Month: January 2014

E-Reading Still On the Rise

Via Digital Bookworld, Pew Research finds that E-Reading Is Still On the Rise:

More Americans own a dedicated e-reading device like a Kindle Paperwhite or Kobo Aura HD than ever before, according to new data from the Pew Internet & American Life project.

This despite flat sales growth for e-reader sales in the U.S. overall as more Americans opt for cheap, multipurpose devices like tablet computers instead.

At the same time, the proportion of Americans who have read an e-book last year has increased to 28% from 23% a year ago.

Some nifty charts there, so well worth taking a look.  Most readers are apparently like me, not dedicated to one way of reading, but jumping from printed books to ebooks to audio books depending on the needs of the moment.

Library Journal apparently has a fuller take on the Pew poll.

Library Funding Nationwide on the Rebound

From Library Journal:

While every library hopes to see good news for its budget, of late, many will happily settle for no bad news. The year 2012 was marked by modest gains in library budgets and a stemming of the bleeding caused by cuts in the wake of the collapse of the financial sector and accompanying recession. As the economy continues its slow recovery, libraries, too, are managing to claw back some of the losses they’ve been asked to endure over the past few years. While gains are being made, though, they’re small ones and often hard fought … [Read the rest of “The Road Back” at Library Journal.]

As the United States economy slowly, painfully, grudgingly pulls itself out of its economic doldrums, it’s nice to see libraries on the rebound.  While there’s a common sentiment out there among the bubble-living punditry that libraries are an unnecessary expense in a digital age, the truth is that libraries have never been more popular.  While the U.S. Congress comes in at a 12 percent approval rating in a recent poll, libraries rank at an astonishing 94 percent! Higher than apple pie!

Do libraries need to adapt?  Sure.  Are they going away?  Apparently, not before apple pie.

Ebooks Are to Printed Books as Airplanes Are to Bicycles

“Kevin Kelly is not a dumb guy — far from it actually. As the founding executive editor of Wired and one of the people who helped build The Well, among the earliest online communities, he has done a good job of seeing what is coming next for decades.

But last year, he had what sounded to me like a dumb idea. Mr. Kelly edits and owns Cool Tools, a website that writes about neat stuff and makes small money off referral revenue from Amazon when people proceed to buy some of those things. He decided to edit the thousands of reviews that had accrued over the last 10 years into a self-published print catalog — also called “Cool Tools” — which he would then sell for $39.99 …”  [Read the rest of “Print Settles into Its Niches” at The New York Times.]

The whole article is worth reading, but I’m not sure why it surprises people so much, even considering the book’s subject matter.  The printed book is a pretty remarkable device:  cheap, portable, disposable if need be, and human-powered.  On top of that, they often have great aesthetic value.  Ebooks are great.  I love them.  But they’re just another mode of conveying information.  The Wright Brothers, who made their early mark manufacturing bicycles, may have launched the greatest technology disrupter of all time with the airplane, but bicycles didn’t go away.  Sometimes a bicycle is just a better way to get around.

The Amazon of Higher Education

“Five years ago, Southern New Hampshire University was a 2,000-student private school struggling against declining enrollment, poor name recognition, and teetering finances.  Today, it’s the Amazon.com of higher education. The school’s burgeoning online division has 180 different programs with an enrollment of 34,000.”  Read the rest of “The Amazon of Higher Education” at Slate.com.

I spend most of my waking hours (and I suppose a fair amount of my sleeping hours too) inhabiting two worlds that have both been heavily disrupted by technology:  1) writing and publishing, and 2) higher education.   SNH provides a road map for how even smaller universities can bet big on online education and reap huge dividends.  There will always be a place for the traditional, straight-out-high-school, student — trust me, no parent wants their kids going to college in their basements — but focusing exclusively on those students is almost always going to be a losing proposition.  Just as in publishing, it’s critical to a book’s survival to have that book available in as many formats and markets as possible, higher education must deliver learning to as many different groups (eighteen-year-olds, working adults, long distance learners) and in as many different formats (face-to-face, online, hybrid) to ensure their long-term success.  Public universities may not be able to turn the corner as fast as a private institution like Southern New Hampshire, but that’s all the more reason not to delay.