder how many adults would have been similarly taken in had they encountered the same spurious information in print?
Perhaps a similar percentage of the population to that which read Midnight, The National Enquirer, and The Star--or checks out from the public library nonfiction works on UFOs, Bigfoot, and . . . um . . . unicorns.
I hadn't previously considered the keyword searchability of the Internet to be a research aid for the dyslexic, but I see now how that could be. Most keyword searches bold the word searched as it appears in the found text, which doubtless also helps.
FICTION READING INCREASES FOR ADULTS
I guess I'm supposed to feel encouraged that more adults reported reading something--anything--in the last 12 months, but I find the statistics depressing.
The slight upturn isn't much, and only about half the adults surveyed admit to having read any sort of traditional work of literature (novel, short story, poem, or play) over the last year.
It saddens me to think how many people don't seem to share my love of reading. Reading's so enjoyable to me, I can't imagine going a whole year--much less even a day--between reads.
NEA REPORT READING ON THE RISE
This article was basically a reiteration of the information contained in the New York Times article above. I was quite interested in the statistics on the more dramatic increase in teen reading than that among adults.
To hear NEA tell it, their Big Read, Poetry Out Loud, and other initiatives were key factors in the turnaround. Supportive as I am of the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm a bit skeptical.
The Harry Potter and Twilight phenomena were much more widespread, touching many more teens. I tend to think that it was these and other popular fiction works that made a more significant contribution to the upturn.
HOW LIBRARIES CAN SURVIVE IN THE NEW MEDIA ECOSYSTEM
Overall, I like the points this PowerPoint presentation made. For example, that in the Information Age, information has become abundant, cheap, personally oriented, and designed for participation.
Also, the 10 fundamental ways in which the information ecosystem has changed:
1) The volume of information has grown.
2) The variety of information has changed.
3) The velocity of information has increased.
4) Venues and availability of information have expanded.
5) People's attention spans have both truncated and elongated.
6) Media environments have become compelling places to hang out and interact.
7) Better searching and customization have improved the relevance of information.
8) Information has democratized, enhancing the visibility of its new creators.
9) Voting and venting about information has proliferated with tagging, rating, etc.
10) Social networks have changed the structure of friendship.
I especially like Lee Rainie's recommendations for how libraries can leverage these changes to reach their patron base and remain relevant:
1) Be findable and available.
2) Become a news node and information hub.
3) Emulate social networks.
4) Build social capital using links.
5) Use Web 2.0 applications.
6) Solicit feedback.
7) Demonstrate how well we are paying attention.
8) Help patrons master the new literacies:
a) Graphic
b) Navigation
c) Context
d) Focus
e) Skepticism
f) Ethics
g) Personal
KINDLE 2
I have to say that when the original version of Kindle hit the market a year or two ago, I took a look at it, but concluded that it was too bulky, heavy, and that the text resolution was not sharp enough.
The new Kindle looks better. Sleaker, slimmer, more streamlined, lighter weight. The text resolution on the grayscale screen looks sharper. Text size is adjustable.
I wonder if you can turn the screen sideways to enable it to be enlarged a little further? That would be a nice feature.
The attribute that appeals the most to me is text-to-speech, enabling the reader to switch from visual text to audiobook format. This is something I've been interested in for years.
The $359 price tag is awfully steep. Reading matter is limited, especially for those of us on the long tail who are not always interested in the latest bestsellers.
It's also expensive. I'd have to see the cost of downloads cut in half before I could seriously consider a Kindle for myself. It's an interesting concept, though.
I wonder if Kindle has any plans to come out with a color screen and the ability to play video for its Kindle 3? Multimedia capability would definitely up my interest and make me willing to reconsider the steep pricetag.
KINDLE IN LIBRARIES
I think if Amazon will allow libraries to lend Kindles to the public, the practice will give their product a great boost in popularity.
I know that I myself might be much more interested in a Kindle if I had the opportunity to check it out myself before having to make a purchasing decision.
Being highly tactile, I prefer a test drive if at all possible. Does the item feel right? That's an important question for me that cannot be answered except by a hooves-on demonstration.
