Pew, Reading, and Technology

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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/
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App of the Week: OverDrive

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Title: OverDrive Media Console
Platform: iPhone, iPad, iPod
Cost: Free

The ability to download and read e-books’  from libraries is obviously a good thing and sometimes, in my travels around the Internet, seems like something that everyone is already doing.’ ‘  But the actual practice of helping our patrons download e-books onto their devices is pretty new in my library and I can imagine this must be the case for other libraries as well.’  The process here’  is pretty clunky.’  Clunky or no, the OverDrive Media Console is the app you need to get started reading library e-books on your iPhone.

The app itself is easy.’  When you open it up you see a list of the books you have checked out.’  You can click on a book and start reading.

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