Books and Literacy in the Digital Age Article Thoughts

As you have surely read now, as a part of my ALA membership, I get the American Libraries magazine every month. While in Lubbock, I finished up the latest (August 2010) issue, and had some thoughts on one of the articles:

Books and Literacy in the Digital Age, by Ralph Raab

I must admit that I, like the author, have a love for the physical book - so much so that we have 274 books in our library at this time. I think the only e-books we have are the ones that came free with our iPad. I love them for many reasons that Raab mentions (as so many others before him have mentioned) but the best thing about a book to me is the reading experience. Not holding a book, or how it smells, but how the text is highly readable on the page in most any lighting conditions. In addition, a book (with some effort) will always "be there" meaning that in 200 years, one can still access and use the majority of books we have today - but the digital nature of e-books does not hold the same guarantee.

National Ranching Heritage Center

Jen and I recently went up to visit the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, Texas. I had been only as a child, and I remembered what a neat place it was. It was even better as an adult - here are some of my photos from the day:

The New Yorker, August 2, 2010

As usual, here is my post about this week's New Yorker. Enjoy!

Is Information More Valid in Print?

Most every morning I wake up, brew a pot of coffee, and check up on the news with the New York Times on the iPad, and I might look at the NYT crossword on my iPhone. I usually won't start the crossword until after my first cup of coffee, so I am a bit sharper. My news primarily comes from electronic resources, although Jen and I recently discussed subscribing to the Times daily delivery. (Man, that's expensive!) In the online content of the Times earlier this week, I read this article about the perception of printed versus electronically delivered news:

Bits: Readers Are Abandoning Print, Yet Don't Trust the Web, by Claire Cain Miller

This article raised the question in my mind: Why do readers see print sources (books, papers, magazines, etc) as being more authoritative over the same content found online? Take, for example, this quote from the article:

The New Yorker, July 26, 2010

Apparently, The New Yorker is slow in getting these to me, so much so that I received two issues in the same week. Oh, well. So, following the format I set here, I'll share with you my reading in this issue.

Some Short Personal Updates

Readers,

I just wanted to share with you some updates on a variety of things. First, my brother Zach came to visit, which was fun! We all had a great time, and I made a video of some of the things we did. Check it out:

Libraries and Infographics

So, I'll just come right out and say it: libraries need more cool infographics. To be fair, I didn't really know what an infographic was until recently. Our GOOD magazines actually have a fair number of them, as does Dwell, but I didn't know they had a name until I started using the Flipbook app on our iPad extensively. If (like I was until recently) you are unaware of what an infographic is, check out this handy article on the source of all of mankind's knowledge, Wikipedia:

"Information graphics." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.