LibraryCity

Corilee Christou is LibraryCity’s new library and publisher relations director emeritus

David Rothman — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 08:57:15 +0000

Update, Aug. 19, 2018: To make more time for her grandchildren, Corilee Christou has resigned as library and publisher relations director for LibraryCity and LibraryEndowment.org. But she still believes in the endowment cause and will now hold the title of director emeritus. We are looking for a replacement. Contact LibraryEndowment.org Co-founder David H. Rothman at drothman@libraryendowment.org or 703-370-6540.

Corilee Christou, a veteran of the library and publishing scenes as well as a grandmother passionate about literacy, is the new director of library and publisher relations for LibraryCity and LibraryEndowment.org. She will also advise on strategy. Another title sums it all up: library evangelist.

LibraryCity is the small informal group calling for a national library endowment. In her new role Corilee will explain the endowment vision to librarians and publishers. The endowment initiative is a heartfelt grassroots cause—LibraryCity is all volunteer. But along the way, opportunities would grow for librarians, publishers, and writers through expanded markets.

Visit Amazon and you’ll see review blurbs from Publishers Weekly. That deal is just one of the many Corilee has helped make happen over the years to the advantage of all involved.

Among other jobs, Corilee was VP of new media licensing and business development for Reed Business Information, the one-time parent company of Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and School Library Journal. She has also worked for LexisNexis and other information-related companies as well as for public, K-12, and academic libraries.

Corilee will continue her work as a rights consultant for C2Consulting and a columnist for Information Today.

She lives in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area. The photo shows her reading Jon Agee’s Little Santa to Karsyn, her five-year-old granddaughter there. Yes, LibraryCity is keen on paper books as well as the digital variety. Corilee reads both old-fashioned books and the digital ones (on a Kindle Fire).

You can reach Corilee at consultc2 @ gmail com. Ahead is her biography along with an explanation of why she is volunteering.

* * *

Books & music, music & books. It all began with The Cat in the Hat, and continued through the Beatles landing in the United States, whose debut changed the music scene and music buyer population for all time. Books and music were always part of my life starting with story books read to me by my mother and ultimately affected significantly by technological disrupters, most notably the transistor radio.

I grew up in Belmont, Massachusetts, home of Mitt Romney, a small suburb bordering on Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to both Harvard and MIT, and my first jobs were at the local Belmont school and public libraries. As an undergrad, I attended Brandeis University, majoring in Classical Civilization and minoring in WBRS FM, the Brandeis radio station. After graduation, I spun vinyl as a disc jockey at several local radio stations. By the early 80s, radio began to change becoming less “progressive,” and with playlists now becoming more restrictive and dictated by the pop culture of the day. It was time to make a change. Much as I loved sharing information about news, events and music, I also loved helping listeners find information, and what better place to do pursue this than as a librarian?

I landed at MIT’s Dewey Library, as a reference assistant, while I pursued my MLS at Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science. After graduation, my first professional librarian position was at Suffolk University’s Mildred F. Sawyer Library, supporting undergraduates and the Masters in Business program.

Still enamored by new technologies especially the emerging online database marketplace, I left Suffolk for Nexis, the small but growing news database created initially by then Mead Data Central to support the current events research needs of its then lawyer and librarian user population. I began training librarians to use the service and ultimately created a team of librarians, the Information Professional Consultant group whose role was to work directly with the librarian user base to help them use the LexisNexis (LN) services efficiently and effectively. But in the end it was content and copyright that called out to me, and soon I started working for the LexisNexis Strategic Relations area managing and signing new licenses content worldwide.

After the sale of the Mead Data Central’s online products and services to Reed Elsevier, and several years pursuing non-US content for LexisNexis, Reed Business Information, the b2b arm of Reed Publishing, tapped me to be the VP of Licensing and Brand Development for its US, UK and Australia operations. Several thousands of frequent flier miles and outbound licensing arrangements later, I left RBI for library work, going full circle as a part-time reference librarian for the MidPointe Library System, consulting with publishers on licensing and maximizing their digital revenue, and writing about copyright and copyright policy and issues for Information Today.

As the Grateful Dead song goes, “what a long strange trip it’s been,” but in actual fact, strange and disconnected as my career may seem, one key point still remains: as a child I was exposed to books, to reading, and to the local public library. Children still need to develop a love for books and for reading regardless of where and in what format. It is the core of their entire learning experience.

Computer literacy, news literacy, whatever kind of literacy—nothing can happen without basic reading literacy. Not everyone can afford to buy books, but everyone can afford a free library card. As more and more school libraries close or scale back as is the case in Chicago and now in Boston, with Public Libraries’ budgets being cut to the barest of bones, the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation phasing out its Global Libraries initiative, and the IMLS budget threatened, the need for a national digital library endowment becomes even more compelling not just for the libraries and their users, but also for the publishing community. The endowment would help publishers retain and grow markets whether it be for books or ebooks bought for a library—or for individual purchases by avid readers (perhaps looking for the next great literary classic after becoming hooked on the latest George R. Martin tome while browsing a library).

The endowment would be a win for all. Publishers, writers, and other content creators would not just receive fair compensation. They would also benefit from the additional money available for libraries to promote books in appropriate media that matched the subject matter of the books. As a side effect, the commercial side would also benefit. My granddaughter, a natural reader, picked out Little Santa because a TV show sparked her interest in Christmas. Fine. But even better, what if imaginative, endowment-financed spots on TV had been around to guide Karsyn to specific books on topics matching those of the shows? The usual public service announcements in spots donated by the media are fine, but we also need this other approach, and libraries on their own could never pay for it. The endowment could especially go for shows seen by kids or young parents.

The resources exist for this and many other endowment-financed activities. Just ten Americans are together worth half a trillion, and the top 400 are worth $2.4 trillion. A mere fraction of that could pay for a $15-$20 billion endowment within five years. Imagine all the possibilities that the Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge could open up.

Today public libraries in the U.S. can spend only around $1.2 billion per year on books and other content. LibraryCity believes in balanced copyright law, fair to all, but by itself that is far from a complete solution. Libraries also need money. By better being able to promoting literacy, they will grow the book market. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumers in 2013 spent an average of only “$29.20 on books not purchased through book clubs.” Total entertainment expenditures reached thousands of dollars. More importantly, the typical 15-19 year old spends fewer than eight minutes a day on recreational reading on weekends and holidays despite the well-documented benefits of reading for fun. The medium doesn’t matter as much as whether the kids are reading. Ebooks, however, can help.

At the same time, the endowment would make more money available for the education, hiring, and professional development of digital-savvy librarians to help children and others discover and enjoy books—especially in minority communities. Minorities are significantly underrepresented in both the publishing and library words. This is one of many areas where I believe an endowment could make a major difference.

(Updated January 17, 2017.)Similar Posts:

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Props! Novelist Philip Roth and the Newark Public Library bring his books ‘home’

David Rothman — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 17:47:22 +0000

Unfair. I’m glad Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his song lyrics, veritable poetry, but the the judges should have honored Philip Roth eons ago.

At least the Newark Public Library is showing Roth-love, and vice versa. A Scene Right Out of Philip Roth: His Books Come Home to Newark’s Library—that’s the headline of a New York Times article telling of Roth’s donation of his 4,000-book personal library to the institution he immortalized in his novella Goodbye Columbus. From the Times:

The books will be shelved in Newark exactly as they are in Connecticut—not a window into Mr. Roth’s mind exactly, but physical evidence of the eclectic writers who helped shape it: Salinger, Bellow, Malamud, Kafka, Bruno Schulz. Many of the volumes are heavily underlined and annotated. “It’s like he’s having a dialogue with them,” [Library Trustee Rosemary Steinbaum] said.

