Library Journal has an article on BYU’s plan to loan Kindles to faculty members:
Faculty members at Brigham Young University (BYU), Provo, UT, have a new alternative to interlibrary loan (ILL): the Amazon Kindle. The Harold B. Lee Library has purchased three ebook readers for the pilot, expecting the items chosen to be either very new or very popular titles—titles that in some cases the library has been unable to get through ILL.
Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote a piece for the San Jose Mercury News outlining why CA has started an initiative to replace paper books in classrooms with ebooks:
It’s nonsensical — and expensive — to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form. Especially now, when our school districts are strapped for cash and our state budget deficit is forcing further cuts to classrooms, we must do everything we can to untie educators’ hands and free up dollars so that schools can do more with fewer resources.
He also talks about currency of materials:
By frequently updating texts as they are developed, rather than continuing to teach from outdated textbooks, we will better prepare our students. For example, many textbooks still describe television technology in terms of cathode-ray tubes, without even mentioning LCD or plasma screens that are being sold today. If California is to remain competitive in an increasingly global economy, this initial focus on math and science texts is critical.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Just found tweetingtoohard.com. Oh, sweet nectar of self-importance. . .
I just read the Pew report on Twitter that came out in February. Nothing surprising, but it’s still nice to have the numbers:
Twitter and similar services have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have ever used Twitter and its ilk, as have 20% of online adults 25 to 34. Use of these services drops off steadily after age 35 with 10% of 35 to 44 year olds and 5% of 45 to 54 year olds using Twitter. The decline is even more stark among older internet users; 4% of 55-64 year olds and 2% of those 65 and older use Twitter.
What I’ve found interesting lately is the number of businesses/organizations I’ve heard advertising their Twitter feeds. Perhaps an indicator that it might be becoming more mainstream.
LA Times has report on a panel discussion from their Festival of Books, of which Wells Tower was a part. I’m reading Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned and liking it so far. More to come as I finish it.
Publisher’s Weekly has an interesting article on how independent book sellers are feeling about ebooks:
For bookstore owners who see e-books as a nonstarter, one major concern is price. “You’re not going to make 40% of your margin on e-books,” said David Didriksen, president of Willow Books & Cafe in Acton, Mass. “Therein lies the problem, as I see it. You’re making pennies per transaction; e-books are a pipe dream. Books still sell every day.” In a similar vein, Mitchell Kaplan, cofounder and owner of Books & Books, headquartered in Coral Gables, Fla., plans to continue doing what he does best. “I have to serve my core customer, and that doesn’t fall into the realm of e-books,” he said. “We have to provide value of a different sort. We focus more on a sense of place, providing a place for people to come. Can you stop an Amazon? While we can’t do electronic books well, they can’t capture a big share of what we do well.”
In honor of National Poetry Month, the 52 Poems app will add a new poem each week to your Facebook wall. (Via Bookslut)
Michael Meyer has a good essay in the Sunday’s NYT Book Review about author advances.
A.O. Scott has an article in the NY Times praising the short story. Using the back-drop of recent biographies of Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever, and Donald Barthelme, Scott wonders, intriguingly, if our current culture could mark a return to the form:
The new, post-print literary media are certainly amenable to brevity. The blog post and the tweet may be ephemeral rather than lapidary, but the culture in which they thrive is fed by a craving for more narrative and a demand for pith. And just as the iPod has killed the album, so the Kindle might, in time, spur a revival of the short story. If you can buy a single song for a dollar, why wouldn’t you spend that much on a handy, compact package of character, incident and linguistic invention?
I think that having short stories available for download at a low price are a great idea, and would certainly be something I’d use a Kindle for. (If, you know, I had one). Or, it would even be appealing to be able to download one as a PDF (and DRM restrictions could be built into the PDF to address copyright issues). But, the flaw I see in Scott’s vision is that, with his analogy of the ipod and albums, people were already listening to music. All they had to do was adapt to listening to it in a new format. I don’t know that a new format (e.g., a Kindle) could also raise interest in an unfamiliar genre.
The Tournament of Books has a winner, and it is A Mercy by Toni Morrison. Unfortunately, I had Pittsburgh in this pool too.