The new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary will be online-only. Many of its rivals – Collins, Chambers et al - have already launched free web versions. But which one is the wordsmith's best friend?
by: Aida Edermariam
Sad news for those of us with fond memories of long minutes lost in the more arcane histories of English words: the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which a team of 80 lexicographers has been working on since 1989, will probably never be printed. "The print dictionary market is just disappearing," Oxford University Press CEO Nigel Portwood told a Sunday newspaper. It will still be available online – in fact, in December, the web version is being relaunched, including for the first time the historical thesaurus of the OED, which contains almost every word in English from Old English to the present. The problem is that it is a tad pricey: £7 plus VAT for a week's access; £205 plus VAT for a year. Luckily, there are alternatives:
Collins
This paper's preferred arbiter, in its print version, the pocket version is available free online – though, it must be said, boasting some rather confusing orthography. The second entry for the word "help", for example, reads "2. to contribute to, to help Latin America's economies" – some italics, or brackets, or bold letters would help. You can buy a 1,888-page hard copy for £70, or download it for a mere £9.99.
Chambers
The Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, with its 75,000 words and phrases and 110,000 definitions, is free online. This is much more presentable, with quite satisfying lists of definitions, and examples of the word in context. A little bit of etymology, too. Chambers is not, however, accepting new subscribers to the full shebang – 170,000 words and phrases and 270,000 definitions. The 1,871-page print version sells for £40.
Macmillan
The definitions are short and to the point, with no information about sources or background (though there are sample phrases, and a direct link to a thesaurus). It also lets you submit words of your own, and gives you the option of British or American English. Macmillan's particular wheeze, useful to learners of English, is to highlight the 7,500 core, high-frequency words in the English language: three-star words are the most frequent; one-star words less so. It's free online, but you'll pay £24 for a hard copy.
OneLook
A real discovery, this online site trawls 18,967,499 words in 1,060 different dictionaries – all the major English ones, but also dictionaries for specific subjects (business, art, medicine) or languages. You can customise your search – only in slang, for example; compare entries in different dictionaries; do a wildcard search (asterisks, hashtags or @ symbols account for the characters you can't remember), or a reverse search (type in "being tried twice for the same crime", for "double jeopardy", for example). It doesn't, however, link to a Scrabble dictionary, which some might feel is an important omission.
from: Guardian
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Authors join forces to defend public lending right
Authors including AS Byatt, David Almond and Ali Smith have signed a petition calling on the government not to cut PLR, which gives authors 6p each time one of their books is borrowed from a public library.
by: Alison Flood
Nearly 3,000 authors are calling on the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, not to cut back on the money they receive when their books are loaned from a library, a "significant" part of income for many struggling writers.
Well-known literary names including AS Byatt, Hari Kunzru, Tom Holland, Carol Drinkwater, John Siddique, Marina Warner, David Almond, Victoria Glendinning, Malorie Blackman, Patrick Ness, Sadie Jones, Ali Smith, Geraldine McCaughrean and hundreds of others have put their names to a petition entreating the government not to make the public lending right (PLR) scheme – which gives authors 6p each time one of their books is borrowed from a public library – part of the widespread spending cuts this autumn.
"While accepting that DCMS [Department for Culture, Media and Sport] has been instructed to reduce its budget, we ask the secretary of state, Jeremy Hunt, to recognise that the £7.5m spent on PLR gives effect to a legal right and is not a subsidy. It provides working writers with a modest income when their books are read by library users free of charge. PLR is particularly important to authors whose books are sold mainly to libraries and to those whose books are no longer in print but are still being used," the authors say. "Most [authors] struggle to make ends meet. PLR provides a significant and much-valued part of authors' incomes ... Any reduction in PLR will have an immediate and detrimental effect on the 'front line' payments to authors."
With new signatures being added to the petition every day, it will be delivered to Hunt, and to culture minister Ed Vaizey, at the end of the summer.
Award-winning crime writer Penny Grubb, chair of the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society – which is hosting the petition – hopes the initiative will "make a real difference".
"The spending review will be a dog fight," she said. "PLR funding mustn't be seen as an easy target. A well-supported petition to protect PLR funding will provide evidence to strengthen the hand of those who support it in the spending review; it will be a measure of the importance of this funding to writers."
Grubb points to the fact that it is not only bestselling books by the likes of Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown that do well in libraries: less familiar names including saga writers Anna Jacobs, Katie Flynn, Rosie Harris and Lyn Andrews, and children's authors Ian Whybrow, Fiona Watt and Jeanne Willis, all featured in the top 50 most borrowed authors last year.
"For many writers PLR payments are a substantial part of their annual income and exceed their income from primary sales," said Grubb. "With average earnings for writers so low, and with such a short shelf life for books in shops these days, PLR income for many writers is a vital part of their take-home pay."
Bestselling romantic comedy author Trisha Ashley agreed. "When I think of some of the elderly novelists who rely on their PLR payments, it makes my blood boil," she said. "For many authors it is a large and hugely important part of their income and this especially applies to the many excellent authors who are hugely popular in libraries, but who do not get published in mass market paperback."
The mean average income for an author in the UK was £16,531 in 2007, according to a survey carried out that year by the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, which also revealed that the bottom 50% of authors earn less than 10% of total income.
"Squeezing the authors, on whose backs the huge publishing industry rests, has to be an entirely daft idea," said Ashley. "My books may be out there in the supermarkets and bookshops, but I still want them to be available to those who can't afford to buy them, or want to read them in large print. And for that reason and to support the many friends I have whose main source of income is PLR, I signed the form and would be prepared to march with banners, lobby parliament, or do whatever else it takes to keep this vital payment at at least the same level."
The petition is also supported by the Society of Authors and the Royal Society of Literature.
From: Guardian
by: Alison Flood
Nearly 3,000 authors are calling on the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, not to cut back on the money they receive when their books are loaned from a library, a "significant" part of income for many struggling writers.
Well-known literary names including AS Byatt, Hari Kunzru, Tom Holland, Carol Drinkwater, John Siddique, Marina Warner, David Almond, Victoria Glendinning, Malorie Blackman, Patrick Ness, Sadie Jones, Ali Smith, Geraldine McCaughrean and hundreds of others have put their names to a petition entreating the government not to make the public lending right (PLR) scheme – which gives authors 6p each time one of their books is borrowed from a public library – part of the widespread spending cuts this autumn.
"While accepting that DCMS [Department for Culture, Media and Sport] has been instructed to reduce its budget, we ask the secretary of state, Jeremy Hunt, to recognise that the £7.5m spent on PLR gives effect to a legal right and is not a subsidy. It provides working writers with a modest income when their books are read by library users free of charge. PLR is particularly important to authors whose books are sold mainly to libraries and to those whose books are no longer in print but are still being used," the authors say. "Most [authors] struggle to make ends meet. PLR provides a significant and much-valued part of authors' incomes ... Any reduction in PLR will have an immediate and detrimental effect on the 'front line' payments to authors."
With new signatures being added to the petition every day, it will be delivered to Hunt, and to culture minister Ed Vaizey, at the end of the summer.
Award-winning crime writer Penny Grubb, chair of the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society – which is hosting the petition – hopes the initiative will "make a real difference".
"The spending review will be a dog fight," she said. "PLR funding mustn't be seen as an easy target. A well-supported petition to protect PLR funding will provide evidence to strengthen the hand of those who support it in the spending review; it will be a measure of the importance of this funding to writers."
Grubb points to the fact that it is not only bestselling books by the likes of Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown that do well in libraries: less familiar names including saga writers Anna Jacobs, Katie Flynn, Rosie Harris and Lyn Andrews, and children's authors Ian Whybrow, Fiona Watt and Jeanne Willis, all featured in the top 50 most borrowed authors last year.
"For many writers PLR payments are a substantial part of their annual income and exceed their income from primary sales," said Grubb. "With average earnings for writers so low, and with such a short shelf life for books in shops these days, PLR income for many writers is a vital part of their take-home pay."
Bestselling romantic comedy author Trisha Ashley agreed. "When I think of some of the elderly novelists who rely on their PLR payments, it makes my blood boil," she said. "For many authors it is a large and hugely important part of their income and this especially applies to the many excellent authors who are hugely popular in libraries, but who do not get published in mass market paperback."
The mean average income for an author in the UK was £16,531 in 2007, according to a survey carried out that year by the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, which also revealed that the bottom 50% of authors earn less than 10% of total income.
"Squeezing the authors, on whose backs the huge publishing industry rests, has to be an entirely daft idea," said Ashley. "My books may be out there in the supermarkets and bookshops, but I still want them to be available to those who can't afford to buy them, or want to read them in large print. And for that reason and to support the many friends I have whose main source of income is PLR, I signed the form and would be prepared to march with banners, lobby parliament, or do whatever else it takes to keep this vital payment at at least the same level."
The petition is also supported by the Society of Authors and the Royal Society of Literature.
From: Guardian
Sunday, August 29, 2010
E-Books Make Readers Less Isolated
by: Austin Considine
VOLUMES have been written about technology’s ability to connect people. But burying one’s nose in a book has always been somewhat isolating — with its unspoken assertion that the reader does not want to be disturbed. So what about a device that occupies the evolving intersection between?
“Strangers constantly ask about it,” Michael Hughes, a communications associate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said of his iPad, which he uses to read a mix of novels and nonfiction. “It’s almost like having a new baby.” An iPad owner for four months, Mr. Hughes said people were much more likely to approach him now than when he toted a book. “People approach me and ask to see it, to touch it, how much I like it,” he said. “That rarely happens with dead-tree books.”
With the price of e-readers coming down, sales of the flyweight devices are rising. Last month, Amazon reported that so far this year, Kindle sales had tripled over last year’s. When Amazon cut Kindle’s price in June to $189 from $259, over the next month Amazon sold 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers.
Social mores surrounding the act of reading alone in public may be changing along with increased popularity. Suddenly, the lone, unapproachable reader at the corner table seems less alone. Given that some e-readers can display books while connecting online, there’s a chance the erstwhile bookworm is already plugged into a conversation somewhere, said Paul Levinson, professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University.
“I think, historically, there has been a stigma attached to the bookworm, and that actually came from the not-untrue notion that, if you were reading, you weren’t socializing with other people,” Dr. Levinson said. “But the e-reader changes that also because e-readers are intrinsically connected to bigger systems.” For many, e-readers are today’s must-have accessory, eroding old notions of what being bookish might have meant. “Buying literature has become cool again,” he said.
Debra Jaliman, a dermatologist in Manhattan, said that she believed technology like her iPad, which she uses to read everything from newspapers to novels, had helped banish social stigmas about reading alone in public.
“There may once have been a slight stigma about people reading alone, but I think that it no longer exists because of the advancement of our current technology,” she said. “We are in a high-tech era and the sleekness and portability of the iPad erases any negative notions or stigmas associated with reading alone.”
Not everyone agrees that e-readers have made the people reading them more approachable. In fact, the opposite may be true in some cases. Jenny Block, a Dallas-based writer and sex columnist, said that she thought her Kindle was a stronger pre-emptive rebuff than a book. “I think the Kindle sends the imperative ‘I’m busy, please don’t disturb me’ message when you are traveling on a plane or eating in a restaurant or relaxing at a resort,” she said, adding that the last book she read on her Kindle was “Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality.”
“And that’s a good thing,” she said of the Kindle’s imperative. “It says, ‘I’m used to doing this, don’t pity me.’ ”
From: NYTimes
VOLUMES have been written about technology’s ability to connect people. But burying one’s nose in a book has always been somewhat isolating — with its unspoken assertion that the reader does not want to be disturbed. So what about a device that occupies the evolving intersection between?
“Strangers constantly ask about it,” Michael Hughes, a communications associate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said of his iPad, which he uses to read a mix of novels and nonfiction. “It’s almost like having a new baby.” An iPad owner for four months, Mr. Hughes said people were much more likely to approach him now than when he toted a book. “People approach me and ask to see it, to touch it, how much I like it,” he said. “That rarely happens with dead-tree books.”
With the price of e-readers coming down, sales of the flyweight devices are rising. Last month, Amazon reported that so far this year, Kindle sales had tripled over last year’s. When Amazon cut Kindle’s price in June to $189 from $259, over the next month Amazon sold 180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers.
Social mores surrounding the act of reading alone in public may be changing along with increased popularity. Suddenly, the lone, unapproachable reader at the corner table seems less alone. Given that some e-readers can display books while connecting online, there’s a chance the erstwhile bookworm is already plugged into a conversation somewhere, said Paul Levinson, professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University.
“I think, historically, there has been a stigma attached to the bookworm, and that actually came from the not-untrue notion that, if you were reading, you weren’t socializing with other people,” Dr. Levinson said. “But the e-reader changes that also because e-readers are intrinsically connected to bigger systems.” For many, e-readers are today’s must-have accessory, eroding old notions of what being bookish might have meant. “Buying literature has become cool again,” he said.
Debra Jaliman, a dermatologist in Manhattan, said that she believed technology like her iPad, which she uses to read everything from newspapers to novels, had helped banish social stigmas about reading alone in public.
“There may once have been a slight stigma about people reading alone, but I think that it no longer exists because of the advancement of our current technology,” she said. “We are in a high-tech era and the sleekness and portability of the iPad erases any negative notions or stigmas associated with reading alone.”
Not everyone agrees that e-readers have made the people reading them more approachable. In fact, the opposite may be true in some cases. Jenny Block, a Dallas-based writer and sex columnist, said that she thought her Kindle was a stronger pre-emptive rebuff than a book. “I think the Kindle sends the imperative ‘I’m busy, please don’t disturb me’ message when you are traveling on a plane or eating in a restaurant or relaxing at a resort,” she said, adding that the last book she read on her Kindle was “Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality.”
“And that’s a good thing,” she said of the Kindle’s imperative. “It says, ‘I’m used to doing this, don’t pity me.’ ”
From: NYTimes
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Harry Potter course to be offered at Durham University
Module will focus on 'social, cultural and educational context,' but no word on whether Expelliarmus will be applied to students with poor grades.
by: Alison Flood
There'll be no flying lessons, potions or defence-against-the-dark-arts classes, but Harry Potter fans at Durham University have the option of a course on the adventures of the boy wizard.
Around 70 of Durham's undergraduates have already signed up to the module Harry Potter and the Age of Illusion, which will be offered for the first time this autumn as part of the university's Education Studies BA degree.
Thought to be the first course in the UK focusing on the works of JK Rowling, the module will require undergraduates to set the series "in its social, cultural and educational context and understand some of the reasons for its popularity", and to consider Harry Potter's relevance to today's education system.