“I’m 83, and I don’t have any heirs,” Mr. Roth said, explaining why he decided to give the library away. “If I had children it might be a different story. It’s not a huge library, but it’s special to me, and I wanted it preserved as it was, if only for historical interest: What was an American writer reading in the second half of the 20th century.”

Could this be a model for other writers and cities—not just the donations but the loving way the library will display them with the help of the architect Henry Myerberg?

Philip Roth, 1973

Of course, not every town comes with a world-famous novelist. Also, I can imagine challenges for, say, New York or Chicago, with all the literary greats and all rooms to build. Must it really come to Saul Bellow vs. rivals? Not to mention the fact that most novelists’ personal libraries do not remain intact after their deaths. And then there is a pesky problem in the future. What to do about the authors who read and wrote electronically?

I confess. This is one downside of ebooks and one reason why I can appreciate the usefulness of paper editions for helping to keep books on people’s minds even it can happen through many other ways.

Just the same, done well, ebooks could make reading more popular, given all the cell phones out there and the ability of disciplined people to enjoy even classics on them. Not to mention other platforms such as tablets and E Ink readers with the ability to blow up the type. While honoring the old, let’s look ahead. Philip Roth in the past despaired that few people read fiction, and in 2011 he said he himself had stopped even though he still enjoyed nonfiction. A journalist-critic-editor-writer named Sarah Weinman speculated that it was due to his age. Harder to engage? But must the right fiction always be a challenge, no matter what your age?

I hope that Philip Roth changes his mind if he hasn’t already. Meanwhile the Roth room ideally can help people of all ages discover or rediscover Goodbye Columbus and other masterpieces. And if someday an electronic version of the Newark collection can go online, complete with Roth’s annotations, then so much the better. Needless to say, a national digital library endowment could help support efforts of this kind.

Below: The trailer for the Goodbye Columbus movie, which, like the book, features Neil Klugman, a library clerk courting the well-off Brenda Patimkin, whose mother inquires about “the library business.” Some critics say Roth’s books tend to be too complicated to work as films. Not necessarily, if a screenwriter is a good fit and appreciates the differences between the two media. The Goodbye Columbus adaptation is brilliant as a popular work and perhaps more. Alas, the early reaction to the new American Pastoral film isn’t as favorable as it could be, but maybe that will change with time.

(Cross-posted from TeleRead.)Similar Posts:

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Bill Gates: A billionaire book critic who apparently shuns e-books

David Rothman — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:56:24 +0000

Microsoft blew it. The company could have been Amazon, too—at least the e-book side around the turn of the century.

I can recall going to an industry-government conference eons ago where Microsoft’s e-book crew set the tone. But today Microsoft Reader is dead, and Bill Gates so far hasn’t lived up to his promise as a potential funder of electronic libraries.

Could one reason for the above be that Gates himself either has never embraced e-books at the personal level or has given up on them?

In Bill Gates: The Billionaire Book Critic, Katherine Rosman of the New York Times writes about him as a new Oprah, turbocharging the careers of authors he blesses. Along the way, she reports: “Mr. Gates says he reads about 50 books in a year, eschewing digital readers for old-fashioned books on paper. When he is busy with work, he reads about a book or two a week but will consume four or five in the same period while vacationing with family.”

Notice the last sentence? Gates shuns e-books nowadays at the personal level despite their portability for travels. Of course, with his wealth, for all I know, he has hired an Official Book Carrier. More seriously, I’d love to know why Gates seems to dislike e-books. Part of it could be generational. Gates, like Warren Buffett, might simply be more accustomed to reading books off paper. I also wonder if Gates himself, at the personal level, might have qualms about DRM in terms of the ability to own books for real.

At any rate, Gates’ apparent nonreading of e-books is something for us boosters of the format to ponder. Just what will it take to win over Gates? Will he even resist E when it’s hard to tell electronically displayed text from the traditional paper variety and e-books can have flippable pages for those wanting them? Perhaps the e-book industry should worry less about the latest multimedia wrinkles and more about leaning on its tech side for more innovations in areas such as screens (or nonscreens). Also helpful would be better software giving readers more control when they use such devices as the Kindle. It is outrageous that Kindles so badly lag Moon+ Reader Pro in features, when Amazon could KISS for newbies while also offering an advanced mode for experienced readers.

Meanwhile how about the library world? The problem isn’t just that many libraries could be smarter about the possibilities of E and of greater e-book literacy for the masses (so ignorant about such issues as glare reduction). If Gates loved e-books personally, might he have become a digital-era Carnegie for real? Single-handedly, with just a fraction of his $78.5B worth, he could get a national digital library endowment off to a good start.

Very much on the positive side, Gates tells the Times that as a boy “I did things like reading the encyclopedia for fun, I was lucky in that my parents would buy me any book I wanted.” He is a nongenuine lover of nonfiction and reveals how his appreciation of one author’s books can lead to his reading others. Exactly! And that’s what well-stocked national digital libraries could offer people a lot more cost effectively than would a paper-centric approach. Imagine—even children from the poorest families, in the most remote hamlets, being able to follow their curiosities the same way Gates does. No, I’m not pretending that every book would be free for eternal access and without wait times. But in this respect, expanded access, our libraries could do much better. Today in the U.S., public libraries can spend only about $4 per capita each year on content of all kinds, not just books alone. Gates could make a real difference. If he read the latest research out of the U.K., showing e-books as a powerful encourager of reading, he might grasp how well his money would be spent.

Of course, if Bill Gates appreciated fiction more at the personal level, so much the better. Go to the book section of the Gates Notes blogs and you won’t exactly see an surfeit of novels. One on the list is The Rosie Project, about a genetic expert with Asperger’s syndrome who is hunting for a mate. “Melinda thought I would appreciate the parts where he’s a little too obsessed with optimizing his schedule. She was right.” Someone who especially prides himself on logical thought might just be the very person to benefit from more reading of fiction. Here’s to both brains and hearts! Novels can help build empathy, one of the major points I make in The K-12 and economic cases for a national digital library endowment. (Gates ideally would also read related commentary in Education Week and the Chronicle of Philanthropy and Library Journal.)

So what are Gates’ favorites? Here they are for 2015, with his first mention being of the The Road to Character, by David Brooks. Consider the possibilities that more reading of fiction could lead to in this area for Gates, who has owned and may still own several rare editions of The Great Gatsby. Suppose he treated novels as books to be read regularly, not just collected, and massively funded digital libraries and related activities such as cell phone book clubs to share such an enthusiasm with millions.

Regardless of my belief that Gates should broaden his reading somewhat, it is still wonderful to see someone like him talking up books as a medium. In terms of support for a national digital library endowment, that’s means he’s halfway there, in that he at least appreciates the importance of reading, period.

The rest of the challenge is to win him over, all the way, to the potential of well-stocked national digital libraries to expand reading choices far beyond the current ones, so that future Gates can more easily follow their own curiosities and also benefit from good fiction.Similar Posts:

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E-books, e-reading help child literacy: Major study from UK National Literacy Trust

Paul St John Mackintosh — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 01:04:10 +0000

Here’s a research finding that should surprise no one except ebook haters. The UK’s National Literacy Trust, “dedicated to raising literacy levels in the UK,” has released a study, “The Impact of Ebooks on the Reading Motivation and Reading Skills of Children and Young People,” which demonstrates that ebooks and ereading actually help improve child literacy – especially for boys. As the NLT’s headline says, “Our research shows using ebooks increases boys’ reading progress and makes them keener, more confident readers.”

