Some End-of-the-Year Reading

As a public service alternative to football games, here are a few end-of-the-year items of interest:

The 100 Essential Websites from the Guardian of London

How Google Changed the Game in 2009 from Smartware

Newspapers and Technology: Network Effects from The Economist

What Does it Mean to be Literate in the 21st Century? a video from bibliosmartgirl

Happy new year to all!

Seattle Tops List of Literate Cities

For the third time in five years, Seattle is the most literate large city in the United States (population 250,000 and above), according to Dr. John W. Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University.

Dr. Miller, working with the University’s Center for Public Policy and Social Research, looked at six key indicators of literacy – newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources (including number of libraries, volumes held, and circulation), periodical publishing, educational attainment, and Internet resources – to put together the ranking.

Rounding out the top ten are: Washington, DC; Minneapolis; Pittsburgh; Atlanta; Portland, OR; St. Paul; Boston; Cincinnati; and Denver. Detroit finished 51st of the 75 cities surveyed.

The top five cities in terms of libraries are Cleveland; St. Louis; Pittsburgh; Seattle; and Cincinnati.

Dr. Miller writes:

"For the 2009 edition, I also examined how well the most literate cities fared in other quality of life surveys. What I discovered is that quality tends to be associated with quality, and highly literate cities often rank high in other quality of life metrics.

Cities ranked in the top 10 most literate tend to offer the most active singles’ scenes (Boston, Seattle, Washington, and Atlanta), are safer (Minneapolis, Boston, Seattle, Portland, Denver, and Cincinnati), more walk-able (Seattle, Washington, DC, Portland, Boston, and Denver), and healthier (Washington, DC and Denver).

They are not, however, immune to financial hard times: only #2 Washington DC has even relatively low unemployment."

[via EarlyWord]

People of the Screen?

Maybe the question shouldn't be "Are we killing books?" but "Are we killing reading?"

This wonderfully in-depth column on implications of our new media and its impact on the mundane task of reading is thought-provoking. We've been debating a bit here in the Tech Center about the differences in reading online versus the printed page and I think this column makes a very persuasive case that we're underestimating the risk of something very basic as we plunge ahead in our love affair with technology with a seemingly tacit acceptance that any change is good change. Things change. People evolve. Get used to it. I find this attitude, especially in a library, to be rather odd and this really gets to the heart of my side of the argument.

From the column:

How strategic and targeted are we when we read on the screen? In a commissioned report published by the British Library in January 2008 (the cover of which features a rather alarming picture of a young boy with a maniacal expression staring at a screen image of Darth Vader), researchers found that everyone, teachers and students alike, “exhibits a bouncing/flicking behavior, which sees them searching horizontally rather than vertically....Users are promiscuous, diverse, and volatile.” As for the kind of reading the study participants were doing online, it was qualitatively different from traditional literacy. “It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense, indeed there are signs that new forms of ‛reading’ are emerging as users ‛power browse’ horizontally through titles, contents pages, and abstracts going for quick wins.” As the report’s authors concluded, with a baffling ingenuousness, “It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.”

I think there is a legitimate point here. Now I wouldn't argue that reading online (if that's what we can call it) is bad, just very different. And hopefully in some ways it's better. But I would argue that clearly, in some very specific ways, it's worse. Much worse.

Take the time read the full column. Hopefully it will create a good debate.