The registrar of Durham University, Carolyn Fowler, called it a "serious but innovative" academic module. "A huge amount of work has gone into developing it, and we are extremely excited to be offering it as a study option to our undergraduate students, who have already expressed a high level of interest," she said.
Rowling published the first Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in 1997. The seven-book series about the adventures of the boy wizard has gone on to sell more than 400m copies around the world, and has been the subject of PhDs and academic conferences. Fowler, however, believes the Durham course is "the first, or among the first, module of its kind in a UK university".
Exploring issues such as "prejudice and intolerance, peer pressure, good citizenship and ideals of adulthood, [as well as] ways in which the Harry Potter series has helped to rebrand Britain", the course has been reviewed and approved by the faculty's teaching and learning committee.
"Harry Potter is a culturally iconic phenomenon and has already been the subject of many well-regarded academic studies over recent years, so it is only fitting that a leading university like Durham responds to new developments in our academic and wider social and cultural environment in developing new modules like this," said Fowler.
There is no word yet about whether Durham will be joining the International Quidditch Association, which counts more than 400 colleges and 300 high schools among its members, the vast majority of which are from the US.
The game differs from the fictional version in that its participants are unable to fly; instead they run with their broomsticks held between their legs. With a fourth annual world cup set to be held in New York this November, perhaps Durham's undergraduates are in with a chance.
From: Guardian
by: Alison Flood
There'll be no flying lessons, potions or defence-against-the-dark-arts classes, but Harry Potter fans at Durham University have the option of a course on the adventures of the boy wizard.Around 70 of Durham's undergraduates have already signed up to the module Harry Potter and the Age of Illusion, which will be offered for the first time this autumn as part of the university's Education Studies BA degree.
Thought to be the first course in the UK focusing on the works of JK Rowling, the module will require undergraduates to set the series "in its social, cultural and educational context and understand some of the reasons for its popularity", and to consider Harry Potter's relevance to today's education system.
The registrar of Durham University, Carolyn Fowler, called it a "serious but innovative" academic module. "A huge amount of work has gone into developing it, and we are extremely excited to be offering it as a study option to our undergraduate students, who have already expressed a high level of interest," she said.
Rowling published the first Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in 1997. The seven-book series about the adventures of the boy wizard has gone on to sell more than 400m copies around the world, and has been the subject of PhDs and academic conferences. Fowler, however, believes the Durham course is "the first, or among the first, module of its kind in a UK university".
Exploring issues such as "prejudice and intolerance, peer pressure, good citizenship and ideals of adulthood, [as well as] ways in which the Harry Potter series has helped to rebrand Britain", the course has been reviewed and approved by the faculty's teaching and learning committee.
"Harry Potter is a culturally iconic phenomenon and has already been the subject of many well-regarded academic studies over recent years, so it is only fitting that a leading university like Durham responds to new developments in our academic and wider social and cultural environment in developing new modules like this," said Fowler.
There is no word yet about whether Durham will be joining the International Quidditch Association, which counts more than 400 colleges and 300 high schools among its members, the vast majority of which are from the US.
The game differs from the fictional version in that its participants are unable to fly; instead they run with their broomsticks held between their legs. With a fourth annual world cup set to be held in New York this November, perhaps Durham's undergraduates are in with a chance.
From: Guardian
Friday, August 27, 2010
Public libraries: A pint of best bitter and a Cider with Rosie
Christopher Howse drinks in the benefits of a volunteer library in a pub.
by: Christopher Howse
The ideal pub has a large proportion of regulars, no amplified music – so it is always quiet enough to talk – barmaids who call everyone "dear", a good fire burning, a plain dining-room upstairs, pub games in the public bar, and a garden. This is not my idea, but George Orwell's, and he was right.
The George and Dragon in Hudswell, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, has gone one better by setting up a library, run by volunteers. To tell the truth, the whole pub is run by volunteers, like the village shop in Ambridge and other resorts of countryfolk. They know that life hangs together with a local pub, shop, school, church and library.
Now, there's all the difference between books in a pub, which are good, and drinks in a library, which are bad. It is the difference between praying while you smoke and smoking while you pray.
Tessa Jowell once praised libraries of the kind that "when you walk into them, you do not know whether you are walking into a job centre, an internet cafe, a juice bar or a library". By that thinking, they would also be improved with hostesses and opium pipes. In any case, Miss Jowell is only a distant memory, like last year's holiday stomach upset – or she would be were it not for the cost of the Olympics.
A legacy of debt explains some of the reactions to the news that two thirds of the nation do not venture into a library from one year's end to another. "Aha!" they say. "Close 'em down." The matter is devoured by the debate about "funding", as if all good gifts around us were sent from Whitehall above.
Yet despite Miss Jowell's idea of making them smell like job centres, one third of adults and three quarters of children aged between 11 and 15 do still use libraries. That's impressive. For one thing, it is marvellous that they bring the books back. And if three quarters of children aged 11 to 15 went to the dentist, would the response be to close them down for lack of interest?
Libraries – I mean places with books, not just the internet – are just as important as dentists. For example, I quite like Laurie Lee's writing. Laurie Lee would never have written a word had he not visited the public library on his way home from school. Nor would generations since have read Cider with Rosie had they not found it on the library shelves. That wouldn't be the end of the world; there is much to be said for illiteracy. But the world would be narrower and more brutish.
When it comes to today's libraries, the books are the thing – not internetting. Books are windows into other people's minds. The internet is like a library with some rooms fitted with television, others with music or silly games; other rooms on the internet have real books, but they are too often locked, and usually neglected.
A very bookish person, writing in another newspaper, thinks the big threat is "the sound of a back door being quietly opened to the privatisation of the library service". Privatisation? What does it say down the side of Truro Community Library in big stone letters? "Passmore Edwards Free Library", that's what. John Passmore Edwards left school at 13 to help his father, a carpenter and nurseryman. But he read all the books he could, and later made a fortune out of newspapers. He spent his money by giving Dundee a lifeboat and 24 other places a public library.
Philanthropy works at different levels. Rich men should use money for good. "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced," said Andrew Carnegie, who founded 660 libraries in Britain. Those who are not rich may have time to volunteer. They do not excuse councils that close libraries, any more than the volunteers of the George and Dragon had made the brewers close it. But the rich rich and the time-rich between them can save thousands of people from the blind penury of booklessness.
From: Telegraph
by: Christopher Howse
The ideal pub has a large proportion of regulars, no amplified music – so it is always quiet enough to talk – barmaids who call everyone "dear", a good fire burning, a plain dining-room upstairs, pub games in the public bar, and a garden. This is not my idea, but George Orwell's, and he was right.
The George and Dragon in Hudswell, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, has gone one better by setting up a library, run by volunteers. To tell the truth, the whole pub is run by volunteers, like the village shop in Ambridge and other resorts of countryfolk. They know that life hangs together with a local pub, shop, school, church and library.
Now, there's all the difference between books in a pub, which are good, and drinks in a library, which are bad. It is the difference between praying while you smoke and smoking while you pray.
Tessa Jowell once praised libraries of the kind that "when you walk into them, you do not know whether you are walking into a job centre, an internet cafe, a juice bar or a library". By that thinking, they would also be improved with hostesses and opium pipes. In any case, Miss Jowell is only a distant memory, like last year's holiday stomach upset – or she would be were it not for the cost of the Olympics.
A legacy of debt explains some of the reactions to the news that two thirds of the nation do not venture into a library from one year's end to another. "Aha!" they say. "Close 'em down." The matter is devoured by the debate about "funding", as if all good gifts around us were sent from Whitehall above.
Yet despite Miss Jowell's idea of making them smell like job centres, one third of adults and three quarters of children aged between 11 and 15 do still use libraries. That's impressive. For one thing, it is marvellous that they bring the books back. And if three quarters of children aged 11 to 15 went to the dentist, would the response be to close them down for lack of interest?
Libraries – I mean places with books, not just the internet – are just as important as dentists. For example, I quite like Laurie Lee's writing. Laurie Lee would never have written a word had he not visited the public library on his way home from school. Nor would generations since have read Cider with Rosie had they not found it on the library shelves. That wouldn't be the end of the world; there is much to be said for illiteracy. But the world would be narrower and more brutish.
When it comes to today's libraries, the books are the thing – not internetting. Books are windows into other people's minds. The internet is like a library with some rooms fitted with television, others with music or silly games; other rooms on the internet have real books, but they are too often locked, and usually neglected.
A very bookish person, writing in another newspaper, thinks the big threat is "the sound of a back door being quietly opened to the privatisation of the library service". Privatisation? What does it say down the side of Truro Community Library in big stone letters? "Passmore Edwards Free Library", that's what. John Passmore Edwards left school at 13 to help his father, a carpenter and nurseryman. But he read all the books he could, and later made a fortune out of newspapers. He spent his money by giving Dundee a lifeboat and 24 other places a public library.
Philanthropy works at different levels. Rich men should use money for good. "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced," said Andrew Carnegie, who founded 660 libraries in Britain. Those who are not rich may have time to volunteer. They do not excuse councils that close libraries, any more than the volunteers of the George and Dragon had made the brewers close it. But the rich rich and the time-rich between them can save thousands of people from the blind penury of booklessness.
From: Telegraph
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Public libraries: enablers of Americans' dreams
It's amazing, writes columnist Neal Peirce, that many of the nation's libraries are able to maintain the bulk of their services and adapt to growing needs during a recession, even in the face of snowballing funding cuts by their local government.
by: Neal Peirce
America's public libraries, fast turning themselves into "one-stop shops" for digital job searches, appear to be staging one of their great historic transformations.
Responding to a rush of recession-time visitors, 88 percent of our libraries now offer access to job databases. And at least two-thirds of library staffs are helping applicants complete online job applications, according to a national survey by the American Library Association and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
As for access to free wireless services, 82 percent of libraries now provide it — up from just 37 percent four years ago. In two-thirds of cases, the libraries are the only source of free Internet service in their communities.
What's amazing is that many libraries are able to maintain the bulk of their services and adapt to growing needs during a recession, even in the face of snowballing funding cuts by their local governments. More than 55 percent of urban libraries are reporting budget cuts, and a quarter have felt obliged to cut hours or close branches. Fifteen percent reduced their hours of operation in 2009 — three times the number reported in 2008. And 50 percent report they have insufficient staff to meet their patrons' job-seeking needs.
But they're not taking it quietly. In Indianapolis, neighborhoods around the branches facing possible closure became very active, holding read-ins, marches and letter-writing campaigns. In Camden, N.J., one of America's poorest cities, a fierce public outcry has followed the threat to close the entire library system.
And when Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposed 37 percent cuts to his city's library budgets, advocates argued it would be the first time in the system's 138-year history that libraries would be open just five days a week. And they came up with a strong productivity argument. In 1978, when there were 61 L.A. libraries (there are now 72), 1,459 staff librarians served 6 million visitors. Under Villaraigosa's budget, they noted, there'd only be 848 staff slots — to serve 18 million visitors.
The silver lining for communities, note library sources, is that threats of actual branch closures create such a strong pushback that most communities compromise with cuts that go no further than constriction in staff or branches.
The reality, says Audra Caplan, director of the Harford County, Md., Public Library and president of the Public Library Association, is that the role of public libraries has changed dramatically in the past 10 to 15 years. And computers and job-search assistance, while highly significant, aren't the whole story.
"We've turned ourselves into community centers," notes Caplan. "We have meeting rooms that get booked by community agencies, chess clubs, any not-for-profit. We bring in authors, we sponsor civic engagement-type programs. And we're attracting a larger share of the population — even teens, or parents with toddlers."
So what about serious research? "It's still healthy," Caplan insists. She acknowledges Google and Wikipedia are popular on the available computers. But libraries also subscribe to specialized and sometimes costly subscription databases — business, legal, health and other — and electronically extend the access to even their smallest branches. As for books (remember them?), libraries' per capita circulation has increased roughly 20 percent over the past decade.
And in a sense, libraries are as varied as America. Many provide specialized services, including translation and English instruction, to America's large populations of new immigrants. Some let patrons check out not just books but fishing poles, backpacks and garden tools.
And central libraries, notes Robert McNulty of Partners for Livable Communities, can be "the
great good place in the city" — as a literacy, Internet and special film center, or as a place for lectures, for local performing arts and exhibitions. Or as a coffeehouse. Or as an information center for visiting tourists, or a safe place for kids.
Andrew Carnegie's original idea in founding his string of free public libraries, McNulty notes, was that they'd be gathering places for young people — that once drawn there, they'd learn to read. So Carnegie built a boxing gymnasium into one of his Pittsburgh libraries, a swimming pool into another.
But right now, it's computer access that leads the library parade. "Beginning computer skills are especially important for dislocated workers," says Brian Clark of the Nashville, Tenn., Career Advancement Center. "Having computer skills," he suggests, "won't necessarily get a person a job. But it means the door won't be slammed in their face" — in other words, before they can even state their case.
Opening doors? It's true that funds saved or restored to libraries may mean deeper, sometimes very painful cuts in other parts of city and county budgets.
But what's more American than open doors? Seen this way, libraries have been enablers of generations of Americans' dreams. And with a little luck, they'll help pull us out of our current economic morass too.
From: Seattle Times
by: Neal Peirce
America's public libraries, fast turning themselves into "one-stop shops" for digital job searches, appear to be staging one of their great historic transformations.
Responding to a rush of recession-time visitors, 88 percent of our libraries now offer access to job databases. And at least two-thirds of library staffs are helping applicants complete online job applications, according to a national survey by the American Library Association and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
As for access to free wireless services, 82 percent of libraries now provide it — up from just 37 percent four years ago. In two-thirds of cases, the libraries are the only source of free Internet service in their communities.
What's amazing is that many libraries are able to maintain the bulk of their services and adapt to growing needs during a recession, even in the face of snowballing funding cuts by their local governments. More than 55 percent of urban libraries are reporting budget cuts, and a quarter have felt obliged to cut hours or close branches. Fifteen percent reduced their hours of operation in 2009 — three times the number reported in 2008. And 50 percent report they have insufficient staff to meet their patrons' job-seeking needs.
But they're not taking it quietly. In Indianapolis, neighborhoods around the branches facing possible closure became very active, holding read-ins, marches and letter-writing campaigns. In Camden, N.J., one of America's poorest cities, a fierce public outcry has followed the threat to close the entire library system.
And when Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposed 37 percent cuts to his city's library budgets, advocates argued it would be the first time in the system's 138-year history that libraries would be open just five days a week. And they came up with a strong productivity argument. In 1978, when there were 61 L.A. libraries (there are now 72), 1,459 staff librarians served 6 million visitors. Under Villaraigosa's budget, they noted, there'd only be 848 staff slots — to serve 18 million visitors.
