Talking about some of the most useful sites online during the past three months mixed with my ongoing interest in online broadcasting inspired me come up with the following list:
Five Things The Internet Is Killing 1. The Music Industry – I saw a stat somewhere that 80% (!) of teens in the US hadn't bought a single CD in the last year. That's not a good sign if your (inflexible) business model is selling overpriced CD's!
2. The Movie Industry – see above. It's a bit slower death since the file sizes are bigger and it's harder for the average user to get high quality video displayed in an enjoyable format compared to outputting high quality music to a stereo or even just decent speakers from a computer.
3. Real Estate Agents – I keep hearing these commercials that slam “do it yourself” real estate sales sites while talking about all the expertise a realtor brings you. Frankly, they reek of desperation. Selling or buying a home yourself is a natural for the strengths of the Internet – many-to-many reach, incredible cost savings (realtors usually charge around 7% for their service), unlimited space for featuring photos and specifications. Plus, ultimately, who's going to care the most about selling a property – the person who sees it as a house or the person who sees it as a home?
4. Traditional Software – increasingly, people are using online applications that they don't need to buy, install or update instead of their more traditional cousins. MS-Office is the most obvious example of software that Google and others are trying to replicate online but I don't think it'll be long before pretty much everything you do locally on your computer is available online and the only piece of software you'll need is a web browser.
5. Newspapers – I think classified ad revenue is down something like 20%, subscribers are down 15% in the last few years (disclaimer: all stats quoted in this and any other post I do – are usually from memory. Don't quote them in your academic papers without verifying them!) Online competitors now provide news that is interactive, has alternative perspectives and is more timely. Some newspapers are migrating online but still use old school subscription models or pay-per-article (boo G&M after what, a week?) The New York Times gets it right – all their content is available as soon as it's published, its archived, searchable and free.
Bonus: One Thing The Internet Is Not Killing Books – outside of music, more ink (real and digital) is spilled proclaiming the death of the book than anything else. To paraphrase Twain, “the rumours of [the book's] death are greatly exaggerated.” I'll always remember going to a national publishers' conference in 2000 where the e-book was all the talk and one presenter said that by 2005, more than half of readers would be using e-books over regular books. Really? Even most of the tech-types I know don't use e-books yet. I don't think e-books aren't without their merits and we're heading to more of a Movie-Television relationship. When TV first came out in the 1940's-50's, commentators warned about the death of the movie theatre. Instead, they developed a symbiotic relationship. I think that's what will happen with “real” books and e-books. E-books will continue to gain traction with users but also continue to co-exist with traditional books.
(Here's an article I found on this topic which discusses many of the same ideas I'm talking about.)
[2008-08-11 – Edit: here's another list on the topic from Cracked that counts phone books, MP3 players, DVD's, magazines, catalogues and newspapers, hard copies of video games, and cash. I'd also add “Post Office” to the list of things you'd think the Internet is killing but isn't.]
Pace was babbling up a storm the other day while grandma was watching him. So she rather ingeniously decided to call our Regina number and leave a message of his babbling so we could hear it later. (I've got a neat feature enabled on my message manager that forwards all messages to us by e-mail so she knew I'd get it later that night.) The funniest part? At the end, how she has to clarify “That was Pace!” in case we didn't know.
Congrats to Amy Buckland for getting the nod! (<old man voice>I remember when Amy was just a wee lass, firing off e-mails to library school-focused blogs asking about the merits of various schools.</old man voice> Obviously I didn't do a good enough sales job for UWO and she landed at McGill. London's loss is Montreal's gain.)
Looking at the list of recipients and seeing how many of those named have blogs (and/or are doing work focused on technology and Web 2.0 stuff), it made me wonder what sort of relationship there is between having a blog and the “real world” of libraries?
Classmate John Miedema of the Slow Reading blog recently presented at Salt Lake City Public Library's “Thinking Ahead” conference. I'm not sure if his blog was how they found him and/or if it helped lend credibility to his application if he “cold called” them as a potential speaker but I'm sure it didn't hurt.
Maybe that's part of it – you need to have a certain specialty or theme that you're “known” for? (See #4 here.) Amy runs Library Student Journal, John has become a leading proponent of the Slow Reading movement.