The study was based on “the impact of access to an ebooks platform on pupils’reading motivation and skills over the academic year 2014-15.” And as the report finds, “the average reading progress made over the project period was 8 months. Boys made significantly greater progress over the course of the study than girls, with boys’ reading levels increasing by an average of 8.4 months compared with girls who made an average gain of 7.2 months.” Furthermore, “enjoyment of reading increased significantly over the course of project activities, particularly with respect to enjoyment of reading using technology.”

The report continues:

Reading enjoyment increased in particular for boys who started the project with the lowest levels of reading enjoyment. The percentage of this subgroup who enjoyed reading using technology increased over the course of the project from 49.2% to 64.2%. However, the percentage that enjoyed reading on paper also increased fourfold, from 10.0% at the beginning of the project to 40.0% at the end of the project.

Working with RM Books, “a market-leading ebooks platform designed specifically for schools,” the NLT based the study on “more than 70 detailed project plans” from a range of UK schools, with post-project feedback from over 800 pupils. The entire report is worth reading in detail for its methodology and statistical nuggets.

The overall conclusions, though, are very clear. E-reading “has the potential to address longstanding achievement gaps,” the study concludes. “We know that a high proportion of children and young people enjoy reading using technology, and read on devices frequently in and out of school.” Instead of complaining about the literacy gap and lagging achievement, pundits and parents should be enlisting technology to solve it.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s $45B pledge: Why libraries deserve their share—and what they could do with it

David Rothman — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 01:53:21 +0000

So of course I’m happy. Facebook founder Mark Zuckberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, have pledged $45 billion in philanthropic donations if you go by the current value of his company’s stock and agree with them on the definition of “philanthropic.” Check out the Facebook page.

Even with the fine print considered, such as the fact we’re really talking about a company rather than a traditional charity, that’s still one tidy sum. It could easily pay for two or three national digital library endowments of the kind that librarian Jim Duncan and I have described in Library Journal and Education Week, as well in my article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The Education Week version drew 103 "Likes," hardly a surprise since my sister worked decades as a K-12 teacher and I've benefited along the way from her insights from the trenches. More details, especially about the endowment’s benefits, are at LibraryCity.org.

Far from being just about e-book collections and hardware, the endowment proposal among other things calls for money for hiring and digital-era professional development of school librarians, especially members of minorities. Research says well-trained librarians can make a big difference academically. So can the encouragement of the right kind of recreational reading. And the same for family literacy programs, which also would benefit.

The endowment would help pay for two national digital library systems, one public, one academic. A common catalog would be available for those wanting this option. The two systems would extensively share content and people and other resources but focus on their respective missions, which can differ starkly. Public libraries tend to cater to local taxpayers' popular tastes, often a Good Thing if you consider libraries as literacy spreaders (dreckish books can be gateways to better ones). Those in big cities like Boston or New York may also serve upper-level researchers. But the needs of Jane Q. Citizen are the main show. Academic libraries, by the contrast, operate under different standards and haven't the slightest involvement in areas such as family literacy. Let's not gentrify our public libraries.

But how to pay for all this? Mind you, the idea of Zuckerberg suddenly showing up with $45 billion is a simplification. It isn’t as if he and his wife could instantly sell off their Facebook stock to raise the money, not without creating a lot of havoc on Wall Street. Still, I think my point is clear—about the vast concentration of wealth in the hands of the super rich. Just 400 Americans are together worth north of $2 trillion dollars, according to Forbes.

In the place of Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan, yes, I would carry out my own pet projects, but I would also think about working with others toward a $15-$20-billion national digital library endowment within five years. Such an endeavor could benefit from the wisdom of many—entrepreneurs as well as library and business professionals, even though the latter two groups would manage it day to day. A major issue in a democracy should not just be the sharing of resources. It should also be the sharing of power. An endowment—ideally a public agency in my opinion, although it could start out as private organization to allow maximum experimentation—would be a far, far more democratic approach than just foundations or companies intended to improve the commonweal. There is room for different options: I just don’t want to see an un-elected elite by itself dictating social policy, whether involving libraries or other institutions. If nothing else, an open approach with many participants would help allay net-neutrality-related concerns.

A good first step for Mark Zuckerberg would be to propose a White House meeting at which he and others, such as Google’s cofounders and perhaps Bill and Melinda Gates, could make pledges to get the proposed national digital library endowment off to a good start.

Ideally Dr. Chan would herself take a special interest in the library project, for traditional literacy, digital literacy and health literacy can be very intertwined. Five times a week my wife and I head off to a radiation center for treatment of her inoperable pancreatic cancer. Over the past few months Carly and I have had to deal with medical jargon and other complexities. Imagine where we would have been without the benefits of both literacy and digital-era technology. More routinely, patients of all kinds need to understand the drugs they are taking and closely follow instructions. And that is not all. Traditional literary is not a cure-all—a long way from one!—but it can help people better comprehend the harm from fast food and tobacco and other health hazards. Simply put, we just can't separate the various kinds of literacies, or overestimate the synergies between them that the endowment could promote.

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Seattle’s iPad-loving librarian vs. books

David Rothman — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 08:07:50 +0000

Washington will soon pick a new Librarian of Congress. May I zero in on an outrageous negative example—to show one risk of choosing the wrong person?

In the past, under Susan Hildreth, ex-city librarian for Seattle, the first goal of the system was to “Fuel Seattle’s Passion for Reading, Personal Growth and Learning.” She and likeminded people wanted the library to “build a community around books.” Exactly! You can love or hate Ms. Hildreth on other matters, but she got the basics right. Reading should be Job #1.

Now compare Ms. Hildreth to her bibliophobic successor, Marcellus Turner. As reported, in the Seattle Review of Books, Turner wants to spend thousands and thousands of valuable library-related dollars to change the name from “Seattle Public Library” to “Seattle Public Libraries.” The real issue, however, isn’t necessarily rebranding vs. none: it’s what kind of creature the reimagined library should be, and books don’t fare well. In a list of “Service Priorities”, the library omits the words “reading” or “books.” Instead Turner and friends go for such language as “Youth and early learning” and “Technology and access.” Turner just cannot grasp the importance of books themselves as a form of access to knowledge, and as a powerful encourager of sustained thought.

City librarians needn’t be reincarnations of Edmund Wilson, but Turner himself is hardly an intellectual Titan. His librarians say that on certain occasions he could not identify which book he was reading (he portrayed himself as more of a magazine fan).

How children and other library patrons suffer under a bibliophobe

Worse, Turner’s under-appreciation of books has influenced library policy. “Last summer, SPL’s popular summer reading program for area children was rebranded as the ‘Summer of Learning’ program,” write Paul Constant and Martin McClellan, cofounders of the Review, in “An open letter to the Seattle Public Library Board of Trustees about SPL’s ‘anti-book’ agenda.” “Instead of books, children were presented with iPads. Parents were livid, and understandably so; a program intended to promote literacy was transformed for seemingly no discernible reason and—this is important—without public input.”

Constant and McClellan did not say whether the program encouraged children to e-read on the iPads. But I wouldn’t count on it. While Turner loves iPads enough for those shiny gadgets to replace books in the Summer of Learning Program, he himself is hardly the biggest reader of e-books if you go by a 2011 statement to a Seattle publication called Real Change. This man just can’t connect the dots. About his own iPad, he said: “I don’t use it as much as I should. It’s very convenient for the quick lookups, for the Google-this, for the Wikipedia-that. I don’t do much with it in other venues. It’s just one more piece of technology to pack, carry. I have it sort of set up by the bed so that I can quickly Google something in the middle of the night. I have a couple books on my phone that I read, but I’m not a big reader electronically, either.

“What I’ve found is that people tend to check out more books electronically and it’s easier to say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to read this, I’ll just put it back.’ Whereas when you check out the physical copies, you think, I brought this big heavy book home, I better try to read it.”