The silver lining for communities, note library sources, is that threats of actual branch closures create such a strong pushback that most communities compromise with cuts that go no further than constriction in staff or branches.
The reality, says Audra Caplan, director of the Harford County, Md., Public Library and president of the Public Library Association, is that the role of public libraries has changed dramatically in the past 10 to 15 years. And computers and job-search assistance, while highly significant, aren't the whole story.
"We've turned ourselves into community centers," notes Caplan. "We have meeting rooms that get booked by community agencies, chess clubs, any not-for-profit. We bring in authors, we sponsor civic engagement-type programs. And we're attracting a larger share of the population — even teens, or parents with toddlers."
So what about serious research? "It's still healthy," Caplan insists. She acknowledges Google and Wikipedia are popular on the available computers. But libraries also subscribe to specialized and sometimes costly subscription databases — business, legal, health and other — and electronically extend the access to even their smallest branches. As for books (remember them?), libraries' per capita circulation has increased roughly 20 percent over the past decade.
And in a sense, libraries are as varied as America. Many provide specialized services, including translation and English instruction, to America's large populations of new immigrants. Some let patrons check out not just books but fishing poles, backpacks and garden tools.
And central libraries, notes Robert McNulty of Partners for Livable Communities, can be "the
great good place in the city" — as a literacy, Internet and special film center, or as a place for lectures, for local performing arts and exhibitions. Or as a coffeehouse. Or as an information center for visiting tourists, or a safe place for kids.
Andrew Carnegie's original idea in founding his string of free public libraries, McNulty notes, was that they'd be gathering places for young people — that once drawn there, they'd learn to read. So Carnegie built a boxing gymnasium into one of his Pittsburgh libraries, a swimming pool into another.
But right now, it's computer access that leads the library parade. "Beginning computer skills are especially important for dislocated workers," says Brian Clark of the Nashville, Tenn., Career Advancement Center. "Having computer skills," he suggests, "won't necessarily get a person a job. But it means the door won't be slammed in their face" — in other words, before they can even state their case.
Opening doors? It's true that funds saved or restored to libraries may mean deeper, sometimes very painful cuts in other parts of city and county budgets.
But what's more American than open doors? Seen this way, libraries have been enablers of generations of Americans' dreams. And with a little luck, they'll help pull us out of our current economic morass too.
From: Seattle Times
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Get Ready for Ads in Books
For those who think this too radical a notion, consider the overwhelming product placement in movies, music videos and video games.
by: Ron Adner and William Vincent
With e-reader prices dropping like a stone and major tech players jumping into the book retail business, what room is left for publishers' profits? The surprising answer: ads. They're coming soon to a book near you.
To understand why this is inevitable, consider the past few years. The historically staid and technology-averse publishing ecosystem has been ripped apart and transformed.
Take the first seven months of 2010 alone: In April, Apple came out with the iPad and quickly sold over three million units. Apple also launched its own proprietary bookstore, iBooks. In June, Barnes & Noble lowered the price of its Wi-Fi- and 3G-enabled Nook reader to $199. Only hours later, Amazon slashed the price of its 3G-enabled Kindle 2 to $189. On July 28, Amazon announced the forthcoming Kindle 3, priced at $139 for Wi-Fi-only and $189 for Wi-Fi and 3G. Barnes & Noble is rumored to have a new version of the Nook ready by the end of the year.
Not to be left out, Google plans to launch its own bookstore, Google Editions, later this year. Google Editions would be the world's largest bookstore, offering millions of trade, technical and out-of-copyright (which would also be free) books. They'd be available on any device with Internet access except Kindle, which for now maintains a closed system.
Especially in light of the rush to e-books, the industry faces a troubling future. In the first place, overall sales have been stagnant or decreasing for over a decade, even as more books are published every year. Production costs are higher than ever now that publishers must produce both physical and digital editions. Above all, pricing remains a challenge: No matter what the split between publisher and retailer, at $9.99 a digital book is far less profitable than its hardcover cousin priced at $25.
Even though periodicals like the New Yorker and the Atlantic have printed ads alongside serious fiction and nonfiction since their founding, purists will surely decry ads in books. But historically, the lack of advertising in books has had less to do with the sanctity of the product and more to do with the fact that books are a lousy medium for ads. Ads depend on volume and timeliness to work, and books don't provide an opportunity for either.
Let's start with volume. The top-selling fiction title in 2009 was "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown. On opening day it sold more than a million copies, but daily sales quickly dropped off. The Wall Street Journal sells twice that number each day. This leads to the second point: Advertisers want to target their audience now. In a daily newspaper or weekly magazine this is easy to do. Not so for a book, which is often years in the making and has a production lead time of many months.
In short, physical books can't compete with other print media for advertisers. Digital books can. With an integrated system, an advertiser or publisher can place ads across multiple titles to generate a sufficient volume. Timeliness is also possible, since digital readers require users to log in to a central system periodically.
Google has taken the first steps in this direction. Its Google Books archive—a collection of over 10 million scanned books from the world's largest libraries—displays advertisements next to search results. It's a small step to imagine Google including advertisements within books, especially since its 2008 settlement over copyright violations with the Authors Guild. For its part, Amazon filed a patent for advertisements on its Kindle device last year. And Apple has recently entered the advertising game with its iAd platform for mobile devices.
What would the world look like with ads in books? For consumers, the free samples of digital books now available would surely include ads. Because not every consumer who reads a sample chapter will buy the book, it's reasonable for the publisher to extract some additional value. Seeing ads in the sample may also convince a reader to pay for a premium, non-ad version of the full-length book. The old market segmentation of paperbacks and hardcovers will be replaced by ad-supported or ad-free books.
Publishers will need to come up with new ways of evaluating a book's commercial value. What is a best seller? Today the criteria is simple: total unit sales. Yet with advertising in the mix, a book downloaded 100,000 times but never read (think of that yet-to-be-opened prize-winning 600-pager) may be worth less than one downloaded 50,000 times and read cover-to-cover. Unread books suddenly become less profitable to a publisher.
Authors are likely to be concerned not only with the idea of ads, but with what particular ads are placed in their books. Imagine the value—and controversy—of placing pharmaceutical ads in healthy-living guides, or partisan attacks in political memoirs. Writers, agents and publishers will have to negotiate a fundamentally new arrangement when ad-driven e-books become a reality.
Advertising in books will introduce a whole new set of relationships into the publishing ecosystem. Ad agencies will be involved in creating a standard form for digital ads. Technology companies will be crucial to implementation. A new set of contracts will have to be created to manage these new costs, revenue sources and control rights.
Ultimately, advertising will be a way to monetize that most valuable content of all: consumers' time. In a fitting irony, the technological advancements of the 21st century may see authors returning to the 18th century concept of paying per word. Advertisements may be necessary to save book publishing, but book publishing will never be the same.
Mr. Adner is a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Mr. Vincent is a former book editor at Houghton Mifflin.
From: Wall Street Journal
by: Ron Adner and William Vincent
With e-reader prices dropping like a stone and major tech players jumping into the book retail business, what room is left for publishers' profits? The surprising answer: ads. They're coming soon to a book near you.
To understand why this is inevitable, consider the past few years. The historically staid and technology-averse publishing ecosystem has been ripped apart and transformed.
Take the first seven months of 2010 alone: In April, Apple came out with the iPad and quickly sold over three million units. Apple also launched its own proprietary bookstore, iBooks. In June, Barnes & Noble lowered the price of its Wi-Fi- and 3G-enabled Nook reader to $199. Only hours later, Amazon slashed the price of its 3G-enabled Kindle 2 to $189. On July 28, Amazon announced the forthcoming Kindle 3, priced at $139 for Wi-Fi-only and $189 for Wi-Fi and 3G. Barnes & Noble is rumored to have a new version of the Nook ready by the end of the year.
Not to be left out, Google plans to launch its own bookstore, Google Editions, later this year. Google Editions would be the world's largest bookstore, offering millions of trade, technical and out-of-copyright (which would also be free) books. They'd be available on any device with Internet access except Kindle, which for now maintains a closed system.
Especially in light of the rush to e-books, the industry faces a troubling future. In the first place, overall sales have been stagnant or decreasing for over a decade, even as more books are published every year. Production costs are higher than ever now that publishers must produce both physical and digital editions. Above all, pricing remains a challenge: No matter what the split between publisher and retailer, at $9.99 a digital book is far less profitable than its hardcover cousin priced at $25.
Even though periodicals like the New Yorker and the Atlantic have printed ads alongside serious fiction and nonfiction since their founding, purists will surely decry ads in books. But historically, the lack of advertising in books has had less to do with the sanctity of the product and more to do with the fact that books are a lousy medium for ads. Ads depend on volume and timeliness to work, and books don't provide an opportunity for either.
Let's start with volume. The top-selling fiction title in 2009 was "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown. On opening day it sold more than a million copies, but daily sales quickly dropped off. The Wall Street Journal sells twice that number each day. This leads to the second point: Advertisers want to target their audience now. In a daily newspaper or weekly magazine this is easy to do. Not so for a book, which is often years in the making and has a production lead time of many months.
In short, physical books can't compete with other print media for advertisers. Digital books can. With an integrated system, an advertiser or publisher can place ads across multiple titles to generate a sufficient volume. Timeliness is also possible, since digital readers require users to log in to a central system periodically.
Google has taken the first steps in this direction. Its Google Books archive—a collection of over 10 million scanned books from the world's largest libraries—displays advertisements next to search results. It's a small step to imagine Google including advertisements within books, especially since its 2008 settlement over copyright violations with the Authors Guild. For its part, Amazon filed a patent for advertisements on its Kindle device last year. And Apple has recently entered the advertising game with its iAd platform for mobile devices.
What would the world look like with ads in books? For consumers, the free samples of digital books now available would surely include ads. Because not every consumer who reads a sample chapter will buy the book, it's reasonable for the publisher to extract some additional value. Seeing ads in the sample may also convince a reader to pay for a premium, non-ad version of the full-length book. The old market segmentation of paperbacks and hardcovers will be replaced by ad-supported or ad-free books.
Publishers will need to come up with new ways of evaluating a book's commercial value. What is a best seller? Today the criteria is simple: total unit sales. Yet with advertising in the mix, a book downloaded 100,000 times but never read (think of that yet-to-be-opened prize-winning 600-pager) may be worth less than one downloaded 50,000 times and read cover-to-cover. Unread books suddenly become less profitable to a publisher.
Authors are likely to be concerned not only with the idea of ads, but with what particular ads are placed in their books. Imagine the value—and controversy—of placing pharmaceutical ads in healthy-living guides, or partisan attacks in political memoirs. Writers, agents and publishers will have to negotiate a fundamentally new arrangement when ad-driven e-books become a reality.
Advertising in books will introduce a whole new set of relationships into the publishing ecosystem. Ad agencies will be involved in creating a standard form for digital ads. Technology companies will be crucial to implementation. A new set of contracts will have to be created to manage these new costs, revenue sources and control rights.
Ultimately, advertising will be a way to monetize that most valuable content of all: consumers' time. In a fitting irony, the technological advancements of the 21st century may see authors returning to the 18th century concept of paying per word. Advertisements may be necessary to save book publishing, but book publishing will never be the same.
Mr. Adner is a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Mr. Vincent is a former book editor at Houghton Mifflin.
From: Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Is the Mindset List still relevant?
by: Ian Crouch
This week, as they have done each August since 1998, Tom McBride and Ron Nief released the Beloit College Mindset List, a pithy, gently condescending review of the historical touchstones that define this year’s incoming class of college freshmen (or “first years,” or whatever they’re called now). The list figures that most of these students were born in 1992, and if they stay on course, they will graduate in 2014, which is an astounding number to look at. (Surely we’ll be in flying cars by then.) Here’s a sampling of what students know and don’t know:
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
58. Beethoven has always been a good name for a dog.
64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
Some facts on the 2014 list stand out as evocative, wistful moments of nostalgia: “19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.” While others seem that they might have been true in any era: “69. It seems the Post Office has always been going broke,” and “71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.”
The list has never been particularly concerned with literature—based on the principle, perhaps, that eighteen-year-olds haven’t had much time to read, so busy are they messing around with whatever new items of technology have defined their lives. Instead, its recurring preoccupations over the years have included the Soviets, Ross Perot, and “Beavis and Butt-head” (a pair that always mattered more to adults than to kids). Recently, when the list has included books, they’ve been children’s books—”Goosebumps” (2012), “The Baby-sitters Club,” (2011), “Waldo” (2010)—with a stray reference to Salman Rushdie (2009) or Robert Ludlum (2002). This year’s list does, however, begin with this bold claim about the life of letters: “1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.”
The list was conceived as a reminder to professors to keep their patter up to date, and this year’s list, at times, retains its original usefulness, as in: “18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.” Yet the list has changed over the years, being distributed ever more widely, and becoming, as the maker’s put it, a “guide to the intelligent but unprepared adolescent consciousness.” Defining “adolescent consciousness” is a broad and thankless responsibility—one I suspect that the creators of the list do more in good humor than in seriousness. Nevertheless they introduce this year’s list with an earnest, panoramic portrait of American youth:
They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone
call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now
be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information
and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation
accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship.
They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not
just on-line.
The Beloit list has always been a bit musty, often trading in cultural totems as stale as coffee in a faculty longue. (See all the lists here.) The reader—young or old, hip or otherwise—can’t help but squirm at lines like: “70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.” But for the class of 2014, for whom “‘digital’ has always been in the cultural DNA,” the list seems particularly outmoded. If nothing else, I suspect that kids now know more, rather than less, about these types of cultural trivia and historical fragments, because as each year passes, the information becomes so much easier to obtain. The Internet encourages so many moments of “accidental knowledge.” I’m thinking of the hours I’ve passed absently following links on Wikipedia, where one link leads to another, and another, and then another—from Justin Bieber to the history of Italian castrati, by way of Michael Jackson. The Web floods us with trivia; I’d be surprised if an eighteen-year-old today is as ignorant of the Cold War, Sam Walton, the racial politics of Los Angeles, or the filmography of Woody Allen, as the list-makers assume. Just as listening to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in 1989 could serve as some kind of five-minute history lesson (and teacher’s have used this song as a syllabus) the Internet is an ongoing, shallow but broad compilation of, and lesson in, popular culture.
What the list’s authors are correct in worrying about, though, is not the absence of this kind of superficial “knowledge” of names, and dates, and places, but the threat that this thin understanding has on serious study. It’s easier now than ever to “know” about something and then never really think about it again. They are right, I think, that their newest students will have to “acquire the patience of scholarship.” We’re all still working on that.