I haven't won any awards or been invited to any conferences because of my blog (yet! ) but as I recently blogged about, it's been an amazing way to become connected to a wider library community that I wouldn't otherwise have in the pre-Internet days.
(Of course, I also have my days when I think bloggers are a lot like poets and professors – namely, a group of people who are mostly interested in what other people in the same area are doing while no one else gives a toss. I've organized enough poetry readings in my life to know that 99% of the people who come to them are other poets. And the citation count wars of academics trying to get their papers cited by other academics often seemed like more of an academic circle jerk than anything. )
Er, anyhow, ranty tangents aside, being a part of the conversation has been useful, even if it hasn't paid off in awards, conference invites or Google-buyout offers. Even something as simple as being able to post the full version of my essay that won second place in the CLA student essay contest last year since CLA didn't have room to print anything but the winner in Feliciter has generated the a couple hits from people who searched for it after the winners were announced last year. And who knows – it may do so into the future as well. And then? That CLA conference invite can't be far off! (How can you tell it's conference season? I'm hoping to go to SLA this year – and to maybe get a chance to meet the famous Jessamyn West of librarian.net and MetaFilter.com – but CLA looks like it's not going to happen, what with the price of diapers and whatnot.)
The Globe and Mail recently had an article on the benefits of reading and good literacy to your health (PDF). This is probably not a huge surprise but lines like “While we obsess about our weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, the single best predictor of good health and longevity is probably literacy.” are pretty big statements to make. (I'd have guessed that the single best predictor of longevity might have to do with healthy eating and exercise.)
(via one of our branch librarians who in turn, got it from a librarian at RPL)
Each year, our library system gives out four awards to our branches – one for Service, one for Programming, one for Branch Development and one for Branch of the Year which incorporates elements of all three plus more. Right now, I'm working through nearly 200 quarterly reports (48 branches x 4 reports per year) to come up with a shortlist for this year's nominees.
As part of the process, I did a tabulation of which branches have won awards since 1992. I knew my hometown of Indian Head had done okay, being one of only two branches in the whole system, to have won Branch of the Year twice. What I hadn't realised was how well Indian Head had done across all categories. Since 1992, we've they've won 6 awards.
The next branches that come close are our two city branches, Estevan and Weyburn, which have won four awards each (and it's apparently a perennial argument around here whether city branches serving thousands of people should even compete with small towns serving hundreds or villages that literally serve dozens.) If you take away the two city branches, the next closest communities have won three awards over the same span.
We haven't decided what to do about Indian Head this year – I've got a pretty big conflict of interest being from there so think I might get a colleague to look over their reports to see if they should be on the shortlist for any of the awards this time around. (But frankly, they can afford to wait for a year. Give everybody else a chance to catch up! )
As I said, the awards only go back to 1992 and by that time, I was off at University. I haven't lived in Indian Head since (though my parents still do.) Even without the awards to “prove” it, I think Indian Head has always had a strong library with great boards and staff – even as I personally tend to think of Indian Head as more of a sports town in general. (On the prairies, my theory is that every small town basically falls into one of two categories – you're either a sports town or an arts & culture town.)
I talked about it in my Statement of Intent to get into FIMS. Although I laid it on pretty thick (as I tend to do), I honestly think you can draw a pretty straight line from my formative experiences in that small town library to where I am today (er, supervising that small town library while trying not to let my biases show! )
LibraryThing is already a wicked cool service but it's getting better all the time.
One of their latest features is LibraryThing Local which is “a new [LibraryThing] sub-site devoted to finding, mapping and
describing the world's bookstore, library, book fair and festival—as
well as all the readings, signings, lectures and other events they
host.”
I recently
posted the second annual “Head Tale Blog Survey” to find out a bit
about the visitors to this site – how they get here, what they like
about the site, what they want to see more of and so on.
Here are some of the results…
– 75% of
respondents read the site via RSS with 55% occasionally clicking
through to the site and 20% never clicking through. 25% visit directly
via a bookmark.
– it was pretty
evenly split between Google Reader and Bloglines with 60-40% for each
respective service. Even though I love it and have raved about it on
this blog multiple times, no one uses NetVibes.