To Turner’s credit, he was sympathetic elsewhere in the interview to self-publishing, which digital technology makes cheaper. But then he more than balanced that out with his lack of confidence in electronic tools and related in-person activities as avenues for the discovery of new books, the very stuff that would benefit self-published authors among others.

Granted, libraries need to go out of their way to remind the public of the existence of e-books—both as a medium and in terms of individual titles. That means everything from digital-smart family literacy programs to colorful posters pushing Book X or Book Y. Ideally, too, it can mean such innovations as cell phone book clubs for young people and their parents—efforts that could help popularize even paper books by associating words and stories with the gadgets that young people and their parents are most likely to carry around these days. Imagine all the new possibilities for highly trained librarians and family literacy workers in general if we want families to discover, enjoy and absorb books despite such obstacles as e-book price gouges by big publishers.

Instead, however, Turner appears to be moving in the opposite direction. “SPL is right now in the process of removing librarians from their role as moderators of book clubs and handing those moderator positions to non-librarian employees,” Constant and McClellan write.

As much as I want libraries to increase expenditures on books perhaps per capita—and I take it for granted they are high in Seattle because of the wealth of the city compared to others—we mustn’t forget the need for qualified librarians to help absorb them. School libraries with enough well-trained librarians fare better than those without them. The same concepts undoubtedly would apply to book club activities in most cases.

A roadmap for Seattleites who want Turner fired

Why is Turner so “actively ‘antibook’”—the Review’s language, based on interviews with SPL staffers? I don’t see any evil conspiracies here, just a mediocrity intimidated by his intellectual superiors in person and in print. Seattle needs to fix this and fire him.

The way the Seattle government is set up, the library board of trustees may be insulated from public sentiment. But pressure on the five-member board through a vigorous publicity campaign—complete with a petition circulated both on and offline, especially in poor neighborhoods—is at least worth a try. Already one library trustee has regretted not doing “a better job” in asking questions about the rebranding. It is also encouraging that when the library solicited options about the rebranding, the majority said no when they found out what the proposed change was about. Mind you, this was an online survey. To hell with low-income patrons who would especially suffer from less focus on reading and books.

Philanthropists and others funding the Seattle library will ideally join the public outcry for Turner’s firing. In fact, Constant and McClellan quote Gary Kunis, a former Cisco vice president said to be “the largest single benefactor,” as disapproving of the proposed changes. Perhaps Kunis can go on to use the F word.

Keep in mind the expected counter-arguments from Turner. He would say that libraries should be about much more than books—that they could provide other forms of text, along with reference services and maker programs and plenty else, including meeting spaces and other people connectors. And, in fact, I would fervently agree. The problem is that that books are so besieged nowadays—check out the 2011 and 2015 book-readership statistics from a recent Pew poll—that libraries need to go out of their way to promote them. And I don’t just mean e-books. Whatever the format, here’s to all kinds of books, even if E is the future! I’m especially keen on paper books for preschoolers who love their tactile feel (even though E should also be available for young mothers and their children).

Lessons for Barack Obama and others in selecting the next Librarian of Congress

So what are the lessons from Seattle for President Obama and Congress as he prepares to nominate a new librarian of Congress to as a permanent replacement for the luddite James Billington.

1. While I would love to see a professional librarian in the LoC job, Turner’s disgraceful record shows the need for the right one.

2. No bibliophobes, please! Librarian or nonlibrarian, this person should genuinely enjoy books in more than a superficial way, just as I’ve said before. Given all the obstacles books are up against these days from know-nothings like Turner, LoC does not need a bibliophobic technocrat or quasi-technocrat as librarian. Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle is a hero of mine for all he has done in the technical area, but I shudder at the thought of him as him as head of LoC. I’m confident that this brilliant man cares far more about books than Turner does. But the library needs a full-strength book advocate, and instead would benefit most of all from Brewster’s valuable services in a tech-related position under a digital-savvy librarian. While the encouragement of reading is not among LoC’s official missions, I would love for Washington to fix this lapse. Such a book advocate should not mince words. He or she should be steadfast defender of the medium even at the risk of offending Turner-style librarians. I prefer civility. But Turner is inept enough to justify an exception. I’ll repeat my incivility again—three words: Fire this man.

3. If the next librarian of Congress can be an African-American or member of another minority, so much the better when we consider the role model potential here for young people. Librarians and executives in the publishing industry are not deliberately racist. But that, in effect, is what they are—given the disgraceful underrepresentation of black people and Hispanics and others in the book world. Appointing a book-loving minority person as Librarian of Congress would send a powerful message to librarians and publishers that that diversity counts. That said, let me note that publishers and librarians alike can do only so much when our top policymakers and educational institutions have so badly served the students who could become librarians, writers, editors and publishers.

In The K-12 and economic cases for a national digital library endowment, I call among other things for “scholarships and other assistance for African-Americans, Hispanics and other members of minorities to become librarians and serve as book-and-tech-hip role models for at-risk young people.” Remember, nonHispanic whites in the coming decades will be a minority in the United States, and the endowment could expand the pool of minority talent. In the search for diversity, there is no reason to settle for fifth-raters like Turner.

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Should libraries get into the e-reader hardware business in time?

David Rothman — Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:35:00 +0000

I’m rooting for Good E-Reader to succeed with the proposed Ultimate Android e-ink tablet. Props to TeleRead Editor Chris Meadows for the generosity he has shown in his analysis of the Ultimate.

If a small e-book site can indeed pull this stunt off—Chris correctly notes the scary obstacles and isn’t betting on it—imagine what this could mean for libraries. A library consortium could contract with an e-reader manufacturer and first-rate techies to create Android hardware optimized for e-reading and other library and K-12 apps.

Unfortunately the Ultimate won’t offer text to speech, a feature AWOL from Amazon’s recent E Ink readers, but a library-marketed e-reader could include TTS. Also, the library version could come in different screen sizes. And privacy could be baked in from the start—or at least more than Amazon and friends offer.

Given the thousands of school and public libraries out there, not to mention the higher-ed variety, a library e-reader could enjoy a built-in marketing advantage that the Good E-Reader project lacks.

No, the idea wouldn’t be to supply a library e-reader for every patron or expect every patron to buy the devices, especially at a time when so many people read e-books on tablets and smart phones rather than on Kindles and other dedicated e-readers.

But again, if Good E-Reader can defy the skeptics and succeed, libraries would at least know that some kind of market existed. And not just for libraries, but small companies beyond the current ones offering Android-capable E Ink readers.

Those competing against Amazon, B&N and Kobo will have to struggle hard to deal with issues such as technical support—could this be contracted out?—but they also will have a built-in tailwind. The big boys offer the readers to encourage purchases of the books these companies sell. That means limiting easy access only to their own book inventories. But a library e-reader or one from a small entrepreneur wouldn’t face that same challenge.

As for prices, they are high right now—the Ultimate e-Reader is to go for $189.99. But eventually they will drop. Hardware will matter less; software and content choices will count more.

Meanwhile TeleRead’s Joanna Cabot has nicely summed up the challenges as she sees them: “…most general readers don’t care about eInk all that much—and even here in Canada where the $50 Fire Tablet has yet to arrive, my full-colour plain vanilla Android tablet came in at $30 less than this device’s proposed price. I just can’t see most people paying more for a black and white device. There is a niche market of die-hard eInk lovers out there who perhaps do care enough, but I think it is very small compared to the quantity of people who will just buy a cheap tablet and glory in its versatility and full color.”

Exactly. That is no small part of what makes the Good E-Reader project so iffy right now. But if e-paper technology improves to the extent I expect and if color and faster-responding screens becomes truly affordable, then the landscape could change.