From: New Yorker
This week, as they have done each August since 1998, Tom McBride and Ron Nief released the Beloit College Mindset List, a pithy, gently condescending review of the historical touchstones that define this year’s incoming class of college freshmen (or “first years,” or whatever they’re called now). The list figures that most of these students were born in 1992, and if they stay on course, they will graduate in 2014, which is an astounding number to look at. (Surely we’ll be in flying cars by then.) Here’s a sampling of what students know and don’t know:
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
58. Beethoven has always been a good name for a dog.
64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
Some facts on the 2014 list stand out as evocative, wistful moments of nostalgia: “19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.” While others seem that they might have been true in any era: “69. It seems the Post Office has always been going broke,” and “71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.”
The list has never been particularly concerned with literature—based on the principle, perhaps, that eighteen-year-olds haven’t had much time to read, so busy are they messing around with whatever new items of technology have defined their lives. Instead, its recurring preoccupations over the years have included the Soviets, Ross Perot, and “Beavis and Butt-head” (a pair that always mattered more to adults than to kids). Recently, when the list has included books, they’ve been children’s books—”Goosebumps” (2012), “The Baby-sitters Club,” (2011), “Waldo” (2010)—with a stray reference to Salman Rushdie (2009) or Robert Ludlum (2002). This year’s list does, however, begin with this bold claim about the life of letters: “1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.”
The list was conceived as a reminder to professors to keep their patter up to date, and this year’s list, at times, retains its original usefulness, as in: “18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.” Yet the list has changed over the years, being distributed ever more widely, and becoming, as the maker’s put it, a “guide to the intelligent but unprepared adolescent consciousness.” Defining “adolescent consciousness” is a broad and thankless responsibility—one I suspect that the creators of the list do more in good humor than in seriousness. Nevertheless they introduce this year’s list with an earnest, panoramic portrait of American youth:
They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone
call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now
be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information
and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation
accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship.
They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not
just on-line.
The Beloit list has always been a bit musty, often trading in cultural totems as stale as coffee in a faculty longue. (See all the lists here.) The reader—young or old, hip or otherwise—can’t help but squirm at lines like: “70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.” But for the class of 2014, for whom “‘digital’ has always been in the cultural DNA,” the list seems particularly outmoded. If nothing else, I suspect that kids now know more, rather than less, about these types of cultural trivia and historical fragments, because as each year passes, the information becomes so much easier to obtain. The Internet encourages so many moments of “accidental knowledge.” I’m thinking of the hours I’ve passed absently following links on Wikipedia, where one link leads to another, and another, and then another—from Justin Bieber to the history of Italian castrati, by way of Michael Jackson. The Web floods us with trivia; I’d be surprised if an eighteen-year-old today is as ignorant of the Cold War, Sam Walton, the racial politics of Los Angeles, or the filmography of Woody Allen, as the list-makers assume. Just as listening to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in 1989 could serve as some kind of five-minute history lesson (and teacher’s have used this song as a syllabus) the Internet is an ongoing, shallow but broad compilation of, and lesson in, popular culture.
What the list’s authors are correct in worrying about, though, is not the absence of this kind of superficial “knowledge” of names, and dates, and places, but the threat that this thin understanding has on serious study. It’s easier now than ever to “know” about something and then never really think about it again. They are right, I think, that their newest students will have to “acquire the patience of scholarship.” We’re all still working on that.
From: New Yorker
Monday, August 23, 2010
India's first e-reader Wink unveiled, supporting 15 languages
MUMBAI: Bangalore-based digital publisher EC Media International on Thursday launched its multi-function e-book reader Wink that not only supports 15 languages but will also offer over 200,000 book titles on debut.
Wink will offer consumers a one-stop e-store to access e-reading content of choice via www.thewinkstore.com that would enable access not just to e-books, but also journals, newspapers, magazines and selected articles, EC Media said.
Many of the titles have been acquired from international aggregators, giving Indians access to a whole lot of books not available in the country. "With the launch of Wink, we aim to revolutionise the way people read," said Ravi DeeCee, founder and chief executive of DC Group, which has promoted EC Media and the Kerala-based publishing house DC Books.
"Wink will allow readers to access their favourite content anytime, anywhere, that, too, in the language of their choice," he said.
Another offering will be Wink Wire for news, the first e-reader newspaper in India. EC Media has entered into a content alliance with IANS, India's largest independent news service, for Wink Wire.
EC Media's e-reader itself is designed primarily for reading digital books and periodicals but users can also listen to music, check e-mails or even play games, executives said.
This e-reader uses e-ink technology to display content to readers, and the main advantages of these features are portability, strain-free reading even in bright sunlight and substantial battery life.
"With the launch of Wink, we want to enable the growth of content provisioning through electronic medium by leveraging existing eco-system of global tie-ups with publishers and aggregators," said Pradeep Palazhi, chief operating officer of EC Media. "We hope to succeed in attaining this vision."
The group also aims to help publishers and authors leverage the new platform, simplifying the process of publishing -- from the draft of a book to its final printing, besides also helping them to reach out to a larger audience.
Wink has enrolled top publishers like Penguin, Roli, Oxford University, Harper Collins and Permanent Black for content so far. It will provide access to over 100,000 tiles to begin with, along with some newspapers and magazines.
The group has also announced a tie-up with Croma, the electronics megastore promoted by the Tata Group, as its retail partner. It has also roped in Redington as its distribution partner. "From a consumer perspective, it's going to be a resourceful investment. It will certainly enhance their reading experience with a variety of offerings," said Ajit Joshi, chief executive of Croma Electronics Megastore.
Explaining how the e-reader works, officials said a user can access the online store from the web or through the catalogue present on the gadget, intuitively designed for easy preview of content, downloads and a secure payment gateway.
The Wink store will have a strong base of regional language content on top of a wide-variety of international titles and category of e-books. Members will be able to avail of special deals and discounts on the store, they added.
Gurcharan Das, author of "The Difficulty of Being Good: The Subtle Art of Dharma", is upbeat about e-readers. "E-readers like Wink are well positioned to capture the imagination of the younger generation," Das said at a function at the Crossword book store at Kemps Corner here.
"I feel book stores are going to be history soon because the younger generation wants everything on screen. E-books are going to get cheaper than an actual book over time, so there is no point being stuck in nostalgia," Das, who is among the nominees of the Vodafone Crossword award, said.
from: Economic Times
Wink will offer consumers a one-stop e-store to access e-reading content of choice via www.thewinkstore.com that would enable access not just to e-books, but also journals, newspapers, magazines and selected articles, EC Media said.
Many of the titles have been acquired from international aggregators, giving Indians access to a whole lot of books not available in the country. "With the launch of Wink, we aim to revolutionise the way people read," said Ravi DeeCee, founder and chief executive of DC Group, which has promoted EC Media and the Kerala-based publishing house DC Books.
"Wink will allow readers to access their favourite content anytime, anywhere, that, too, in the language of their choice," he said.
Another offering will be Wink Wire for news, the first e-reader newspaper in India. EC Media has entered into a content alliance with IANS, India's largest independent news service, for Wink Wire.
EC Media's e-reader itself is designed primarily for reading digital books and periodicals but users can also listen to music, check e-mails or even play games, executives said.
This e-reader uses e-ink technology to display content to readers, and the main advantages of these features are portability, strain-free reading even in bright sunlight and substantial battery life.
"With the launch of Wink, we want to enable the growth of content provisioning through electronic medium by leveraging existing eco-system of global tie-ups with publishers and aggregators," said Pradeep Palazhi, chief operating officer of EC Media. "We hope to succeed in attaining this vision."
The group also aims to help publishers and authors leverage the new platform, simplifying the process of publishing -- from the draft of a book to its final printing, besides also helping them to reach out to a larger audience.
Wink has enrolled top publishers like Penguin, Roli, Oxford University, Harper Collins and Permanent Black for content so far. It will provide access to over 100,000 tiles to begin with, along with some newspapers and magazines.
The group has also announced a tie-up with Croma, the electronics megastore promoted by the Tata Group, as its retail partner. It has also roped in Redington as its distribution partner. "From a consumer perspective, it's going to be a resourceful investment. It will certainly enhance their reading experience with a variety of offerings," said Ajit Joshi, chief executive of Croma Electronics Megastore.
Explaining how the e-reader works, officials said a user can access the online store from the web or through the catalogue present on the gadget, intuitively designed for easy preview of content, downloads and a secure payment gateway.
The Wink store will have a strong base of regional language content on top of a wide-variety of international titles and category of e-books. Members will be able to avail of special deals and discounts on the store, they added.
Gurcharan Das, author of "The Difficulty of Being Good: The Subtle Art of Dharma", is upbeat about e-readers. "E-readers like Wink are well positioned to capture the imagination of the younger generation," Das said at a function at the Crossword book store at Kemps Corner here.
"I feel book stores are going to be history soon because the younger generation wants everything on screen. E-books are going to get cheaper than an actual book over time, so there is no point being stuck in nostalgia," Das, who is among the nominees of the Vodafone Crossword award, said.
from: Economic Times
Sunday, August 22, 2010
When book recommendations go wrong
How many times has someone pressed a book on you 'that you'll love' which you actually loathe?
Bibliophiles, by definition, love books. We love to read them and reread them, to discuss and ponder them, to keep them on our shelves. Some even love to share them ... though others, like me, jealously protect the integrity of their collection like a citadel guard getting paid by the corpse.
But the at very least we all – even we hoarders – love to suggest and recommend books to others. Especially if we've just come across something previously unknown but spectacularly good, or something very obscure, but also spectacularly good, that we feel should be appreciated by more people. (I've spent the last 15 years trying to convince the world that Bruce Wagner's graphic novel Wild Palms is a work of genius. It is, I swear to God.)
It's lovely, how this enthusiasm for books and writing draws us together like molecules in liquid, gathering and binding us. We willingly become entangled in a sort of literary waltz, a pleasant to-and-fro of fresh discovery.
But what about when someone presses a book on you, assuring you that you'll simply adore it ... and you don't? Worse – you hate the thing, and can't understand how anyone would think of it and then think of you.
Here's a prime example. I hold in my hand a piece of paper – several pieces of paper, actually, and a stiff cardboard cover. It's a paperback of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, the one with a cover of lava-red and a bleary photo of what looks like two people standing at a window. I've had it since 1994, when I was given it by a girl with whom I sort of had a bit of a thing going on. Inside is her personalised message: "From the mild-green hairy-lipped squid" (a silly in-joke that's actually funnier than it sounds). She bought it for me because it was, at the time, one of her favourites, and she was sure it would become one of mine.
And I haven't read it. I've had that book in my possession for 16 years and not read it, because I didn't like it. I gave it a go more than once, reached page 50 or whatever, and closed it again. Still don't like it. Still find it a bit undergraduate, in theme and style. Still think Tomas is – for want of a more elegant phraseology – a lousy prick who deserves a punch in the head.
All of this raises a number of rather disquieting existential questions. Does this mean, when a fellow book lover gives you a book you hate, the person didn't really know you, or had an erroneous idea of you in their mind? Does it mean you don't really know yourself? Does it mean the self is fundamentally unknowable, at least through the contents of a bookshelf?
Most importantly, does it mean you'll have to avoid the giver from now until the day one of you dies, just to be spared that excruciatingly awkward moment where they excitedly ask how you liked the book, and you lie unconvincingly to spare their feelings?
The Milan Kundera thing is exacerbated by the fact that this girl was but the latest person to tell me I would love the book, would really relate to it, was so like the main character (say it ain't so…). Throughout college every person I met who had read Unbearable Lightness of Being urged me to read it, too. It was made for me. We were made for each other. This book would make sense on a profound, almost spiritual level. It would even, I was assured more than once, change my life. It did, I suppose. It made me realise the mild-green hairy-lipped squid and I were doomed.
There have been other ill-starred recommendations. The most disturbing in recent years came about six months ago, when one of my oldest friends exhorted me to read Russell Brand's memoir. She not only promised me I'd love the book but insisted that Brand frequently reminded her of me, particularly our younger selves. Christ. Hopefully she meant the charming, funny, literate aspects, not the childish, tiresome braggadocio about his sexual conquests.
Unsuitable book suggestions: guaranteed to inculcate existential confusion and personality disintegration in even the most well-ordered mind. And mine wasn't too well-ordered to begin with.
From: Guardian
Bibliophiles, by definition, love books. We love to read them and reread them, to discuss and ponder them, to keep them on our shelves. Some even love to share them ... though others, like me, jealously protect the integrity of their collection like a citadel guard getting paid by the corpse.
But the at very least we all – even we hoarders – love to suggest and recommend books to others. Especially if we've just come across something previously unknown but spectacularly good, or something very obscure, but also spectacularly good, that we feel should be appreciated by more people. (I've spent the last 15 years trying to convince the world that Bruce Wagner's graphic novel Wild Palms is a work of genius. It is, I swear to God.)
It's lovely, how this enthusiasm for books and writing draws us together like molecules in liquid, gathering and binding us. We willingly become entangled in a sort of literary waltz, a pleasant to-and-fro of fresh discovery.
But what about when someone presses a book on you, assuring you that you'll simply adore it ... and you don't? Worse – you hate the thing, and can't understand how anyone would think of it and then think of you.
Here's a prime example. I hold in my hand a piece of paper – several pieces of paper, actually, and a stiff cardboard cover. It's a paperback of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, the one with a cover of lava-red and a bleary photo of what looks like two people standing at a window. I've had it since 1994, when I was given it by a girl with whom I sort of had a bit of a thing going on. Inside is her personalised message: "From the mild-green hairy-lipped squid" (a silly in-joke that's actually funnier than it sounds). She bought it for me because it was, at the time, one of her favourites, and she was sure it would become one of mine.
And I haven't read it. I've had that book in my possession for 16 years and not read it, because I didn't like it. I gave it a go more than once, reached page 50 or whatever, and closed it again. Still don't like it. Still find it a bit undergraduate, in theme and style. Still think Tomas is – for want of a more elegant phraseology – a lousy prick who deserves a punch in the head.
All of this raises a number of rather disquieting existential questions. Does this mean, when a fellow book lover gives you a book you hate, the person didn't really know you, or had an erroneous idea of you in their mind? Does it mean you don't really know yourself? Does it mean the self is fundamentally unknowable, at least through the contents of a bookshelf?
Most importantly, does it mean you'll have to avoid the giver from now until the day one of you dies, just to be spared that excruciatingly awkward moment where they excitedly ask how you liked the book, and you lie unconvincingly to spare their feelings?
