January 2013

The bronze statue of a young boy dreamily gazing into the sky as he reads from a book in his lap was discovered missing on Thursday morning.

The statue has been stolen before and recovered.

Full article

Big Data is pushing into the humanities, as evidenced by new, illuminating computer analyses of literary history.

Full article

Emily Lloyd:…is the name of a brief slide deck & guest post I have up at Tame The Web, a kind of part two to an earlier guest post on tweeting libraries. I’ve embedded the slide deck below, too–please set it to full screen if you decide to view it.

I spent a lot of time on Twitter last year, not as myself, but as my library system*. This deck covers some of what I learned. I strongly urge tweeting libraries (and nonprofits, and small businesses, etc) to follow their patrons. Many don’t. It’s too big a missed opportunity not to mention.

The world is full of data — and that’s a problem. We have to find a place to store all those digital photos, tax records and unfinished novels. British scientists have demonstrated a possible solution: They’ve stored all of Shakespeare’s sonnets on several small stretches of DNA.

Full piece

And because I am who I am, it got me thinking about great movie library scenes that already exist. At first, I thought the list would be pretty short, but you know what? Hollywood loves a library. Some combination of ambiance, seclusion, hidden knowledge, and the sheer beauty of shelves upon shelves of books make libraries a fantastic film setting.

Here are my sixteen favorite:

Results of a recent Pew Research Study are reported in Publishers Weekly.

The singular most important finding in the latest Pew study, Library Services in the Digital Age, is that libraries—in the opinion of most Americans—aren’t just about books. 80% of U.S. residents say that lending books is a “very important” service, but they rate the help they get from reference librarians as equally important. And nearly the same number, 77%, reported that free access to technology and the Internet is also very important. This triumvirate—books, help, and technology—runs through the entire report.

Could the library brand—historically bound to book borrowing—be undergoing a transformation? In the last major study of users, OCLC’s Perception of Libraries, 2010, patrons were asked to associate the first thing that came to mind when they thought of libraries. And for 75% of the respondents, the answer was books. While Pew didn’t play the same association game, it seems that Pew’s users have a more nuanced take on the library’s role.

The Pew study is based on landline and cell phone interviews conducted in English and Spanish, with a nationally representative sample of 2,252 people ages 16 and older. It could be that the study tapped into a younger demographic who make greater use of library technology. Or perhaps the recession, which has forced millions to rediscover libraries, was a catalyst for users to take fuller advantage of what the library offers.

Copy of the results of this latest study here. According to the authors “Patrons embrace new technologies – and would welcome more. But many still want printed books to hold their central place.”

Piece on NPR: New Reading Standards Aim To Prep Kids For College — But At What Cost?

Atlantic article about David Coleman, one of the major people behind Common Core

Why one consumer has spent more on digital media in the last year than he used to spend on the physical stuff.

Excerpt: I am spending more on digital media than I used to spend on the physical stuff. (The federal government says the average American family spent $2,572 on all entertainment, not just digital, in 2011.) And I know why I am spending more on digital media.

Digital media, unlike its slow cousin, is immediate. In the past, if friends mentioned a good book they had just finished, people made a note (mental or on a scrap of paper) to pick it up during their next visit to the bookstore or library. The same went for other items like CDs, DVDs or magazines.

Full post

St. Paul Public Library’s “Read Brave” program is a One Read-like campaign with an added goal of youth empowerment. SPPL is encouraging teens to read A.S. King’s Everybody See The Ants–a YA novel addressing bullying–and to create art in response to it, in preparation for an author visit from King in late February. Bonus: participating teens get a chance to board Lady Gaga’s Born Brave tour bus, which will make a special stop before heading to her February 6th St. Paul concert.

Woodrow Hartzog and Evan Selinger:

Obscurity is the idea that when information is hard to obtain or understand, it is, to some degree, safe. Safety,here, doesn’t mean inaccessible. Competent and determined data hunters armed with the right tools can always find a way to get it. Less committed folks, however, experience great effort as a deterrent.

Online, obscurity is created through a combination of factors. Being invisible to search engines increases obscurity. So does using privacy settings and pseudonyms. Disclosing information in coded ways that only a limited audience will grasp enhances obscurity, too.