Long Tail, Short Tale

The old feed reader is looking like the python that ate the woolly mammoth, but a couple of recent MSM articles seem worth sharing because they might generate some thoughts about the public library biz and its collection philosophy.

First was in Time magazine on a self-published author, Lisa Genova, whose novel "Still Alice" achieved fame via the Internet and fortune after being picked up by Simon & Schuster, who know a good thing when hit over the head by it.

The second was in today's Washington Post, on the Smithsonian trying to push its staff into 2.0dom.

[An aside here: The Smithsonian has now got 1,300 or so photos up on Flickr (see sample below). Small potatoes, given the size of the collection, TWP points out, but it's a start.]

Among the folk preaching to the museum skeptics was Chris Anderson of Wired, whose "long tail" concept essentially is that while the info beast is enormous, its tail tapers out to infinity; each of the segments on that long tail may appeal to a diminishing number of people but add up all those half-dozen here, half-dozen there folks and you get a number bigger than the beast.

Anderson says: "If you're given infinite choice and the tools to help you find stuff, then we will start to diversify our choice, and define our communities of interest. . . . It often turns out that the stuff we love the most is the stuff that's not the blockbuster. The stuff that we all like collectively -- the Super Bowl -- are things we don't feel as passionately about. Less popular things are actually more meaningful to us as individuals."

So, I have been pondering this:

If self-selected readers are now boosting unknown writers to the point that big-time publishers shell out half a million to get the book that already has a life of its own; and

If what gives people the greatest pleasure are the works that address their own quirky interests;
Should the library continue to concentrate its spending on the few mega names and the few mega sellers rather than single copies of a broader array of titles that will keep that long tail happily wagging?

Reading Trends

The National Endowment for the Arts' new survey of reading in America is out, as reported in today's Washington Post.

Some interesting stats on online readers, from the NEA news release:
*Online readers also report reading books. Eighty-four percent of adults who read literature (fiction, poetry, or drama) on or downloaded from the Internet also read books, whether print or online.
*Nearly 15 percent of all U.S. adults read literature online in 2008.

In discussing the shift of reading from print to computer, the report recognizes the "shortage of scientific research on the effects of screen reading--not only on long-term patterns of news consumption, but more importantly, on the development of young minds and young readers. (A good research question is whether the hyperlinks, pop-up windows, and other extratextual features of screen reading can sharpen a child’s ability to perform sustained reading, or whether they impose unhelpful distractions.)"

The entire report can be downloaded. As it's 98 pages, perhaps my next 2.0 venture should be Web annotation. I still find it easier to mark and flip through pages of hard copy than through pages of ether.

New Year's Resolution #243: Do More Things

Happy 2009!

The Matman merchandising talk got to me and so for the new year I resolved to neaten up the shelves and piles of books at home. On the aforementioned new bedroom shelves I now have a modest display of cat books of various kinds and sizes, ornamented with one of the cat sculptures that seem to multiply around here like the books. Figure the "no props" rule can be violated outside the library.

Mr. MacGeek's shelf of Christmas books will have a small display sign so he'll know that's where they now are. It's an improvement over his dining-room-table stack that kind of overflows onto the breakfast counter.

Speaking of book displays, I'm still not sure how I feel about Arty vs. Dewey, but Better Homes & Gardens has a colorful example of the former in this month's issue (click on the photo to enlarge it). In trying to locate the picture online, I discovered Coverleaf, which allows browsing of magazine issues. Hitch seems to be you have to accept their offer to send you e-mails about stuff you don't want e-mails about.

I also in the past weeks set up a Twitter account (wortklauberlein -- I'll let you in if you ask) and am following a few people at the branch plus a couple of outsiders who are demon tweeters: Robin Bell of the Antarctic research effort mentioned a post or two back and Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, who I don't think ever stops writing. They're both fun and informative.

Howie's got 1,492 followers. I've got 1!