– 30% of people
read/visit the site when they see a new post, 12% visit multiple times
per day, 20% visit daily, 20% visit every few days, 6% visit weekly and
12% visit “whenever the mood strikes me”. Nobody answered “monthly or
less frequently” but then again, I don't think I've had the post up for
a month yet!
– Given that the
blog started when I was in library school and is known mostly to people
who are either professors, alumni, former colleagues from when I was
attending FIMS or current students there now (and the same categories
from other library schools to a lesser degree), it's no surprise that
“Library related” and “Library school” are, by far, the most popular
types of posts being picked by 87% and 73% of respondents. Other
popular categories with more than 50% of people picking them were
“Work-Related” (a new category I added to the survey this year) and
“Miscellaneous Ramblings” (which sort of surprised me as I don't do a
lot of these and tend to not like them as they often feel unfocused and
random. But hey, didn't I just describe 90% of blogs in general?)
–
“Baby-related”, “Pop Culture”, “Technology” and “Humour” were all just
under the 50% level in terms of popularity with survey respondents.
– Everything
else got at least a double-digit approval rating except “Hockey” which
only got a 6% approval rating including one person who went so far as
to write-in “I like everything you write about except hockey!”
– Sending a strong message to get back to the theme that this blog started with (a message which I may or may not hear! ),
“Library-related” was not only the most popular category for posts I do
now but also, by far, the category people would like to see more posts
in with 67% of respondents citing it. “Work related” (which you can
probably view as a vote for “library related” in some ways) and
“Miscellaneous ramblings” were the other top vote getters in this
area.
– “Comments”
were by far the most popular widget with people indicating that they
read them, even if they don't post them. Every other widget got at
least a vote or two except for the LastFM “last song played” widget and
the Regina/Calgary/London weather widget (but I use that one on a daily
basis so it ain't going anywhere!)
– Maybe
surprisingly, 100% of respondents who answered the question liked that
this blog has daily posts! (If I remember correctly, last year, it was
only a slight majority who thought this was important.) Thanks for the
vote of support folks. I'll try to keep it up (even if I have to
occasionally “fudge” time stamps the following day to do so!).
– the general
comments were very supportive of what I do with this blog and it was
nice to see that the respondents included a few former
classmates/colleagues from FIMS because I didn't know if those folks
were still “out there” reading now that we've all gone our separate
ways.
– Pace got lots
of kudos as well and I'm sure he'll continue to be a regular feature on
the blog. (Idea for a future post – the security/privacy issues around
putting up pictures and updates about him – something I've thought
about a lot while doing my computer/Internet training sessions the past
three months. I didn't show Shea's Flickr account or our YouTube
videos at every workshop but occasionally it would come up and then I
often had to explain our choice to put this type of material on the
Internet to people who still buy into that media-generated hysteria
about pedophiles lurking around every URL and IP address.)
– as for ideas for other future posts from the respondents, I can address this one right now: “Will a Large Hadron Collider experiment create a mini black hole that consumes the earth? Or, do aliens blog more than humans?”
Answer: Uhm, no idea. And also, no idea. (Next time, I'm going to
include a question about what you're smoking when you fill out the
survey!)
The thread also led to the obituary for a groundbreaking children's librarian who started one of the first children's libraries in the UK at that branch, Eileen Colwell. Reading her obituary reminds me of why I love libraries, I love librarians and why I decided to get into this amazing world in the first place.
A couple copyright-related stories that warm the cockles of my Canadian heart… While the inclusion of China and Russia on the “Priority Watch List”
isn't surprising, the report also has strong words for a more
surprising: Canada.
Sources indicate that the CBC is set to become the first major North
American broadcaster to freely release one of its programs without DRM
using BitTorrent. This Sunday, CBC will air Canada Next Great Prime Minister.
The following day, it plans to freely release a high-resolution version
via peer-to-peer networks without any DRM restrictions. This
development is important not only because it shows that Canada's public
broadcaster is increasingly willing to experiment with alternative
forms of distribution, but also because it may help crystallize the net
neutrality issue in Canada.