The Milan Kundera thing is exacerbated by the fact that this girl was but the latest person to tell me I would love the book, would really relate to it, was so like the main character (say it ain't so…). Throughout college every person I met who had read Unbearable Lightness of Being urged me to read it, too. It was made for me. We were made for each other. This book would make sense on a profound, almost spiritual level. It would even, I was assured more than once, change my life. It did, I suppose. It made me realise the mild-green hairy-lipped squid and I were doomed.
There have been other ill-starred recommendations. The most disturbing in recent years came about six months ago, when one of my oldest friends exhorted me to read Russell Brand's memoir. She not only promised me I'd love the book but insisted that Brand frequently reminded her of me, particularly our younger selves. Christ. Hopefully she meant the charming, funny, literate aspects, not the childish, tiresome braggadocio about his sexual conquests.
Unsuitable book suggestions: guaranteed to inculcate existential confusion and personality disintegration in even the most well-ordered mind. And mine wasn't too well-ordered to begin with.
From: Guardian
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Cops: Homeless man found living in Ocean Township library
by: Charles Webster
OCEAN TOWNSHIP: A Neptune man who told police he is homeless was discovered living in the basement of the township library after a custodian saw him peeking out a basement window after hours, police said.
Charles A. Jones Jr., 26, was discovered by the custodian, who subsequently called police, around 9:10 p.m. Friday, according to Detective Lt. Steven R. Peters.
After a search of the building by officers Mark Del Tin, Alon Bercovicz and Matthew Guido, Sgt. Gregory Schenck and detectives Matthew Jackiewicz and Michael Legg, discovered Jones hiding in the basement. Jones told police he was living in the basement of the library for almost two weeks unnoticed, Peters said.
Police also discovered Jones took several books to the basement, and had taken food items from the employee break room, Peters said.
Jones was charged with burglary and theft, and later released on a criminal summons pending a court hearing, Peters said.
From: Asbury Park Press
OCEAN TOWNSHIP: A Neptune man who told police he is homeless was discovered living in the basement of the township library after a custodian saw him peeking out a basement window after hours, police said.
Charles A. Jones Jr., 26, was discovered by the custodian, who subsequently called police, around 9:10 p.m. Friday, according to Detective Lt. Steven R. Peters.
After a search of the building by officers Mark Del Tin, Alon Bercovicz and Matthew Guido, Sgt. Gregory Schenck and detectives Matthew Jackiewicz and Michael Legg, discovered Jones hiding in the basement. Jones told police he was living in the basement of the library for almost two weeks unnoticed, Peters said.
Police also discovered Jones took several books to the basement, and had taken food items from the employee break room, Peters said.
Jones was charged with burglary and theft, and later released on a criminal summons pending a court hearing, Peters said.
From: Asbury Park Press
Friday, August 20, 2010
'Vuvuzela', 'interweb' among new words in Oxford Dictionary of English
LONDON — The ever-present hum of the vuvuzela during this year’s soccer World Cup catapulted the plastic trumpet to prominence and now it has earned a place in the Oxford Dictionary of English.
Vuvuzela is among 2,000 new words and phrases added to the third edition of the dictionary, published on Thursday, which is compiled from analysis of two billion words used in everything from novels to internet message boards.
The credit crunch features heavily in this year’s additions, with terms such as “overleveraged,” having taken on too much debt and “quantitative easing,” the introduction of new money in to the money supply by the central bank, among those included.
“Staycation,” a holiday spent in one’s home country, and “bargainous,” costing less than usual, also reflect the hot topic of belt-tightening among consumers during the economic downturn.
The rise of “social media,” itself a new term, has spawned several additions, including “defriend,” removing someone from a list of friends or contacts on a social networking site, and “tweetup,” a meeting organised via posts on Twitter.
Other words include:
Bromance: a close but non-sexual relationship between two men
Buzzkill: a person or thing that has a depressing or dispiriting effect
Cheeseball: lacking taste, style or originality
Chillax: calm down and relax
Frenemy: a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry
Interweb: the internet
LBD: a little black dress
Wardrobe malfunction: an instance of a person accidentally exposing an intimate part of their body as result of an article of clothing slipping out of position.
From: National Post
Vuvuzela is among 2,000 new words and phrases added to the third edition of the dictionary, published on Thursday, which is compiled from analysis of two billion words used in everything from novels to internet message boards.
The credit crunch features heavily in this year’s additions, with terms such as “overleveraged,” having taken on too much debt and “quantitative easing,” the introduction of new money in to the money supply by the central bank, among those included.
“Staycation,” a holiday spent in one’s home country, and “bargainous,” costing less than usual, also reflect the hot topic of belt-tightening among consumers during the economic downturn.
The rise of “social media,” itself a new term, has spawned several additions, including “defriend,” removing someone from a list of friends or contacts on a social networking site, and “tweetup,” a meeting organised via posts on Twitter.
Other words include:
Bromance: a close but non-sexual relationship between two men
Buzzkill: a person or thing that has a depressing or dispiriting effect
Cheeseball: lacking taste, style or originality
Chillax: calm down and relax
Frenemy: a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry
Interweb: the internet
LBD: a little black dress
Wardrobe malfunction: an instance of a person accidentally exposing an intimate part of their body as result of an article of clothing slipping out of position.
From: National Post
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Veria Central Public Library, Greece - 2010 Access to Learning Award
The Veria Central Public Library has emerged as a leader in Greece by offering a range of services and programs for children and adults, and helping other libraries replicate its success. Its creative use of information and technology services meet the economic, educational, and cultural needs of more than 180,000 people.
For librarians living in North America what Veria Public Library did is just regular business, but in Southern and Eastern Europe libraries are very different. Veria Public Library is indeed an innovator in library service in that part of the world.
Of particular interest should also be the open children's area with comfortable listening stations. That may even be for us North Americans a little step forward.
Click here to watch the slideshow.
For librarians living in North America what Veria Public Library did is just regular business, but in Southern and Eastern Europe libraries are very different. Veria Public Library is indeed an innovator in library service in that part of the world.
Of particular interest should also be the open children's area with comfortable listening stations. That may even be for us North Americans a little step forward.
Click here to watch the slideshow.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014
Beloit, Wis. – Born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage, members of this fall’s entering college class of 2014 have emerged as a post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and technology is just too slow.
Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually.
The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.
Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older.
The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014
Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.
For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”
4. Al Gore has always been animated.
5. Los Angelinos have always been trying to get along.
6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.
8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.
9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.
11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.
14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.
15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.
16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.
17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.
18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.
21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.
22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.
23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.
24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording.
25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.
26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.
30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows.
31. The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum.
32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.
34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always been an alternative to hospitals.
35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.
36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.
37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”
38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.
40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.
41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.
42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.
43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.
44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.
45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college.
46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.
48. Someone has always gotten married in space.
49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States.
50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.
51. Food has always been irradiated.
52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.
53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?
54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy.
55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.
56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street.
57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife.
58. Beethoven has always been a dog.
59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab Clear, it was gone.
60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48.
61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else.
62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.
63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.
64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.
67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.
68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.
69. The Post Office has always been going broke.
70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.
71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.
72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.
73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated.
74. They’ve always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi Channel.
75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis.
Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually.
The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.
Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older.
The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014
Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.
For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”
4. Al Gore has always been animated.
5. Los Angelinos have always been trying to get along.
6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.
8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.
9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.
11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.
14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.
15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.
16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.
17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.
18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.
21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.
22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.
23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.
24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording.
25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.
26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.
30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows.
31. The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum.
32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.
34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always been an alternative to hospitals.
35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.
36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.
37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”
38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.
40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.
41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.
42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.
43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.
44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.
45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college.
46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.
48. Someone has always gotten married in space.
49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States.
50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.
51. Food has always been irradiated.
52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.
53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?
54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy.
55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.
56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street.
57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife.
58. Beethoven has always been a dog.
59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab Clear, it was gone.
60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48.
61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else.
62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.
63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.
64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.
67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.
68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.
69. The Post Office has always been going broke.
70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.
71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.
72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.
73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated.
74. They’ve always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi Channel.
75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Is Facebook suitable for Govt transactions?
by: Robin Hicks
Last week, an airline in the United States became the first company to allow customers to book directly through its Facebook page. Will citizens soon be able to transact directly with government on social media? In interviews with FutureGov, officials in Indonesia and Singapore say that despite data security concerns, some government transactions on Facebook or Twitter will very soon be possible.
Delta Airlines launched a “Ticket Window” on Facebook that enables travelers to reserve flights directly without leaving the site. To date, airlines and other businesses have only used social media for promotional purposes.
Some government entities already use Facebook to allow direct transactions - although for relatively non-sensitive business. The National Library Board of Singapore uses the Facebook appliation NLB myLibrary that can be automatically linked to a patron’s library account. The app pulls up borrowed books and due dates. However, the app does not allow books to be renewed or fines paid. “Patrons must go to the official library web sites and login separately,” a Singaporean official explained.
However, social networks will soon be able to support more revenue-based government transactions such as tax or business registration, thinks Heru Sutadi, Commissioner of the Indonesian Regulatory Authority (BRTI). “In the near future, we will use social media for more than chatting, status updates and sharing photos,” he said. But a number of issues need to addressed first, not least data security, he added.
“It will be some time before this is possible,” said Sutadi. “Besides data security, which is a big concern in Indonesia, our systems and processes for online transactions would require re-engineering for social media. For business transactions, such as paying tax, citizens can send a tax form by email and pay their taxes online using a government web site, which is highly secure.”
Sutadi pointed out that while the Delta Ticket Window allows users to search and book flights without leaving the Facebook page, the information collected is not stored by Facebook, which may allay security concerns. “Facebook has provided a platform on which Delta customers can transact with the airline’s web site, but Facebook does not host passenger data.”
Making Facebook secure enough for government transactions shouldn’t be too difficult, the Singapore official (who wanted to remain anonymous) added. “The necessary security is technically possible, and not too different from embedding credit card approvals into existing web sites. It’s more a matter of people getting used to it, and Facebook not accidentally creating backdoors due to poor engineering.”
As with any platform on which citizens do business with government, the issue boils down to trust, he said. “And once trust is lost, it’s very difficult to regain.”
From: Asia Pacific FutureGov
Last week, an airline in the United States became the first company to allow customers to book directly through its Facebook page. Will citizens soon be able to transact directly with government on social media? In interviews with FutureGov, officials in Indonesia and Singapore say that despite data security concerns, some government transactions on Facebook or Twitter will very soon be possible.
Delta Airlines launched a “Ticket Window” on Facebook that enables travelers to reserve flights directly without leaving the site. To date, airlines and other businesses have only used social media for promotional purposes.
Some government entities already use Facebook to allow direct transactions - although for relatively non-sensitive business. The National Library Board of Singapore uses the Facebook appliation NLB myLibrary that can be automatically linked to a patron’s library account. The app pulls up borrowed books and due dates. However, the app does not allow books to be renewed or fines paid. “Patrons must go to the official library web sites and login separately,” a Singaporean official explained.
However, social networks will soon be able to support more revenue-based government transactions such as tax or business registration, thinks Heru Sutadi, Commissioner of the Indonesian Regulatory Authority (BRTI). “In the near future, we will use social media for more than chatting, status updates and sharing photos,” he said. But a number of issues need to addressed first, not least data security, he added.
“It will be some time before this is possible,” said Sutadi. “Besides data security, which is a big concern in Indonesia, our systems and processes for online transactions would require re-engineering for social media. For business transactions, such as paying tax, citizens can send a tax form by email and pay their taxes online using a government web site, which is highly secure.”
Sutadi pointed out that while the Delta Ticket Window allows users to search and book flights without leaving the Facebook page, the information collected is not stored by Facebook, which may allay security concerns. “Facebook has provided a platform on which Delta customers can transact with the airline’s web site, but Facebook does not host passenger data.”
Making Facebook secure enough for government transactions shouldn’t be too difficult, the Singapore official (who wanted to remain anonymous) added. “The necessary security is technically possible, and not too different from embedding credit card approvals into existing web sites. It’s more a matter of people getting used to it, and Facebook not accidentally creating backdoors due to poor engineering.”
As with any platform on which citizens do business with government, the issue boils down to trust, he said. “And once trust is lost, it’s very difficult to regain.”
From: Asia Pacific FutureGov
Monday, August 16, 2010
Well read: Literature is being used as part of revolutionary therapy to transform people's lives
by: Brian Viner
Betty's divorce came through on the day of her golden wedding anniversary. She had lived overseas for 50 years, married to a domineering Frenchman who earlier in their marriage had fathered a child with another woman. When finally she called time on the troubled relationship, she decided to return to her native Liverpool, yet her self-confidence was completely shot. Betty is 79.
Sue lost both her husband and her father within 12 months. She, too, found herself bereft of confidence, and couldn't bring herself to leave the house. She became introverted, introspective, and stopped reading anything, even newspapers.
Margaret suffered from depression. Her sister's health was poor and her son, too, had been ill. A devout Catholic, she found solace in prayer, but still suffered from panic attacks and needed anti-depressants.
Pip, aged 58, and once the regional sales manager for the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, has suffered nine strokes, all stress-related. He no longer works.
Louise has Asperger's syndrome. She has difficulty following conversations, but is fed up of being "treated like an idiot".
Noelene rarely left the sanctuary of her home. Her mother said to her, "What you need is some friends to hang out with". Noelene replied, "Well, do me a favour, go and find me some. And when you find them, I'll hang out with them."
Noelene has friends now. Louise relates better than ever to other people. Pip's health has improved. Margaret and Sue are cheerful, outgoing and chatty, while Betty positively radiates charisma. And they all owe their transformation to a Friday-morning reading group at a community centre in Birkenhead, led by Kate McDonnell, a serene, softly-spoken, middle-aged Oxford graduate who suffers badly from rheumatoid arthritis.
McDonnell works for Get Into Reading, an initiative started nine years ago by Jane Davis, an English lecturer at Liverpool University. This is principally a story of inspirational women, none more so than Davis, whose original motivation was to introduce great literature to people who would never otherwise encounter it. That is still one of the principles of Get Into Reading, and the charity to which it gave birth, The Reader Organisation. Yet along the way, the goalposts shifted. Davis has effectively turned William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Emily Brontë, Alfred Tennyson and WB Yeats, into therapists.
Her own background is key to the whole remarkable enterprise. Davis left school in Liverpool at 16, with two O-Levels. By 19, she was a mother, living in squats. Yet she had always read to keep herself company. Part of her childhood had been spent living above a pub, surrounded by drunk adults, so she would escape to the local library to immerse herself in what she now describes as "another universe, where your parents look after you, and you have a pony".
