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: Viz Manga & Yen Press

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I’ve been trying to read more manga lately.’  Manga in book form is very popular at my library, so I have been working on building up’ our print collection. My anime club kids are always telling me about new titles. There is also a lot of manga to be read electronically. Reading scanlated manga online has been a longtime habit of many fans, regardless of the copyright issues involved, (scroll down on this page for a good definition of scanlation) but more manga is becoming available electronically either for free or for reasonable prices.’  It will ‘ be nice if this encourages more fans to pay for content and support the creators whose work they enjoy. Even if it doesn’t, it does afford more options for consuming content for people who enjoy reading on their mobile devices. Viz Media and Yen Press, are two popular publishers making manga available via mobile app.’  I decided to check out how these apps work and compare and contrast their features. Read More →

28 Days of Teens & Tech # 5: Never Thought I’d Be Saying This With Glee, but “The Kindles are here!!!”

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Not much more than a year ago, I was that person who proclaimed I would never own a Kindle. I loved books as objects (I have bookshelves in every room in my house except the bathroom) and, let’s face it, I’m kind of materialistic. I like to own things, to collect. At the same time, I had bigger concerns about a possible future where everyone would need a device to be able to read a book.

Flash forward to today: I am a Kindle owner. What happened?
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