If the Kindle feels better than expected, that might go a long way toward ameliorating my hesitation to drop $359 on a Kindle.
A MOMENTARY COMPLAINT
I notice that Thing #20 consists of 6 articles to read and 8 categories of book-related online tools to sample. It has taken me several hours to finish reading and blogging about the 6 articles. I wonder how long it will take me to do the 8 mandatory categories? (There are two optional ones as well.)
If I were in charge of designing 23 Things, I would divide Thing #20 into half a dozen or more individual Things, each of which would take about 45 minutes to an hour to complete.
Designing a Thing that takes hours and hours to get through is setting participants up for failure. Staff in my own Departments have been asked to schedule no more than two hours of work time per week on 23 Things.
I have heard of similar time limits being observed by other Departments.
Making Things too time-consuming invites cheating. Not everyone is willing to devote their days off to this venture.
Nor is everyone willing to put in the time necessary to form even a nodding acquaintance with the material.
In this unicorn's humble opinion, 23 Things should not be encouraging its participants to give this ostensibly vital training only a quick skim. Cursory participation is unlikely to produce deep or lasting results.
BOOKS ON YOUR PHONE: TWITTERLIT
TwitterLit looked like fun. I love reading the first lines of novels. I added the RSS feed to my Bloglines account.
READERS ADVISORY: BOOKTRAILS
BookTrails looked interesting. The trails I followed were "Great Readalouds for Kids 5 - 6," "Fantasy Wonderland," "Great Fantasy Series," "Books I Have Read and Would Read Again," and "Fantasy / SciFi."
ONLINE BOOK COMMUNITIES: OVERBOOKED
I took a turn through Overbooked's 2008 and 2009 Speculative Fiction lists. This website has possibilities. I'll be back.
BOOK GROUP RESOURCES: LIT LOVERS
I chose to explore LitLovers for my book group resource. The sections of the site most interesting to me were the LitLoversBlog (I visited LibrarianInBlack.net) and the LitCourse Catalogue.
AUDIOBOOKS: LIBRIVOX
Librivox's ambition to record all public domain books as audiobooks using volunteers strikes me as innovative and admirable.
I wish their site contained an audio sample that didn't involve downloading. I don't have time at the moment to download one of their books in order to check out the quality.
Whether or not this free service catches on will almost certainly depend on the quality of its volunteer narrators.
Audiobook listeners--myself included--are very picky about narrators. We want to hear the book read well. Mediocre is not good enough. Reading aloud skillfully is an art.
BOOK REVIEWS: BOOKBROWSE
A quick foray through BookBrowse's "SciFi / Fantasy / Alternate History" list (found under "Book Themes" on the "Find a Book" tab) showed me that this is a site I'll be back to visit.
The titles listed on this list were definitely my type of reading. I think this will be a good place to get suggestions on what to read next.
BOOK RENTAL: BOOKSFREE
I was disappointed that BooksFree wasn't actually a free service. Only the shipping is free. Still, that's something. The selection looked good, especially in the fantasy / scifi audiobooks--but the pricepoint is still too high.
The basic plans (one item at a time) were restrictive, the more liberal plans (multiple items) expensive. The audiobook rentals were costly even at the basic level.
However, because for most of its plans BooksFree has no time limit for borrowers (in other words, no due date: just return items when finished), it occurs to me that a family, book club, or group of friends with similar reading tastes might be able to pool their resources, all chip in to purchase a high-end plan, then pass the books or disks around among members of the group before returning them.
Such a plan would drop the price far below the basic rate of one-at-a-time audiobooks for $22.95 per month. Six people could share six audiobooks and, by splitting the six-at-a-time cost (of $62.9 per month) only pay $10.42 per month individually.
That works out to six times the number of audiobooks as the basic service for less than half the cost. Not bad, provided you and your group could agree on what to order.
FACEBOOK: GOODREADS
Since I'm already a member of GoodReads, I decided to add my GoodReads bookshelf to my Facebook account. I did so and invited 5 friends to exchange book reviews with me.
FORGING AHEAD
I'm embarrassed how many hours I spent on this Thing. I reiterate my protest about better Thing design being needed. These Things are taking much, much too long.
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