With the recent release of the Pew Internet and American Life Report covering the reading, library habits, and behaviors of 16 to 29 year old Americans, there has been a lot to discuss and think on delivered from the lines of the YALSA blog these last two weeks. If you haven’t had a chance to read Linda Braun’s Storify posts summarizing the Pew report over the past two weeks, please take the time, they are a wonderful read.
In response to the report I thought a post on useful sites/apps for e-reading could be useful.
If 47% percent of younger Americans are reading long form e-content such as magazines, news, and books.’ Then we might want to interest them in some of these sites or apps:
Pulse: Read on a Kindle, iPhone, iPad or Droid device, Pulse feeds from multiple news, magazine, and industry feeds, giving readers up-to-date information in an easy to stream format. https://www.pulse.me/
Flipboard: Students can load in social media as well as news, media, fashion, and more into this flippable reading app. Can be used with iPads, iPhones, Nooks, Kindle Fires, or Droids. http://flipboard.com/
Pocket: Load anything that you would like to read for a later time into this site. Read on a computer or handheld device. Great place for saving all the things that you would like to read in one place. http://getpocket.com/
If 80% of all Americans ages 16 and older say they read at least occasionally for pleasure. Here are some sites we might want to investigate:
100 Free Books: Download free bestseller books for your Kindle or Kindle app. Books change often. http://onehundredfreebooks.com/
Lit2Go: Free collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format.’ Play on any device that will run the Mp3 format. http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/
Inanimate Alice: Online interactive digital graphic novel. Four different chapters where the reader can follow Alice as she travels all over the world, the novel is online based and can be read on a variety of hand held devices. http://www.inanimatealice.com/
At this time findings from the Pew Report show us that print still outranks every form of e-reader or device. I believe this is only a matter of time and access to the technology. As our schools and public libraries gain the budgets to begin circulating more devices, and as student/young adults continue to read and research on hand-held technologies we will see a difference on the e-book use, as well as online research and reading. These are only a few sites for this post, if you have others that could be of use for fellow librarians please feel free to add them into the comments section.