In her early twenties, Davis re-entered the world of education. It wasn't quite the same scenario as that imagined by her fellow-Liverpudlian, playwright Willy Russell, who called his literature-hungry heroine Rita, but it wasn't that different. She became a mature student at Liverpool University and left with a first-class degree. Then she became an English teacher. For Davis, reading had never been an intellectual exercise, and nor was teaching. Studying Paradise Lost, her priority had been to find "any useful information that will help me to stay alive", and she applied the same philosophy to teaching, using books to nudge students towards a better understanding of their own lives.
Something was nagging at her, however. It was the popular notion of great works of literature as being somehow elitist; for clever folk, for middle-class folk, for students. This wasn't what Shakespeare or Dickens had intended, quite the reverse, and yet that is what society had done to literature.
Driving one day through a particularly bleak part of Birkenhead, she resolved to address the issue. With a small amount of university funding, she started her first Get Into Reading group, not for people who were physically or emotionally unwell, but for people who hadn't had much formal education. There were 14 of them. She read them contemporary short stories, until a man called Frank, who had been a welder at Cammell Laird shipyard, said, "That was fine, Jane, but when are you going to bring out the good stuff – Shakespeare, Tolstoy, the stuff the posh nobs have?"
Frank is dead now, from a brain tumour, but his legacy endures in some of the texts read every week in 220 Get Into Reading groups throughout the country. As for that shift of the goalposts, it happened when people in the early groups started saying how good the exercise had made them feel, how it had alleviated their physical or emotional troubles. The road through Birkenhead had taken a diversion to Damascus. Davis gave up teaching, managed to get an £89,000 grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to run a year's pilot scheme, and has never looked back, except in ceaseless search of other sources of funding.
On a sunny midsummer Friday, I go to Liverpool to meet her. First though, across the Mersey in Birkenhead, I sit in on Kate McDonnell's group with Betty, Sue, Margaret, Pip, Louise, Noelene and eight or so others. Today's chosen text happens to be a short story, Old Man Minick, written by Edna Ferber in 1922. McDonnell starts reading it herself, aloud, and then stops, to ask what the group think of the relationship between the elderly Mr Minick and his wife. This gets some of them talking about their own relationships; it is easy to see how, by discussing fictional characters, they are able to unload their own stories.
The responsibility for reading then passes around the table, although anyone is at liberty to refuse, and several do. Most of them read fluently but one or two struggle, which of course makes it laborious listening, yet at no point does McDonnell correct them. When one woman trips over her umpteenth word and looks up hesitantly, saying, "Do you want me to carry on?", McDonnell says gently, "If you'd like to". The woman duly continues. This, McDonnell later tells me, is a deliberate policy. "The idea is to make people feel good about themselves," she says. "Our job is not to be teacherly, but enabling."
She also leads groups in hostels for the homeless, drug rehabilitation centres, and even in homes for people with dementia, where of course she does the reading. "I've read to people who can't remember their children's names but can remember 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud'," she says, recalling the old lady hunched almost double in a wheelchair, who on hearing a familiar line of poetry turned her face towards the light and "beamed from ear to ear".
She has chosen Old Man Minick, she tells me, because she thought there would be something in it for everyone, and indeed the ages around the table range from Noelene, in her mid-twenties, to Betty, pushing 80. It is a terrific piece of writing, about an old man who on his wife's death moves in with his childless son and daughter-in-law, but eventually realises he will be happier among his own sort in a retirement home.
All the way through, McDonnell unobtrusively finds reference points applicable to everyone in the room. Some lively conversations ensue, from trivial matters, like whether or not people prefer the bedroom window open or closed, to more weighty issues, like the difficulty of sharing a roof, in adulthood, with an aged parent. A couple of times, McDonnell sums up the story so far for a woman who seems to be having trouble following it, and yet from this same woman there later comes a flash of psychological insight. "Is this Mr Minick looking for his wife in his daughter-in-law," she says, astutely. At other times there is much laughter. "He sounds like a bit of all right," says a woman called Elsie of old man Minick, who to his daughter-in-law's consternation spends hours in the bathroom. "I like 'em nice and clean."
The session lasts for almost two hours, and, afterwards, over a sumptuous but I'm told atypical spread of sandwiches and cakes, I get some further insight into the ways in which Get Into Reading has been therapeutic. Louise tells me about a production of The Winter's Tale they did in Birkenhead Park two years ago, to tie in with Liverpool's European Capital of Culture celebrations. As a child she had been an elective mute, and at first in the play readings that old sense of isolation came flooding back. She stayed silent but she kept attending, and one week she suddenly offered to read out loud. Afterwards, she skipped all the way home. "Reading Shakespeare," she has since said, "has helped me to connect to other people in a way I couldn't imagine. It is the best thing I have done. Having Asperger's is like having jelly with fish. But I feel I have found my jelly and ice-cream here."
As for Pip, he tells me that his health problems had made him suicidal; standing at the kerb of a busy road one day, he'd felt a strong urge to step into the traffic. But these gatherings have given him a new lease of life, and have led him towards other communal pursuits. "I now belong to a singing group that came out of Get Into Reading," he says, cheerfully. "I'm not much good at singing, but I stand at the back and mime. And I also help read to Alzheimer's patients, which is a two-way thing. They seem to like it and it makes me feel good about doing it."
One of Pip's favourites among all the books they have read in the Get Into Reading sessions is Great Expectations, and not merely because he shares a name with the story's main character. Kate McDonnell confirms the novel's impact on her readers. "There is a wonderful line in it," she says, "something about there being one day in every life, and from that day is spun a chain of gold or a chain of iron. After we read that there was complete silence. You could sense everyone finding that day in their own lives."
Later, I look up Dickens' line for myself. "That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."
Talking to Pip, Louise, Betty, Margaret and the others, it is not too fanciful to think of them being bound, as Dickens would have had it, by a chain of gold or flowers, the first link having been formed on the day they joined this Friday-morning group. Its benefits to them are manifest, and there are many people like them not only all over the United Kingdom, but elsewhere in the world.
A couple of hours later, I am sitting in Davis's office in one of Liverpool University's marvellous, rambling, rather shabby Georgian buildings, and she is telling me about the e-mail she has just received from a doctor at a hospital in Chile. He has heard about Get Into Reading, and wants to take it to Santiago.
Davis is a forthright, engaging, formidably intelligent woman in her early fifties, clearly one of nature's pioneers. Nevertheless, she assures me that there are plenty of precedents for literature acting as a catalyst in the healing process, and cites John Stuart Mill, who, having suffered a nervous breakdown, found comfort in Wordsworth's Prelude, the poet's semi-autobiographical epic. "That's the classic case," she says. "John Stuart Mill wrote a heartbreaking account of what it was like not feeling able to be bothered with anything, until he read The Prelude. George Eliot, after her partner George Lewes died, began to read The Divine Comedy with John Cross, an American who became her second husband. That's what helped her get through her grief. Her doctor had prescribed her a pint of champagne every day."
We should all have such doctors, I venture, and Davis obliges me with a big laugh. But the point remains, that words on a page can sometimes reach the parts the medical profession cannot. It is poetry, she adds, which from the start of the project has packed the strongest emotional punch. She recalls one of the earliest meetings, in which she read Tennyson's poem Crossing the Bar, and while she was doing so, a woman began to cry. "That had never happened to me in 15 years of university teaching," Davis recalls. "She'd had a bereavement and the poem really touched her. The power of poetry to people who are not deeply immersed in the literary universe is astonishing."
Davis has convinced many people of this over the past nine years, few more supportive than David Fearnley, a man she describes as one of the scheme's greatest champions. Fearnley is medical director of Mersey Care NHS Trust and also a consultant forensic psychiatrist at Ashworth high- security psychiatric hospital, home of the moors murderer Ian Brady. There are now seven Get Into Reading groups at Ashworth, and Davis is excited by the impact they continue to have.
"Many of the people Dave works with don't have the human equipment to have a therapeutic conversation," she says. "But once they start talking about Wuthering Heights, for example, it's a fantastic opportunity to discuss people behaving very oddly without talking about yourself in any way. 'What's the matter with Cathy, she's off her chump!' Those thoughts can get you to a place where you can talk about yourself."
A few days later I talk to Fearnley on the phone. The objective at Ashworth, he says, is to rehabilitate people to the point where they no longer present a "grave and immediate danger" to the public, and those who have come from the regular prison system can be safely returned. He cites Wuthering Heights, George Orwell's 1984, and the poetry of the First World War as particular favourites of his patients, and I ask him the all-important question: have these collective reading sessions demonstrably helped in the rehabilitation of these very troubled people. "So far," he says, "they have."
It is a guarded endorsement of the extraordinary power of Get Into Reading, and yet perhaps the sweetest one that Davis and her committed band will ever hear.
from: Independent
Betty's divorce came through on the day of her golden wedding anniversary. She had lived overseas for 50 years, married to a domineering Frenchman who earlier in their marriage had fathered a child with another woman. When finally she called time on the troubled relationship, she decided to return to her native Liverpool, yet her self-confidence was completely shot. Betty is 79.
Sue lost both her husband and her father within 12 months. She, too, found herself bereft of confidence, and couldn't bring herself to leave the house. She became introverted, introspective, and stopped reading anything, even newspapers.
Margaret suffered from depression. Her sister's health was poor and her son, too, had been ill. A devout Catholic, she found solace in prayer, but still suffered from panic attacks and needed anti-depressants.
Pip, aged 58, and once the regional sales manager for the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, has suffered nine strokes, all stress-related. He no longer works.
Louise has Asperger's syndrome. She has difficulty following conversations, but is fed up of being "treated like an idiot".
Noelene rarely left the sanctuary of her home. Her mother said to her, "What you need is some friends to hang out with". Noelene replied, "Well, do me a favour, go and find me some. And when you find them, I'll hang out with them."
Noelene has friends now. Louise relates better than ever to other people. Pip's health has improved. Margaret and Sue are cheerful, outgoing and chatty, while Betty positively radiates charisma. And they all owe their transformation to a Friday-morning reading group at a community centre in Birkenhead, led by Kate McDonnell, a serene, softly-spoken, middle-aged Oxford graduate who suffers badly from rheumatoid arthritis.
McDonnell works for Get Into Reading, an initiative started nine years ago by Jane Davis, an English lecturer at Liverpool University. This is principally a story of inspirational women, none more so than Davis, whose original motivation was to introduce great literature to people who would never otherwise encounter it. That is still one of the principles of Get Into Reading, and the charity to which it gave birth, The Reader Organisation. Yet along the way, the goalposts shifted. Davis has effectively turned William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Emily Brontë, Alfred Tennyson and WB Yeats, into therapists.
Her own background is key to the whole remarkable enterprise. Davis left school in Liverpool at 16, with two O-Levels. By 19, she was a mother, living in squats. Yet she had always read to keep herself company. Part of her childhood had been spent living above a pub, surrounded by drunk adults, so she would escape to the local library to immerse herself in what she now describes as "another universe, where your parents look after you, and you have a pony".
In her early twenties, Davis re-entered the world of education. It wasn't quite the same scenario as that imagined by her fellow-Liverpudlian, playwright Willy Russell, who called his literature-hungry heroine Rita, but it wasn't that different. She became a mature student at Liverpool University and left with a first-class degree. Then she became an English teacher. For Davis, reading had never been an intellectual exercise, and nor was teaching. Studying Paradise Lost, her priority had been to find "any useful information that will help me to stay alive", and she applied the same philosophy to teaching, using books to nudge students towards a better understanding of their own lives.
Something was nagging at her, however. It was the popular notion of great works of literature as being somehow elitist; for clever folk, for middle-class folk, for students. This wasn't what Shakespeare or Dickens had intended, quite the reverse, and yet that is what society had done to literature.
Driving one day through a particularly bleak part of Birkenhead, she resolved to address the issue. With a small amount of university funding, she started her first Get Into Reading group, not for people who were physically or emotionally unwell, but for people who hadn't had much formal education. There were 14 of them. She read them contemporary short stories, until a man called Frank, who had been a welder at Cammell Laird shipyard, said, "That was fine, Jane, but when are you going to bring out the good stuff – Shakespeare, Tolstoy, the stuff the posh nobs have?"
Frank is dead now, from a brain tumour, but his legacy endures in some of the texts read every week in 220 Get Into Reading groups throughout the country. As for that shift of the goalposts, it happened when people in the early groups started saying how good the exercise had made them feel, how it had alleviated their physical or emotional troubles. The road through Birkenhead had taken a diversion to Damascus. Davis gave up teaching, managed to get an £89,000 grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to run a year's pilot scheme, and has never looked back, except in ceaseless search of other sources of funding.
On a sunny midsummer Friday, I go to Liverpool to meet her. First though, across the Mersey in Birkenhead, I sit in on Kate McDonnell's group with Betty, Sue, Margaret, Pip, Louise, Noelene and eight or so others. Today's chosen text happens to be a short story, Old Man Minick, written by Edna Ferber in 1922. McDonnell starts reading it herself, aloud, and then stops, to ask what the group think of the relationship between the elderly Mr Minick and his wife. This gets some of them talking about their own relationships; it is easy to see how, by discussing fictional characters, they are able to unload their own stories.
The responsibility for reading then passes around the table, although anyone is at liberty to refuse, and several do. Most of them read fluently but one or two struggle, which of course makes it laborious listening, yet at no point does McDonnell correct them. When one woman trips over her umpteenth word and looks up hesitantly, saying, "Do you want me to carry on?", McDonnell says gently, "If you'd like to". The woman duly continues. This, McDonnell later tells me, is a deliberate policy. "The idea is to make people feel good about themselves," she says. "Our job is not to be teacherly, but enabling."
She also leads groups in hostels for the homeless, drug rehabilitation centres, and even in homes for people with dementia, where of course she does the reading. "I've read to people who can't remember their children's names but can remember 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud'," she says, recalling the old lady hunched almost double in a wheelchair, who on hearing a familiar line of poetry turned her face towards the light and "beamed from ear to ear".
She has chosen Old Man Minick, she tells me, because she thought there would be something in it for everyone, and indeed the ages around the table range from Noelene, in her mid-twenties, to Betty, pushing 80. It is a terrific piece of writing, about an old man who on his wife's death moves in with his childless son and daughter-in-law, but eventually realises he will be happier among his own sort in a retirement home.