So library organizations such as the innovation-friendly Colorado Library Consortium, as well as the New York Public Library and the Digital Public Library of America, would do well to watch the Good E-Reader project very carefully to see what lessons they can learn.

The DPLA has been encouraged people to create apps for it. The existence of a library-promoted and –marketed hardware platform could only whet interest in DPLA-related hacking. More importantly, it could make the library e-reading experience more seamless, Amazon fashion, while still granting readers access to Android apps from many sources. Including E Ink-optimized ones.

For the Good E-Reader’s campaign on Indiegogo, the fund-raising goal is $220K. That is a fraction of what the millions DPLA has spent so far. Moreover the DPLA has focused more on libraries for research than on libraries as sources of material for immersive reading. A really good e-reader could promote the latter goal. And not just in the U.S., once prices decline enough. Think of the developing countries where millions could benefit from affordable, book-friendly E Ink devices with long battery lives and thus no need for frequent recharging at home.

Detail: The original TeleRead proposal in 1992 called for an e-reading-optimized library tablet.

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Q. for the next Librarian of Congress: What to do about the Internet Archive? Google Books’ scanning project? Appoint Archive’s Brewster Kahle as librarian?

David Rothman — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 20:36:17 +0000

Here’s my basic take on the next Librarian of Congress. Most of all, we need someone with “a love of reading—including the e-book variety.”

Mastery of tech policy would help as well. Now—one litmus test. What would be the candidates’ preliminary views on the Internet Archive and Google Books vis-à-vis LoC? To what extent, and how, should the Library of Congress rely on them? Should LoC just link in? Or use them or related organizations as contractors to help create LoC-run collections? Or a mix?

I myself would like a mix, so Washington does not control everything—just so the LoC has a copy of every book and other formal collection item. Both independent archives and LoC should preserve and make available “born digital” items, just as the Archives’ Way Back Machine and other activities do now (along with LoC on a smaller scale).

In a related vein, over at Slate, journalist and academic Dan Gillmore says that The Creator of the Internet Archive Should Be the Next Librarian of Congress. I’m a fan of Brewster Kahle (photo) and can easily see him as a contractor or key advisor to the Library of Congress (in fact, he already has provided LoC with lots of valuable pro-bono advice). But a librarian he is not. He is an enabler, an infrastructure person, not a top go-to guru on, say, the topic of highly curated library content. Scanned text from both Archive and the Google could do better on the typo front. A true librarian would have cared more about issues of this kind and the possibility of almost-fully accurate texts of at least some books (yes, I’m talking about true e-books as opposed to mere images of paper books).

For that matter, James Billington, the current librarian on the cusp of retirement, has been out of touch with librarian-related concerns, especially on the public-library side. He was and is Russian history specialist. Sadly, he prefers faxes to e-mail, hardly the sign of a tech-savvy guy (although, in a future post, I’ll tell of one way for Dr. Billington to redeem himself and leave a lasting digital-era legacy).

Given all the literacy issues in this country, might the best choice be not the standard academic but a book-and-Net-oriented librarian with a full understanding of grubby matters such as the Digital Divide? Yet another issue to query candidates about?

Meanwhile, at the New Yorker site, Columbia law professor Timothy Wu is wondering if the Google Books scan project wouldn’t have won more friends if Google had spun it off as a nonprofit from the start, “thereby extinguishing any fears that the company wanted to somehow make a profit from other people’s work.” Excellent question. Similarly Brewster Kahle has been right to raise issues with Google’s fondness on exclusive rights to search its collection of public domain books. Even the Library of Congress, especially LoC, should not be the one-and-only in that respect. In fact, a law should even specify that, lest any ambiguity exist.

Related: Thoughts on the next Librarian of Congress from public librarian Jessamyn West, former LoC staffer Daniel Schuman, Parker Higgins of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Siva Vaidhyanathan, a board member of the Digital Public Library of America (to a great extent the DPLA exists because LoC has been so far behind the times). Dan Gilmore compiled the just-supplied list.

Major LoC candidates as reported by Politico, on September 15 (update): Walter Isaacson, head of the Aspen Institute as well as a biographer of Steve Jobs, declined the job when the White House came calling. “Other names still under consideration include University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann; John Palfrey, the head of school at Phillips Academy and the former head of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society; former American Library Association President Carla Hayden; Susan Hildreth, former director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency; and Deborah Jacobs, director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Libraries Initiative, according to multiple sources. Also in the mix are Archivist of the United States David Ferriero and Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.” For my thoughts on Palfrey’s recent book on the library world, go here.

And a reminder from 2009 of the amazing cost-rewards of a national digital library, courtesy Brewster Kahle: “It’s not that expensive. For the cost of 60 miles of highway, we can have a 10 million-book digital library available to a generation that is growing up reading on-screen. Our job is to put the best works of humankind within reach of that generation. Through a simple Web search, a student researching the life of John F. Kennedy should be able to find books from many libraries, and many booksellers—and not be limited to one private library whose titles are available for a fee, controlled by a corporation that can dictate what we are allowed to read.” Oh, what a difference the right Librarian of Congress could make—working with experts like Brewster who have refined their technology over the past six years!

Photo credit: Here.

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Live in a certain Iranian city? Minor criminal? Buy and read five book to stay out of jail

David Rothman — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 14:32:01 +0000

If you’re a minor criminal or juvenile offender in an Iranian city, a judge may let you buy and read five book instead of going to jail. The BBC reports:

“Judge Qasem Naqizadeh, who presides over a court in the north-eastern city of Gonbad-e Kavus, is using the alternative sentences to avoid what he calls the ‘irreversible physical and psychological impact on convicts and their families’ that a prison term might bring, state-run IRNA news agency reports. Individuals are told to buy and read five books, then write a summary of them, which is returned to the judge. The books are then donated to the local prison, IRNA says. The punishment is spiritual as well as educational—offenders also have to include a saying from the hadith, a collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.

“A recently adopted law means judges are now able to decide on alternative punishments to prison in some cases, the report notes. Judge Naqizadeh’s literary sentences are being used for individuals convicted of minor crimes, teenagers and people with no prior criminal record, and they have to choose from a selection of approved texts.”

Oh, the irony! In certain ways the Iranians are actually ahead of some trogs in the UK who, until overruled, would not let prisoners receive books from families. Who says books need be dangerous? Mind you, the parallel isn’t exact. Notice the phrase “approved texts” in the above paragraph?

Still, this is definite progress and reflects the philosophy of the Changing Lives through Literature program here in the U.S.—already a success story, if we go by research mentioned on the Changing Lives site. The right books taught the right way can build empathy and encourage self-reflection, no small help as crime preventers. The Reader Organisaton, in the U.K., might well have have some of the same reasons in mind for prison settings, among others.

What’s more, I mention Changing Lives in The K-12 and Economic Cases for a National Digital Library Endowment. Imagine all the billions we could save each year if, even by just one percent, we reduce the recidivism rate among offenders. Additional cost-justification for the endowment!

Already the Bexar County Bibliotech library in the San Antonio area has been experimenting with e-books for prisoners, and OverDrive is a major supplier of digital books for prison reading.

More information: Iranian news report (translatable via Google) and Quartz.Similar Posts:

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Yes, Authors Guild, writers are screwed—here’s what to do about it

David Rothman — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 23:14:00 +0000

Any news that writers are screwed? An Authors Guild survey of members shows that 56 percent of surveyed writers earn less than the poverty line here in the U.S., if only writing income counts. Publisher’s Weekly says:

"The survey, conducted this spring by the Codex Group, is based on responses from 1,674 Guild members, 1,406 of whom identified either as a full-time author, or a part-time one. The majority of respondents also lean older—89% are over the age of 50—and toward the traditionally published end (64%)."

