Interesting presentation on how people discover books on Goodreads.

(Source: paidcontent.org)

library:

The future of public libraries

It’s not uncommon to hear a lot of concern about public libraries coming from librarians and paraprofessionals working, here’s a really interesting example of this from meta-filter.  Anecdotally I’ve heard very little concern from academic libraries, but looking at the data has made me less certain of even the relatively near term future.  So the most interested data question for public libraries is “are these fears justified?”.  Earlier I showed some data on public libraries FTE employment.  Except for hints of decline at the end of the data, things look relatively good.

Above are 2 charts taken straight from the IMLS Public Survey Fiscal Year 2009, and they both tell pretty different stories. The first shows that only 1 state in the US has seen an increase in the per capita number of libraries, nearly half have seen a decrease. The other shows that visitation per capita is up! I’m sure there are many who work in public libraries that would anecdotally confirm this, less libraries are more busy.

Data Source: IMLS Public Survey Fiscal Year 2009

calimae:

thekindlemonologues:

calimae:

Popular e-Book Formats & Readers

Kindles also read .TXT and .Doc formats. Perhaps not super popular, but worth knowing.

And if you’re prepared to “tinker” with the Firmware? They’ll also read epubs. Granted not DRM protected epubs, but regular DRM free epubs? They work a charm.

[I’d also argue that the Kobo ecosystem being missing is strange, as I’m sure their marketshare is higher than that of Windows 7 / Phone.]

Some notes on the graphic I just posted (as a non-user of ereaders, I can’t speak to the accuracy of the graphic or the comments).

(Source: twitter.com)

pewinternet:

Chart of the week: A Snapshot of E-reader and Tablet Owners

The number of Americans owning either a tablet or e-reader is now 29%. Take a look at who owns them: for example, 41% of e-reader owners are male and 58% are female.

Full infographic

More: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/E-readers-and-tablets.aspx

A new report from Pew Internet finds that tablet and e-reader ownership nearly doubled over the holiday gift-giving period, from 10% of adults in December to 19% in January for each device. Overall, almost one in three American adults (29%) currently own at least one of these devices.

pewinternet:

Lovely infographic based on some of the findings from our latest report on mobile giving and the Haiti Earthquake relief campaign.

Some highlights:

• Individual donors contributed an estimated $43 million to the assistance and reconstruction efforts of the Haiti Earthquake using the text messaging feature on their cell phones
• 1 in 10 U.S. adults have made charitable contributions using their phone’s text message function
• 89% of the Haiti text donors found out about the Haiti text effort on TV

pewinternet:

Another neat infographic based on our research: What are people doing online? (As always, you can learn more about online activities & general trend data for the past ten years on our website.)

What American adults do online - an infographic.

(via )