All the way through, McDonnell unobtrusively finds reference points applicable to everyone in the room. Some lively conversations ensue, from trivial matters, like whether or not people prefer the bedroom window open or closed, to more weighty issues, like the difficulty of sharing a roof, in adulthood, with an aged parent. A couple of times, McDonnell sums up the story so far for a woman who seems to be having trouble following it, and yet from this same woman there later comes a flash of psychological insight. "Is this Mr Minick looking for his wife in his daughter-in-law," she says, astutely. At other times there is much laughter. "He sounds like a bit of all right," says a woman called Elsie of old man Minick, who to his daughter-in-law's consternation spends hours in the bathroom. "I like 'em nice and clean."
The session lasts for almost two hours, and, afterwards, over a sumptuous but I'm told atypical spread of sandwiches and cakes, I get some further insight into the ways in which Get Into Reading has been therapeutic. Louise tells me about a production of The Winter's Tale they did in Birkenhead Park two years ago, to tie in with Liverpool's European Capital of Culture celebrations. As a child she had been an elective mute, and at first in the play readings that old sense of isolation came flooding back. She stayed silent but she kept attending, and one week she suddenly offered to read out loud. Afterwards, she skipped all the way home. "Reading Shakespeare," she has since said, "has helped me to connect to other people in a way I couldn't imagine. It is the best thing I have done. Having Asperger's is like having jelly with fish. But I feel I have found my jelly and ice-cream here."
As for Pip, he tells me that his health problems had made him suicidal; standing at the kerb of a busy road one day, he'd felt a strong urge to step into the traffic. But these gatherings have given him a new lease of life, and have led him towards other communal pursuits. "I now belong to a singing group that came out of Get Into Reading," he says, cheerfully. "I'm not much good at singing, but I stand at the back and mime. And I also help read to Alzheimer's patients, which is a two-way thing. They seem to like it and it makes me feel good about doing it."
One of Pip's favourites among all the books they have read in the Get Into Reading sessions is Great Expectations, and not merely because he shares a name with the story's main character. Kate McDonnell confirms the novel's impact on her readers. "There is a wonderful line in it," she says, "something about there being one day in every life, and from that day is spun a chain of gold or a chain of iron. After we read that there was complete silence. You could sense everyone finding that day in their own lives."
Later, I look up Dickens' line for myself. "That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."
Talking to Pip, Louise, Betty, Margaret and the others, it is not too fanciful to think of them being bound, as Dickens would have had it, by a chain of gold or flowers, the first link having been formed on the day they joined this Friday-morning group. Its benefits to them are manifest, and there are many people like them not only all over the United Kingdom, but elsewhere in the world.
A couple of hours later, I am sitting in Davis's office in one of Liverpool University's marvellous, rambling, rather shabby Georgian buildings, and she is telling me about the e-mail she has just received from a doctor at a hospital in Chile. He has heard about Get Into Reading, and wants to take it to Santiago.
Davis is a forthright, engaging, formidably intelligent woman in her early fifties, clearly one of nature's pioneers. Nevertheless, she assures me that there are plenty of precedents for literature acting as a catalyst in the healing process, and cites John Stuart Mill, who, having suffered a nervous breakdown, found comfort in Wordsworth's Prelude, the poet's semi-autobiographical epic. "That's the classic case," she says. "John Stuart Mill wrote a heartbreaking account of what it was like not feeling able to be bothered with anything, until he read The Prelude. George Eliot, after her partner George Lewes died, began to read The Divine Comedy with John Cross, an American who became her second husband. That's what helped her get through her grief. Her doctor had prescribed her a pint of champagne every day."
We should all have such doctors, I venture, and Davis obliges me with a big laugh. But the point remains, that words on a page can sometimes reach the parts the medical profession cannot. It is poetry, she adds, which from the start of the project has packed the strongest emotional punch. She recalls one of the earliest meetings, in which she read Tennyson's poem Crossing the Bar, and while she was doing so, a woman began to cry. "That had never happened to me in 15 years of university teaching," Davis recalls. "She'd had a bereavement and the poem really touched her. The power of poetry to people who are not deeply immersed in the literary universe is astonishing."
Davis has convinced many people of this over the past nine years, few more supportive than David Fearnley, a man she describes as one of the scheme's greatest champions. Fearnley is medical director of Mersey Care NHS Trust and also a consultant forensic psychiatrist at Ashworth high- security psychiatric hospital, home of the moors murderer Ian Brady. There are now seven Get Into Reading groups at Ashworth, and Davis is excited by the impact they continue to have.
"Many of the people Dave works with don't have the human equipment to have a therapeutic conversation," she says. "But once they start talking about Wuthering Heights, for example, it's a fantastic opportunity to discuss people behaving very oddly without talking about yourself in any way. 'What's the matter with Cathy, she's off her chump!' Those thoughts can get you to a place where you can talk about yourself."
A few days later I talk to Fearnley on the phone. The objective at Ashworth, he says, is to rehabilitate people to the point where they no longer present a "grave and immediate danger" to the public, and those who have come from the regular prison system can be safely returned. He cites Wuthering Heights, George Orwell's 1984, and the poetry of the First World War as particular favourites of his patients, and I ask him the all-important question: have these collective reading sessions demonstrably helped in the rehabilitation of these very troubled people. "So far," he says, "they have."
It is a guarded endorsement of the extraordinary power of Get Into Reading, and yet perhaps the sweetest one that Davis and her committed band will ever hear.
from: Independent
Sunday, August 15, 2010
The Collection Development Line
by: Abby Johnson
Where is the line between having a balanced collection and serving the needs of your patrons?
I am a firm believer in representing all points of view and having a balanced children’s collection at my library. In a perfect world, my budget would be $100,000,000.00 and space would be unlimited and I could give everyone access to everything and let my patrons decide what they want to expose themselves to.
Unfortunately, my budget is much, much less than $100,000,000.00 and the shelf space in my building definitely has limits.
So where do we draw the line?
Okay, let’s put all issues of religion, ethnicity, and politics aside.
Say my library serves a population that consists largely of people who love puppies.
There are definitely some people who love kitties, hamsters, or parakeets, but the majority of the people we serve love puppies, and we get many more requests for books about puppies than we get for any of the other animals. I want to give my patrons what they want, to make the collection useful for them, but I also want to keep my collection balanced. Should I buy books about kitties, hamsters, and parakeets for every puppy-themed book that I purchase?
What if I don’t have the funds to do that? My patrons would check out 100 puppy books, but if I bought 25 puppy books, 25 kitty books, 25 hamster books, and 25 parakeet books, the puppy books would fly off the shelves and the others would just sit there. With budgets as tight as they are, how can I justify purchasing 75 books that might only check out a handful of times? Not to mention that the tax-payers of my community pay for these books. If they want puppy books and they ask for them, shouldn’t I do my best to fill their needs?
On the other hand, what about the people who love kitties or hamsters in my community? If I have 90 puppy books and only a few books about kitties and hamsters, will they wonder why they’re not as well represented at the library? They pay taxes, too. And what about people who love puppies but want to learn a little more about parakeets? If people who love puppies don’t have access to information and stories about kitties, hamsters, and parakeets, how can they expand their minds? And what about the people who haven’t given a lot of thought about animals and turn to the library to make up their minds?
I definitely want materials that represent these different animals in my collection, but is it okay to skew the collection towards puppies if that’s how my population is skewed?
Now, substitute religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, or political views for the animals mentioned above.
What do you think? Where is the line between providing access to all points of view and providing the materials that our patrons are asking for? Since we do have limited budgets and limited shelf space, we have to draw a line somewhere. I’m going to venture that the line will be different for every community.
Where is your line?
From: ALSC Blog
Where is the line between having a balanced collection and serving the needs of your patrons?
I am a firm believer in representing all points of view and having a balanced children’s collection at my library. In a perfect world, my budget would be $100,000,000.00 and space would be unlimited and I could give everyone access to everything and let my patrons decide what they want to expose themselves to.
Unfortunately, my budget is much, much less than $100,000,000.00 and the shelf space in my building definitely has limits.
So where do we draw the line?
Okay, let’s put all issues of religion, ethnicity, and politics aside.
Say my library serves a population that consists largely of people who love puppies.
There are definitely some people who love kitties, hamsters, or parakeets, but the majority of the people we serve love puppies, and we get many more requests for books about puppies than we get for any of the other animals. I want to give my patrons what they want, to make the collection useful for them, but I also want to keep my collection balanced. Should I buy books about kitties, hamsters, and parakeets for every puppy-themed book that I purchase?
What if I don’t have the funds to do that? My patrons would check out 100 puppy books, but if I bought 25 puppy books, 25 kitty books, 25 hamster books, and 25 parakeet books, the puppy books would fly off the shelves and the others would just sit there. With budgets as tight as they are, how can I justify purchasing 75 books that might only check out a handful of times? Not to mention that the tax-payers of my community pay for these books. If they want puppy books and they ask for them, shouldn’t I do my best to fill their needs?
On the other hand, what about the people who love kitties or hamsters in my community? If I have 90 puppy books and only a few books about kitties and hamsters, will they wonder why they’re not as well represented at the library? They pay taxes, too. And what about people who love puppies but want to learn a little more about parakeets? If people who love puppies don’t have access to information and stories about kitties, hamsters, and parakeets, how can they expand their minds? And what about the people who haven’t given a lot of thought about animals and turn to the library to make up their minds?
I definitely want materials that represent these different animals in my collection, but is it okay to skew the collection towards puppies if that’s how my population is skewed?
Now, substitute religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, or political views for the animals mentioned above.
What do you think? Where is the line between providing access to all points of view and providing the materials that our patrons are asking for? Since we do have limited budgets and limited shelf space, we have to draw a line somewhere. I’m going to venture that the line will be different for every community.
Where is your line?
From: ALSC Blog
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Random House, Kobo, and Fairmont Hotels Partner to Loan E-Readers to Guests
Random House, Kobo, and Fairmont Hotels are coming to the rescue of travelers who forgot to bring a book on vacation. Ten Fairmont hotels in the U.S. and Canada will have Kobo eReaders available for guests staying on Fairmont Gold, an exclusive “hotel within the hotel” that offers special perks. The Kobo eReaders will be loaded with new and bestselling Random House titles by Bret Easton Ellis, Sophie Kinsella, Alexander McCall Smith, and other authors. Upon returning the Kobo eReader, guests will receive an offer for $2 off select Random House titles redeemable at www.kobobooks.com/randomhouse.
Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis said, “Travelers are a great fit for the Kobo offering and a group that is eager to engage in e-reading. We know that travelers do not want to carry heavy books in their luggage, and vacations provide the perfect time to relax and catch up on reading. This partnership allows Kobo to expand our reach and offer our service to an important segment of our customer base.”
In addition to the Random House library, Fairmont guests can purchase books from Kobo’s e-bookstore.
The Kobo eReader is available at The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, Fairmont Pacific Rim in Vancouver, Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth in Montreal, The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, Fairmont Le Château Frontenac in Quebec, Fairmont Château Laurier in Ottawa, Fairmont Turnberry Isle in Florida, The Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston, and The Plaza (which Fairmont manages) in New York City.
Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis said, “Travelers are a great fit for the Kobo offering and a group that is eager to engage in e-reading. We know that travelers do not want to carry heavy books in their luggage, and vacations provide the perfect time to relax and catch up on reading. This partnership allows Kobo to expand our reach and offer our service to an important segment of our customer base.”
In addition to the Random House library, Fairmont guests can purchase books from Kobo’s e-bookstore.
The Kobo eReader is available at The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, Fairmont Pacific Rim in Vancouver, Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth in Montreal, The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, Fairmont Le Château Frontenac in Quebec, Fairmont Château Laurier in Ottawa, Fairmont Turnberry Isle in Florida, The Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston, and The Plaza (which Fairmont manages) in New York City.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Camden, N.J., saves its libraries
by: Carolyn Kellogg
Last week, the library board in Camden, N.J. announced its intention to close all three library branches by the end of 2010, effectively shutting its entire system. Proposed cuts to the budget were so severe that the libraries would not even have been able to maintain a single branch; rather than leave books on shelves, waiting for a better financial day, the library board planned to auction, donate, store or destroy all its materials. Camden, one of the nation's poorest cities, is suffering a tremendous budget crisis.
On Monday, Mayor Dana Redd announced that the Camden library system had a lifeline: It will join the county system, pending approval by the City Council.
This will be a vital move for Camden residents, more than 150,000 of whom use the city libraries each year. Fewer than a third of residents have high-speed Internet in their homes. The Philadelphia Inquirer visited the library last week:
On Thursday at the main library in downtown Camden,
Gabrielle Simmons, 21, applied for a job on the Internet
while her 3-year-old son, Cameron, squirmed on her lap.
Simmons is an unemployed single mother who relies on the
library to apply for jobs; many workplaces now only accept
online applications. She was busy Thursday applying for a job
at Old Navy in the Cherry Hill Mall.
Next to her sat Timothy Thomson, 32, who was laid off from
Verizon last year. He comes to the library twice a week to check
out self-help books and apply for jobs.
The plight of Camden's library may be extreme, but it is not unique. The New York Public Library managed to avoid extreme cuts, but libraries in Virginia have not been so lucky. Libraries in Stamford, Conn., might be forced to close. And the Los Angeles Public Library has curtailed its hours because of budget cuts.
from: LATimes
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Library Vending Machine Coming to Union Station?
by: Robyn Urback
If you're anything like me, one of the most frustrating aspects of the downtown commute is the lack of immediate access to obscure library materials.
Luckily, the Toronto Public Library is considering installing an automated kiosk to dispense books, CDs and DVDs at Union Station. The kiosk--which, granted, sounds pretty neat--would allow borrowers to choose their selections via touchscreen and complete the transaction with a swipe of their library card. Materials would then be returned to the kiosk by the due date.
"What it does is it allows you to make library materials more available to audiences and areas where you might not be able to put a library branch," Anne Bailey, the director of branch libraries for the Toronto Public Library, told CBC News. "We think that people will really benefit from this type of access to our service and it will also introduce new people to the library."
Bailey predicts the kiosk will be operating at Union Station at 2012.
From: blogTO
If you're anything like me, one of the most frustrating aspects of the downtown commute is the lack of immediate access to obscure library materials.
Luckily, the Toronto Public Library is considering installing an automated kiosk to dispense books, CDs and DVDs at Union Station. The kiosk--which, granted, sounds pretty neat--would allow borrowers to choose their selections via touchscreen and complete the transaction with a swipe of their library card. Materials would then be returned to the kiosk by the due date.
"What it does is it allows you to make library materials more available to audiences and areas where you might not be able to put a library branch," Anne Bailey, the director of branch libraries for the Toronto Public Library, told CBC News. "We think that people will really benefit from this type of access to our service and it will also introduce new people to the library."