Guild Executive Director Mary Rasenberger, shown in the photo, cited "a swirl of factors” as PW paraphrased. They range “from online piracy to publisher consolidation to the rise of Amazon (and the shuttering of brick and mortar bookstores). Rasenberger said the takeaway from the survey is that authors should be receiving higher royalties from publishers. ‘Authors need to be cut in more equitably on the profits their publishers see, or we’ll stop seeing the quality of work the industry was built on.’” No, Ms. Rasenberger is not smiling at the status quo.

As author of seven traditionally published books, I’d be the first to agree that many publishers are shafting writers, especially in regard to royalty percentages on e-books. The trouble is that book-writers’ bargaining clout is limited, thanks in no part to the traits that make them writers to begin with. And meanwhile competition keeps growing from self-published writers and others outside legacy publishing. They won’t put John Grisham out of business. But future Grishams will feel the heat more—well, assuming they bother with big legacy houses in the first place. Not all will in an era when alternatives exist, and I don’t just mean Amazon.

Meanwhile the Guild would do well to pay attention to the demand side. The average U.S. household is spending only around $100 a year on consumer reading materials of all kinds, not just books, if we extrapolate from figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. What to do? Pass a law mandating divorce or other forms of household break-ups if families won’t fulfill the Guild’s wishes? The Guild might also care to know that the average 15-19-old spends six minutes a week on reading for pleasure. Why has the Guild fixated so much on DRM when the big issue isn’t piracy—it’s whether the kids are reading at all? You can accuse Philip Roth of hyperbole and trolling in saying in 1993 that only 120,000 or so serious reader existed in the U.S.; but ultimately might the actual numbers catch up? In the Guild’s place I would care immensely.

With an aging membership, however, could the Guild be out of touch with pathetic condition of reading in America today among the young? Look at the BLS chart to the right (double-click for a better view) and notice how the biggest spenders on reading materials are 65-74 years of age, while the smallest are younger than 25. I don’t think it’s just an issue of the older readers having more time and money. The literary culture here in the U.S., at least among the young outside the well-read elite, isn’t nearly as robust as it was as its peak.

At the same time, it isn’t as if the Guild is entirely blind to literacy issues, which really should be regarded as market development issues if one is to think if this in business terms. It has been more sympathetic than some would have expected to President Obama’s K-12 e-book initiative.

The trouble with the initiative is that it’s able to summon up just a fraction of the resources needed. Correctly the guild has wondered about the availability of optimal hardware for the kids to read books on (cell phones are not for all despite their great promise). Moreover, zillions of other digital divide issues endure despite the current obtuseness of major media outlets like Associated Press. Beyond that, keep in mind that the initiative makes publisher-donated books available only to children from low-income families, and questions also exist about the announced size of the library, a mere 10,000 books. Not to mention the issue of suitable books for the children’s parents. Family literacy, anyone? Alas, public libraries in the U.S. can spend only around $4 per capita each year on books and other items.

Perhaps the Guild should encourage the Obama White House to think more ambitiously and work toward a national digital library endowment and separate but tightly intertwined public and academic systems online for all. Such an endowment could help libraries launch major literacy campaigns, making full use of the mass media. That is the way to boost demand for writers’ wares. Along the way, rules could exist to assure that the library systems favored publishers that fairly compensated writers—with, in other words, at least 50-50 splits of net receipts.

For inspirational memories in regard to national digital libraries, maybe the Guild can look to the late William F. Buckley Jr., a member with whose politics I mainly disagreed. That said, WFB did not let his ideology and his advanced years stop him from calling for well-stocked national digital libraries in two “On the Right” columns. I’d love to see the Guild and White House catch up with Bill’s priorities.

Information on LibraryCity’s proposal for an endowment: See The K-12 and economic cases for a national digital library endowment, as well as articles in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Baltimore Sun, Education Week and Library Journal. As I’ve noted, “Just 400 Americans are together worth more than $2 trillion. An endowment reaching $15-$20 billion could make a real difference in the library world, and contributions from just a tiny fraction of the 400 could do the trick and be in line with the spirit of the Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge.”

More details from PW: "So what does that Federal Poverty Level statistic mean? Given that a single person earning less than $11,670 annually sits below the poverty line, 56% of respondents would qualify, if they relied solely on income from their writing. The survey also indicated that not only are many authors earning little, they are, since 2009, also earning less. Overall, the median writing-related income among respondents dropped from $10,500 in 2009 to $8,000 2014 in 2014, a decline of 24%. The decline came for both full-time and part-time authors with full-time authors reporting a 30% drop in income to $17,500 and part-time authors seeing a 38% decrease, to $4,500."

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Why can’t the media understand the digital divide—especially the Associated Press?

David Rothman — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 16:28:00 +0000

Just why can’t the news media understand the digital divide? And how about the related literacy issues that technology could help cope with, if top policymakers were better informed?

Consider the masterful con job that Amazon performed on reporters by equating Amazon sales figures with how “well-read” people were in various cities. The media bit—hook, line and sinker. Forget about libraries and non-Amazon bookstores. It’s the Big A that counts. Never mind that my hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, was Amazon’s reading city #1 for at least two years even though most of the students in the public schools qualify for “free and reduced-price” school lunches.

Is it any wonder that U.S. public libraries can spend only about $4 per capita a year on library books and other items, digital or paper? Politicians rely heavily on the media for facts and analysis. But journalists themselves can be among the worst-informed.

Told about the miserly content spending, a New York Times reporter replied via e-mail: “How much of a library crisis is there? I’ve never seen a convincing argument either way.”

Now here’s a recent journalistic misstep, from the Associated Press, by way of a story run under such headlines as No digital divide among black, white millennials, poll finds. Anti-library, anti-government trogs will love this one. Why spend money on digital divide matters? Isn’t the crisis over with? Working from research supplied by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, the AP’s Glynn A. Hill writes: “A new poll finds African-American millennials say they are just as engaged in getting news online as their white counterparts, further debunking a long-held belief that people of color are at risk of being left behind technologically.

“In general, 64 percent of millennials say they read and watch news online regularly, including 66 percent of African-Americans, according to the poll, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute. Sixty-five percent of white millennials say they keep up with the news online, while 53 percent of Hispanics do the same. The findings suggest that, despite fears that millennials—those 18-34 years old—may not be going to traditional sources for news, they are clearly getting news from social media.”

Whew! Here I’d been relying on such ill-informed people as Harvard academic Robert Putnam. Writing in Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, he says that the sociologist Eszter Hargittai “and her collaborators, experts on how the Internet is actually used, point out that ‘growth in basic user statistics does not necessarily mean that everybody is taking advantage of the medium in similar ways.’

“Compared to their poorer counterparts,” Putnam says, “young people from upper-class backgrounds (and their parents) are more likely to use the Internet for jobs, education, political and social engagement, health, and news gathering, and less for entertainment or recreation. Affluent Americans use the Internet in ways that are mobility-enhancing, whereas poorer, less educated Americans typically use it in ways that are not. (The same was true of books and the postal system; the point is that the Internet is not immune from that inequality in usage.)”

Exactly! The AP-inspired headline in certain respects, not all, is at odds with years of valid research on the digital divide issue.

Before I continue, however, let me cut AP a little slack. As a poverty beat reporter eons ago in the pre-Web era, I myself could written more smartly on poverty, race and education if I’d only caught up with the right people. Now I’m hoping that the AP and Hill will keep an open mind on digital divide matters even if the news agency last year ignored my plea for it to undertake a major piece on the divide in a library context and maybe even mention possible solutions. Hill himself would be a natural to write it if his editors successfully pointed him in the right direction and gave him enough time and enough of a travel budget, or at least cooperation from AP bureaus. A young African-American and the former editor-in-chief of the student newspaper at Howard University, he is from the heavily A-A community of West Philadelphia. Hill has a smart Twitter stream going—showing an awareness of social issues. I hope he’ll revisit this one and talk to the genuine experts: academics, the more clueful librarians such as my collaborator Jim Duncan, and plenty of others.

