Tag Archives: books

The Future of Libraries

Open Library LogoI am a HUGE fan of our library system here in Birmingham. They are great and very rarely do I feel let down. I’m betting the folks in Boston feel the same way about their library system too. Especially with the launch of their Open Library Scan-on-Demand program.

Here are the directions from their site:

…if it’s at the Boston Public Library and hasn’t been scanned yet, there will be a “Scan This Book” button… …we’ll have a librarian go and get the book from the stacks, bring it to our scanning center, and have our team of scanners digitize it page-by-page. Within 3-5 days, you should receive an email follow-up with a link to the newly-digitized copy, complete with PDF, online flip book, full text (using OCR technology) and more, all thanks to your request!

 

Open Library Screenshot

How cool is that? You can tell these people have put a ton of thought into their library system. if you go the site, you can even see which titles are in the process of being scanned. Kudos Boston!

Amazon’s Editors Need Glasses

Now, I’m no Alvin Lustig or Paul Rand, but does anyone at Amazon REALLY think these are the “10 Best Covers of 2008” in all of the tens of thousands of books that were printed this year? Really?

I mean, there were some GORGEOUS covers done this year. Maybe Amazon’s editors just let some random number generator pick these. Even with the Chip Kidd cover included, this list is just weird, at best. Feel free to disagree and if you do, please explain why. I just don’t get it.

Reading makes you happy

The numbers have been tallied and it’s official, reading makes you happy (or was it you are happy so you read?). The December issue of Social Indicators Research contains the results of a 30-year University of Maryland study which kept up with 30,000+ adults. Their findings seem to be pretty straight forward:

…unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as very happy spend more time reading and socializing.

Another interesting tidbit was that half of the unhappy television watchers felt they had too much time on their hands and the unwanted free-time just added to their woes. Whereas less than 20% of the happy reading socializers said they had extra free-time to fill.

I’m not real sure what all this says about our culture, but after studying it for 30 years, they should get some props. And to be honest, all these numbers and percentages make me grumpy. So I’m just going to go read.

Check out this Reading Challenge

I have signed up for my first ever book challenge (I feel like a grown up blogger now). I’m tossing my hat in the ring for J.Kaye’s 2009 Support Your Local Library Challenge. Basically, I’m committing to borrowing and reading 25 books from my local library. I check out a LOT of books from the library, that I almost feel like I’m cheating. I even started tagging all of my borrowed books with JCLC on LibraryThing.

Continue reading Check out this Reading Challenge