LISNews: Librarian News

A favorite site of mine is wordsmith, and the e-mail advisory 'a word a day' by Anu Garg.

This week's words are all book-related, as next week is TV turn-off week. Here's what webmaster Anu says in today's e-mail:

So many channels, so little worth watching! Do you sometimes find yourself muttering those words? Next week is TV Turnoff Week
so give that TV a well-deserved rest, and instead say: So many books worth
reading, so little time!

People in the US watch TV for more than four hours a day. That's equivalent to sitting in front of a TV for two full months nonstop every year. It's not for nothing that TV has been called the plug-in drug, the boob tube, and the idiot box. For more, see : factsheets and research.

It's time to redefine television, from Greek tele- (far) + Latin vision- (view), as something that deserved to be seen far, far away. Instead, get
closer to books. Cut your screen time and increase your page time. This week we'll explore a few words from the world of books.

Today's word is

belles-lettres (bel-LET-ruh). noun;

Literary works valued for their aesthetic qualities rather than
information or instruction.

Subscribe for yourself or your entire library at wordsmith.

C. Miller writes "

MANY Brazilians cannot read. In 2000, a quarter of those aged 15 and older were functionally illiterate. Many simply do not want to. Only one literate adult in three reads books. The average Brazilian reads 1.8 non-academic books a year;less than half the figure in Europe and the United States. In a recent survey of reading habits, Brazilians came 27th out of 30 countries, spending 5.2 hours a week with a book. Argentines, their neighbours, ranked 18th. More here: More at economist.com"

Anonymous Patron writes " New York Times: Beginning in the early 1990's, schools, libraries and governments embraced the Internet as the long promised portal to information access for all. And at the heart of their hopes for a cultural and educational breakthrough were superbly efficient search engines like Google and those of its rivals Yahoo and MSN. The new search engines not only find more, they are more likely to present usable information on the first screen.

Higher education is fighting back. Librarians are teaching "information literacy" and establishing alternative Web indexes. Graduate students, in the front lines as teaching assistants, are starting to discuss joining Wikipedia rather than fighting it, as many instructors still, quixotically, do."

The BBC Reports Schools spend more than five times as much on computer-based resources as on books, an analysis suggests. The figures, reported by the Times Educational Supplement, also suggest schools spend two and a half times more money on exam fees than on books.

Ministers said numeracy and literacy hours had led to a rise in standards.