In the AP article, Hill instead quotes Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, who may excel as a journalist but hardly as a digital divide authority. API paid for the AP-NORC Center poll. “People of color are very wired and just as adept in using technology,” Hill’s AP story quotes Rosenstiel. “If you want a subject that hasn’t been covered in the mainstream, millennials have found ways to get at that information through community sharing more than traditional ways. The way they get news is heavily influenced by topic.”

As if lobbying for the Tea Party, Hill goes on to write: “In the 1990s, policy makers and advocacy groups expressed concern that minorities would be adversely affected by a ‘digital divide’ in terms of access to technology. Over time, however, minorities emerged among the biggest users of certain forms of technology, such as smartphones.” Doubling down, Hill continues: “The AP-NORC study found no evidence to suggest that African-Americans and Hispanics lag behind in terms of technology use with nearly all millennials across racial and ethnic groups using a smartphone, and half using a tablet. There was little differentiation between racial groups in terms of getting news from Facebook, the poll found. But about half of African-American millennials said they comment on news stories posted to Facebook, compared to about 3 in 10 whites and Hispanics.”

Now—here is my rebuttal, as someone who has written more than 20 years on the digital divide and related issues (mostly for TeleRead and LibraryCity but also on occasion for such publications as an MIT Press information science collection, the Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Education Week and Library Journal).

1. Smartphones, tablets, laptops, PC and e-readers are all computers, but as creation tools, they are not all the same. Will a child composing an essay on a smart phone with a four-inch screen have the same advantages as a CEO’s son with Macintosh with a 32-inch monitor? If a rich girl uses a small screen as her own choice for schoolwork, that’s one thing. It’s another if a laborer’s son is stuck with a third-hand Android phone and enjoys only limited time on a desktop at his local library. Furthermore, consider an opportunity or lack of one to toy around with a gadget to learn programming. Can you become a Google-level programmer just by mastering applications from the Play Store or Apple’s App Store?

Mind you, I’m not anti-cell phone. I even originated the cell phone book club concept. But cell phones and even tablets are not the be-all and end-all. Desktops and large monitors still serve a purpose. I dictate e-email on smart phones and tablets, but for long essays like this, I use a desktop and a large-screen monitor, which more easily lets me write and simultaneously see documents I’m working from.

2. Not all Net connections are the same, either. Laudably, Comcast recently increased access speeds for subscribers to its program for low-income people, but just a fraction of potential beneficiaries in the U.S. are participating, and beyond that, a 10 Mbps connection isn’t the same as what it used to be, in this era of ever-expanding Web pages. My own connection is 150 Mbps. Think of all the rural areas and inner city neighborhoods where truly high speed connections are still exotic. With them, well-off students in the right locations can breeze through school assignments in far less time than it would take students from low-income families.

What’s more, even basic access issues have hardly vanished. As if 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 62.4 percent of households with incomes less than $25,000 owned computer and only 48 percent used the Internet, compared to the figures of 92.6 percent and 84.9 percent for families in the $50,000-$99,999 bracket. Granted, the statistics for Millennials are higher than those of the general population. But income-related gaps are still alive and well.

3. The issue isn’t just access but, as Hargittai and others have pointed out, also how the access is used. There’s news and there’s news, for example. Watching a YouTube about the Kardashians or buying an online subscription to an entertainment magazine isn’t the same reading Foreign Affairs online or using the Net to keep up with the doings and misdoings of the local city council. In saying 66 percent of African-Americans use the Net for “keeping up with news,” compared to 65 percent of whites, the poll is a long way from telling the whole story. Context, please! At least the API-sponsored researchers noted that “whites, African Americans, and Hispanics share similar motivations for getting news and information, with one exception: white Millennials are more likely than African American and Hispanic Millennials to say they use news and information to help them decide where they stand on different issues (54 percent vs. 38 percent vs. 36 percent).” Ideally Hill would have picked up on the nuances here.

Furthermore, isn’t there a difference between reading in-depth journalism—or interacting intelligently via e-mail—and just kicking back and watching Hollywood movies? The researchers themselves found that 78 percent of whites check and send e-mail compared to only 67 percent of African Americans and 61 percent of Hispanics.

4. Plenty of questions exist about the online research skills of even college students, and the poll does not explore the level of competence of minorities and low-income people, as opposed to the the skills of the population as a whole. Tellingly, however, the center found that 71 percent of whites use the Net for “researching topics of interest,” compared to a mere 59 percent of African Americans and 50 percent of Hispanics. Granted, many members of minorities have mastered the online sharing of information missing from the mainstream media. But are tweets and Facebook posts enough to give you the in-depth information you need for school or work, especially on topics about which teachers and employers want you to be familiar?

5. Let’s also consider the relevance of information—shared or not—in terms of its usefulness for school and work and social mobility.

6. Researchers such as Hargittai say the Net in some ways can actually reinforce existing inequalities (go here for a pointer to Hargittai’s article on “The Digital Reproduction of Inequality”). You can bet that Larry Page isn’t prowling Facebook looking for new contacts from urban ghettoes. Even at the local level, the Net can do only so much to connect students with influential people who’ll mentor and advocate for them. I can envision librarians and others not only forming and encouraging the formation of cell phone book clubs but also helping to build bridges to the business community to expand the range of young people’s contacts through the clubs.

I hope it is clear by now: The gadgets themselves and and knowledge of which buttons to press are just a start. It isn’t enough to know Windows 10 and common kinds of software. Students and parents need more specifics. Perhaps even how to create a WordPress blog and write well for it? Or how to research for school? Or how to look for a job through online databases? Or how to embrace reading for pleasure (one way to improve academic skills)? Mastery and love of technology and reading can be intertwined. With the right approach, one can reinforce the other.

Along the way, keep in mind the desirability of family literacy, reinvented for the digital era—a concept you can’t grasp just by fixating on cell phone or tablet ownership. The best way to stimulate children may be to stimulate their parents and encourage them to value books. How many words a child hears at home can influence how well he or she does at school later on. And reading to your child may actually change her brain for the better. Some parents may want to read from paper books, some from tablets or even cell phones. The best solution in many cases might be a mix. Use paper books to hook children, and in some cases parents, on the electronic variety. Paper books are great for tactile creatures like children, who enjoy flipping page. Large-screen tablets are one way to show pictures and discuss them, but even cell phones could enable some parents read to their children in the park or on the subway. Cell phones are like wallets, purses, and keys: they’re always around. That’s why I chose the name “cell phone book club”—not to say, “This is the only way to read,” but to link literacy with an ominipresent object. I want posters for cell phone book clubs, libraries and individual books to be everywhere, from Social Security offices (yes, young people do go there) to department of motor vehicles offices and jury rooms. And if actual e-readers stocked with books can also be around at those locations, then so much the better—a strategy used by the all-digital Bibliotech Library in San Antonio, Texas.

Cell phone book clubs and related activities—both age-focused and multigenerational—could encourage reading on all kinds of different platforms as well as the development or programming skills. They could modernize the concepts explained on an old Web site I developed pro bono for an organization called LINCT: Learning and Information Networking. LINCT’s main founder was P. Kenneth Komoski, a veteran educator who earlier helped the legendary Harvard psychology B. F. Skinner refine the teaching machine concept decades ago. Check out the reading and math test scores that LINCT achieved through a mix of tech training and mentoring. Also see another project from Komoski, eLearningSpace, a “not-for-profit, quality learning space on the web where 3rd – 12th graders learn and earn things of value by using a computer outside of school to do better in school—and in life!” Alas, the domestic-frugality crowd in D.C. decimated Ken Komoski’s budgets some years ago, but he is still alive in his ‘80s and available for the Associated Press to interview him about what could have been.