Bailey predicts the kiosk will be operating at Union Station at 2012.
From: blogTO
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
The Kids' Books Are All Right
by: Pamela Paul
While au fait literary types around town await the buzzed-about new novels from Jonathan Franzen and Nicole Krauss, other former English majors have spent the summer trying to get hold of “Mockingjay,” the third book in Suzanne Collins’s dystopian trilogy, so intensely under wraps that not even reviewers have been allowed a glimpse before its airtight Aug. 24 release. What fate will befall our heroine, Katniss Everdeen? My fellow book club members and I are desperate to know. When will the Capitol fall? And how can Collins possibly top the first two installments, “The Hunger Games” and “Catching Fire”?
Oh, did I mention? “Mockingjay” is for teenagers. I am well into my 30s.
But I am not embarrassed by my, shall we say, immature taste in literature. And I wasn’t much concerned when, barreling through “The Hunger Games” at the hospital after giving birth to my third child, I hardly noticed whether he ate or slept. When will the rebellion begin, I wanted to know. Which suitor will Katniss choose? Nor am I alone. According to David Levithan, editorial director at Scholastic, Collins’s publisher, roughly half of the “Hunger Games” fans on Facebook are full-fledged adults. “The Harry Potter generation has grown up,” he told me.
It isn’t just the kids who graduated with the Hogwarts crowd who are tuning in. After all, the historian Amanda Foreman, a 42-year-old mother of five and author of “Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire,” was honeymooning when she first read Harry. When I asked Foreman about her young adult reading habit, she could hardly contain her enthusiasm. I must, she urged, read Susan Cooper (“incredibly clever”), Eoin Colfer (“a brilliant author”), Rick Riordan (“really, really, really good”). I must! “A lot of adult literature is all art and no heart,” Foreman, who is currently working on a book about British involvement in the American Civil War, said. “But good Y.A. is like good television. There’s a freshness there; it’s engaging. Y.A. authors aren’t writing about middle-aged anomie or disappointed people.”
That may be, in part, why so many middle-aged readers like them. (“They’re also easier to read, and people are tired,” Lizzie Skurnick, author of the anthology “Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading,” suggested. “I’m sure I’ll get in trouble for saying that.”) But big type and short, plot-driven chapters aside, the erosion of age-determined book categories, initiated by Harry Potter, has been hastened along by an influx of crossover authors like Stephenie Meyer and interlopers like Sherman Alexie, James Patterson, Francine Prose, Carl Hiaasen and John Grisham, to name just a few stars from across the spectrum of adult fiction who have turned to writing Y.A. According to surveys by the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry, 47 percent of 18- to 24-year-old women and 24 percent of same-aged men say most of the books they buy are classified as young adult. The percentage of female Y.A. fans between the ages of 25 and 44 has nearly doubled in the past four years. Today, nearly one in five 35- to 44-year-olds say they most frequently buy Y.A. books. For themselves.
When Gretchen Rubin, the author of “The Happiness Project,” started up her Kidlit book club in 2006, it was a furtive, underground pursuit. “I always knew that I loved children’s literature but had shoved it to the side because it didn’t fit my idea of myself as a sophisticated adult,” Rubin, a former clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, told me. “So I read it on the sly, when I was stressed out. If I found myself rereading ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ it meant I was really anxious.”
The idea for Kidlit was hatched at a lunch with Jennifer Joel, a literary agent at I.C.M., in which both tentatively expressed a love that ran deeper than Potter. A few days later, Rubin discovered that another acquaintance, Jonathan Burnham, senior vice president and publisher of Harper, was also a fan. Their first meeting was held shortly thereafter. Its subject was “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” At the end of dessert (Turkish delight), Amy Zilliax, who has a Ph.D. in English, stood up and shouted, “At last, I have found my people!”
Kidlit has now expanded to three groups, which meet every six weeks, alternating between classic and contemporary works. When I joined in 2008, the initial appeal was catch-up. Why had I never read “Bridge to Terabithia”? Shouldn’t I tackle H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, “Where the Red Fern Grows”? But I was also intrigued that Lev Grossman, book critic for Time, and Laura Miller, the book critic for Salon, along with several top agents and editors, were also members. What, I wondered, were such high-powered literary eminences doing in a club devoted to children’s stories?
Arguing, often passionately, about the books, for one thing. “We take these books seriously,” said Grossman, whose latest novel, “The Magicians,” has been described as an R-rated Harry Potter. His group recently devoted two sessions — “among the most contentious and shouty we’ve had” — to “The Hunger Games.” Is Katniss a feminist hero? Is she a tool of the state? Is this a conventional romance or a subversion of the genre? “Everybody had an opinion,” Grossman added.
And none of it feels like homework. The themes are serious and the discussions intense, but the books are fast-paced and fun. “A lot of contemporary adult literature is characterized by a real distrust of plot,” Grossman said. “I think young adult fiction is one of the few areas of literature right now where storytelling really thrives.”
Y.A. may also pierce the jadedness and cynicism of our adult selves. “When you talk to people about the books that have meant a lot to them, it’s usually books they read when they were younger because the books have this wonder in everyday things that isn’t bogged down by excessively grown-up concerns or the need to be subtle or coy,” explained Jesse Sheidlower, an editor at large at the Oxford English Dictionary and member of Kidlit. “When you read these books as an adult, it tends to bring back the sense of newness and discovery that I tend not to get from adult fiction.”
“There’s an immediacy in the prose,” said Darcey Steinke, a novelist who says she reads about one Y.A. book a month (recent favorites: “Elsewhere,” by Gabrielle Zevin — “better than ‘The Lovely Bones’ — and anything by Francesca Lia Block of “Weetzie Bat” fame). “I like the way adolescent emotions are rawer, less canned.”
Caitlin Macy, the author of the story collection “Spoiled” and another Kidlit member, pointed out that the early teens are “a moment in time when you feel that each decision you make — like who you sit next to at lunch — is actually going to have repercussions for the rest of your life.” As Steinke puts it: “There’s a timelessness to the period. These books are far from you, yet are also the same as you.”
Fortunately, it’s a you who need not be embarrassed about still reading kids’ books.
from: NYTimes
While au fait literary types around town await the buzzed-about new novels from Jonathan Franzen and Nicole Krauss, other former English majors have spent the summer trying to get hold of “Mockingjay,” the third book in Suzanne Collins’s dystopian trilogy, so intensely under wraps that not even reviewers have been allowed a glimpse before its airtight Aug. 24 release. What fate will befall our heroine, Katniss Everdeen? My fellow book club members and I are desperate to know. When will the Capitol fall? And how can Collins possibly top the first two installments, “The Hunger Games” and “Catching Fire”?
Oh, did I mention? “Mockingjay” is for teenagers. I am well into my 30s.
But I am not embarrassed by my, shall we say, immature taste in literature. And I wasn’t much concerned when, barreling through “The Hunger Games” at the hospital after giving birth to my third child, I hardly noticed whether he ate or slept. When will the rebellion begin, I wanted to know. Which suitor will Katniss choose? Nor am I alone. According to David Levithan, editorial director at Scholastic, Collins’s publisher, roughly half of the “Hunger Games” fans on Facebook are full-fledged adults. “The Harry Potter generation has grown up,” he told me.
It isn’t just the kids who graduated with the Hogwarts crowd who are tuning in. After all, the historian Amanda Foreman, a 42-year-old mother of five and author of “Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire,” was honeymooning when she first read Harry. When I asked Foreman about her young adult reading habit, she could hardly contain her enthusiasm. I must, she urged, read Susan Cooper (“incredibly clever”), Eoin Colfer (“a brilliant author”), Rick Riordan (“really, really, really good”). I must! “A lot of adult literature is all art and no heart,” Foreman, who is currently working on a book about British involvement in the American Civil War, said. “But good Y.A. is like good television. There’s a freshness there; it’s engaging. Y.A. authors aren’t writing about middle-aged anomie or disappointed people.”
That may be, in part, why so many middle-aged readers like them. (“They’re also easier to read, and people are tired,” Lizzie Skurnick, author of the anthology “Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading,” suggested. “I’m sure I’ll get in trouble for saying that.”) But big type and short, plot-driven chapters aside, the erosion of age-determined book categories, initiated by Harry Potter, has been hastened along by an influx of crossover authors like Stephenie Meyer and interlopers like Sherman Alexie, James Patterson, Francine Prose, Carl Hiaasen and John Grisham, to name just a few stars from across the spectrum of adult fiction who have turned to writing Y.A. According to surveys by the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry, 47 percent of 18- to 24-year-old women and 24 percent of same-aged men say most of the books they buy are classified as young adult. The percentage of female Y.A. fans between the ages of 25 and 44 has nearly doubled in the past four years. Today, nearly one in five 35- to 44-year-olds say they most frequently buy Y.A. books. For themselves.
When Gretchen Rubin, the author of “The Happiness Project,” started up her Kidlit book club in 2006, it was a furtive, underground pursuit. “I always knew that I loved children’s literature but had shoved it to the side because it didn’t fit my idea of myself as a sophisticated adult,” Rubin, a former clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, told me. “So I read it on the sly, when I was stressed out. If I found myself rereading ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ it meant I was really anxious.”
The idea for Kidlit was hatched at a lunch with Jennifer Joel, a literary agent at I.C.M., in which both tentatively expressed a love that ran deeper than Potter. A few days later, Rubin discovered that another acquaintance, Jonathan Burnham, senior vice president and publisher of Harper, was also a fan. Their first meeting was held shortly thereafter. Its subject was “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” At the end of dessert (Turkish delight), Amy Zilliax, who has a Ph.D. in English, stood up and shouted, “At last, I have found my people!”
Kidlit has now expanded to three groups, which meet every six weeks, alternating between classic and contemporary works. When I joined in 2008, the initial appeal was catch-up. Why had I never read “Bridge to Terabithia”? Shouldn’t I tackle H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, “Where the Red Fern Grows”? But I was also intrigued that Lev Grossman, book critic for Time, and Laura Miller, the book critic for Salon, along with several top agents and editors, were also members. What, I wondered, were such high-powered literary eminences doing in a club devoted to children’s stories?
Arguing, often passionately, about the books, for one thing. “We take these books seriously,” said Grossman, whose latest novel, “The Magicians,” has been described as an R-rated Harry Potter. His group recently devoted two sessions — “among the most contentious and shouty we’ve had” — to “The Hunger Games.” Is Katniss a feminist hero? Is she a tool of the state? Is this a conventional romance or a subversion of the genre? “Everybody had an opinion,” Grossman added.
And none of it feels like homework. The themes are serious and the discussions intense, but the books are fast-paced and fun. “A lot of contemporary adult literature is characterized by a real distrust of plot,” Grossman said. “I think young adult fiction is one of the few areas of literature right now where storytelling really thrives.”
Y.A. may also pierce the jadedness and cynicism of our adult selves. “When you talk to people about the books that have meant a lot to them, it’s usually books they read when they were younger because the books have this wonder in everyday things that isn’t bogged down by excessively grown-up concerns or the need to be subtle or coy,” explained Jesse Sheidlower, an editor at large at the Oxford English Dictionary and member of Kidlit. “When you read these books as an adult, it tends to bring back the sense of newness and discovery that I tend not to get from adult fiction.”
“There’s an immediacy in the prose,” said Darcey Steinke, a novelist who says she reads about one Y.A. book a month (recent favorites: “Elsewhere,” by Gabrielle Zevin — “better than ‘The Lovely Bones’ — and anything by Francesca Lia Block of “Weetzie Bat” fame). “I like the way adolescent emotions are rawer, less canned.”
Caitlin Macy, the author of the story collection “Spoiled” and another Kidlit member, pointed out that the early teens are “a moment in time when you feel that each decision you make — like who you sit next to at lunch — is actually going to have repercussions for the rest of your life.” As Steinke puts it: “There’s a timelessness to the period. These books are far from you, yet are also the same as you.”
Fortunately, it’s a you who need not be embarrassed about still reading kids’ books.
from: NYTimes
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Save Money, Do Good with Better World Books
by: Jennifer Leslie
ATLANTA -- Green metal bins are popping up in parking lots across metro Atlanta to encourage people to donate books and "do good."
The company behind the bins, Better World Books, takes the books, sells them online at a deep discount and donates a portion of the sales price to literacy programs around the world.
"Why a book would ever end up in a landfill is beyond me," said David Murphy, President and CEO of Better World Books. "We get a chance to reuse the book at a great cost saving to the person who's gonna buy it."
The company was started eight years ago by three Notre Dame grads who collected and sold used textbooks to support literacy programs.
The company has grown over the years but stayed true to its mission.
"To date, we've raised over $8 million in cash for nonprofit literacy partners and donated about 2 1/2 million books," Murphy said.
BetterWorldBooks.com carries eight million titles, new and used books, some up to 80 or 90 percent off list price, with free shipping.
The company donates money from the sales price and gives away books that don't sell to nonprofits, like Books for Africa and the National Center for Family Literacy.
The company gets used books from 1600 college campuses and 950 library partners.
It recently added 120 donation bins in metro Atlanta and Northern Indiana.
"These bins are an opportunity for people to unload their books from garages, apartments, basements, attics," Murphy said. "Think of Better World Books like you would think of Goodwill or the Salvation Army. It's a great place to put your books, and we guarantee they're gonna be put to a great use."
from: 11alive.com
ATLANTA -- Green metal bins are popping up in parking lots across metro Atlanta to encourage people to donate books and "do good."
The company behind the bins, Better World Books, takes the books, sells them online at a deep discount and donates a portion of the sales price to literacy programs around the world.
"Why a book would ever end up in a landfill is beyond me," said David Murphy, President and CEO of Better World Books. "We get a chance to reuse the book at a great cost saving to the person who's gonna buy it."
The company was started eight years ago by three Notre Dame grads who collected and sold used textbooks to support literacy programs.
The company has grown over the years but stayed true to its mission.
"To date, we've raised over $8 million in cash for nonprofit literacy partners and donated about 2 1/2 million books," Murphy said.
BetterWorldBooks.com carries eight million titles, new and used books, some up to 80 or 90 percent off list price, with free shipping.
The company donates money from the sales price and gives away books that don't sell to nonprofits, like Books for Africa and the National Center for Family Literacy.
The company gets used books from 1600 college campuses and 950 library partners.
It recently added 120 donation bins in metro Atlanta and Northern Indiana.
"These bins are an opportunity for people to unload their books from garages, apartments, basements, attics," Murphy said. "Think of Better World Books like you would think of Goodwill or the Salvation Army. It's a great place to put your books, and we guarantee they're gonna be put to a great use."
from: 11alive.com
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