Likewise in line with the thinking that the gadgets are just the start, we need to spend more on the hiring of more librarians and literacy specialists of various kinds and especially focus on the needs of minorities.

In a Baltimore Sun op-ed published on April 21 last year, I told of the disgraceful record of libraries and publishers in minority hiring matters: “Last year U.S. publishers released an estimated 5,000 books for children and teens. Now, here’s a quick quiz. How many were written or illustrated by African-Americans or were about black people or other non-whites? 400? 500? Guess again. A mere 63 books were by black authors, and just 93 were about African-Americans — those are the documented statistics from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the Department of Education at the University of Wisconsin. For Latinos, the numbers were even lower: 48 by and 57 about. Furthermore, the library world is hardly a paragon of diversity, not when only 563 African-American males and 522 Latino men were credentialed librarians in 2009-2010 out of 118,666 total.” Through scholarships and otherwise, a national digital library endowment could increase the number of minority librarians who serve as a role models.

On the positive side, the White House has undertaken a K-12 e-book initiative. The problem is that access to commercial titles is limited to low-income children. And even then, questions exist. Access to 10,000 books should be considered just a start. And how about the children’s role models, their parents? What about books of interest to them? And training in technology? And access to the right devices for children and parents who would rather not read off cell phones?

But how could we pay not just for technology and content but also for those literary specialists and librarians and others to encourage the discovery, absorption and enjoyment of books and other library items? One possibility worth exploring is a national digital library endowment—discussed in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Baltimore Sun, Education Week and Library Journal. Just 400 Americans are together worth more than $2 trillion. An endowment reaching $15-$20 billion could make a real difference in the library world, and contributions from just a tiny fraction of the 400 could do the trick and be in line with the spirit of the Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge.

Alas, however, without in the least intending to, Glynn Hill and the Associated Press have hurt the endowment cause by playing down the severity of the digital divide and glossing over its nuances. The good news is that it’s not too late to undo the damage, in terms of the library context. I am not expecting AP to endorse the endowment concept. But it can at least revisit the digital divide issue with more thorough reporting and perhaps even turn a lemon into lemonade by winning a Pulitzer Prize along the way. What’s more, after educating prominent philanthropists and the rest of the country about the problems, the AP could at least ask the super wealthy how they felt about the endowment idea. After all, the leading publications in the most relevant fields—philanthropy, education and libraries—have at least seen fit to bring up the issue for readers’ consideration.

Glynn Hill himself, as noted, could be a natural to write a major series on the digital divide and various solutions such as a national digital library endowment. Along the way, he should take it for granted that many, including African-Americans, will be in denial about the problems. How much easier it can be to talk up the high number of African-Americans and other minorities who own cell phones and tablets! Yes, there is room for pride. But let it not result in denialism or in a refusal to consider solutions such as the proposed endowment.

Note: This is a “first edition,” and I may do some tweaks.

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In Warren Buffett’s own backyard: Underfunded Omaha libraries. National digital library endowment, anyone?

David Rothman — Fri, 03 Jul 2015 02:19:00 +0000

"Currently, Omaha Public Libraries' spending per capita is substantially below that of surrounding communities." – Library Board of Trustees President Mike Meyer, as quoted by KETV, source of a related video.

Wait. It gets worse. Library branches may cut hours, one may even close, and meanwhile the budget for books and other content is suffering. Hello, Warren Buffet? Aren't you the same Omaha guy who has sent many billions out of town for Bill Gates's foundation to hand out—with most of it leaving the U.S.?

Global altruism is praiseworthy, given all the need for economic development and better health in developing countries; but how about Omaha itself?

"The library already sees six-month wait times for materials" such as books that patrons request, says KETV. What's more, "interim director Norma Pontee said there are serious maintenance needs across the city. Some furniture and carpet" have not "been cleaned in 18 months."

And thinking more strategically, how about a national digital library endowment to help address the library needs of U.S. cities, especially those without billionaires in their midst? Your current worth, Mr. Buffett, is about $72 billion. I'm sure your family has given before to local libraries, but how about reassessing the current levels of philanthropy for Omaha?

Meanwhile consider that the new Omaha digital library, along with the all-digital Bibliotech system down in the San Antonio area, could be a testbed for many systems elsewhere. It isn't as if we should replace all paper books with e-books overnight, but Omaha could help pave the way for greater efficiencies at libraries elsewhere.

Now that Jim Billington is on his way out as librarian of Congress, perhaps his successor at LOC build on the work of the Digital Public Library of America. LOC could help work toward the creation of separate public and academic digital systems to help get the most books and other items out to the most patrons at the least cost. Along the way, extra digital resources would be a godsend for K-12 and the economy, including start-ups. Perhaps LOC could even host one or both of the systems that the endowment helped fund. Content is especially important. In all too many cities, the book budget is the first to suffer due to competing needs both within and outside library systems.

While Omaha's mayor actually has proposed a higher library budget, this still won't be enough due to inflation and other causes. Yes, immediate local needs first, Mr. Buffett. Care to help all branches in the Omaha system keep full hours and enjoy better than a substandard budgets for books and other items? Either the old-fashioned way or electronically, you should buy or borrow or otherwise obtain a copy of Bleak House (also available through Project Gutenberg). Then read up on the character of Mrs. Jellyby, who, while horridly neglecting her own family, constantly fixates on the fate of Africans. Don't you pride yourself on your own hometown? I'll not dismiss you here as another Jellyby. Let's see what you and others in your family can do.

Looking beyond Omaha, we should help people in both the U.S. and developing countries in a meaningful way. If you doubt we're in trouble, just read Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. Among other things, it mentions the benefits of libraries and also reminds us of the digital divide—especially in regard to how well-off kids use the Net vs. the disadvantaged ones.

A national digital library endowment, expanding resources ranging from e-books to training in information literacy, would be one way to help avoid the Jellyby Syndrome.

The current national average on library content spending, by the way, is a pathetic $4 per capita or less than the price of a Big Mac here in the U.S, a figure well known to you via Berkshire-Hathaway's partial ownership of MacDonald's. Your company is in my retirement account. Long term, I trust you and your colleagues to invest wisely on behalf of shareholders. As a philanthropist, you should do the same for Omaha children and parents and the rest of America. A national digital library endowment could help turn things around and dovetail nicely with the Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge. None other than the late William F. Buckley Jr., our political opposite, wrote two "On the Right" columns on behalf of a national digital library and philanthropy to help fund it, in line with the basic TeleRead vision from the 1990s. Ideally Buffett and encourage policymakers and other philanthropists to catch up with WFB.

On top of everything else, Buffett should keep in mind that as a patron at least, he and public libraries go way back. "I started investing when I was 11," the Motley Fool site quotes him, "but I started reading about it when I was seven. So I'd gone through all—I'd read every book in the Omaha public library by the time I was 12 on investing and the stock market. I had a lot of fun, but I never really found out, I never really got grounded in anything. It was entertaining, but it wasn't going to be profitable." If nothing else, however, the Omaha Public Libraries fueled Buffett's fondness for investments. Besides, imagine how national digital library systems could help young investors not only with books but also with librarian-assisted access to authoritative databases. Such an approah could make informed investing more doable for the nonelite and maybe even for a future Buffett.

Simply put, in helping libraries both locally and nationally, Warren Buffett would be giving back to the people who helped him amass that $72 billion.

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