Bibliothecaire's Favorite Links on reading from Diigo

Onward and Upward with the Arts: Future Reading: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:55:26 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Without leaving Manhattan, Kazin read his way into “lonely small towns, prairie villages, isolated colleges, dusty law offices, national magazines, and provincial ‘academies’ where no one suspected that the obedient-looking young reporters, law clerks, librarians, teachers would turn out to be Willa Cather, Robert Frost, Sinclair Lewis, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore.”

It’s an old and reassuring story: bookish boy or girl enters the cool, dark library and discovers loneliness and freedom. For the past ten years or so, however, the cities of the book have been anything but quiet. The computer and the Internet have transformed reading more dramatically than any technology since the printing press

The rush to digitize the written record is one of a number of critical moments in the long saga of our drive to accumulate, store, and retrieve information efficiently. It will result not in the infotopia that the prophets conjure up but in one in a long series of new information ecologies, all of them challenging, in which readers, writers, and producers of text have learned to survive.

s early as the third millennium B.C., Mesopotamian scribes began to catalogue the clay tablets in their collections. For ease of reference, they appended content descriptions to the edges of tablets, and they adopted systematic shelving for quick identification of related texts.

Six hundred years later, Eusebius, a historian and bishop of the coastal city of Caesarea, in Palestine, assembled Christian writings in the local library. He also devised a system of cross-references, known as “canon tables,” that enabled readers to find parallel passages in the four Gospels—a system that the scholar James O’Donnell recently described as the world’s first set of hot links.

With electronic publishing programs, libraries have begun to take on many of the tasks that traditionally fell to university presses, such as the distribution of doctoral dissertations and the reproduction of local book and document collections—a spread of activities that Eusebius would have found natural.

Manuals such as Jeremias Drexel’s “Goldmine”—the frontispiece of which showed a scholar taking notes opposite miners digging for literal gold—taught students how to condense and arrange the contents of literature by headings. Scholars well grounded in this regime, like Isaac Casaubon, spun tough, efficient webs of notes around the texts of their books and in their notebooks—hundreds of Casaubon’s books survive—and used them to retrieve information about everything from the religion of Greek tragedy to Jewish burial practices.

the film- and reprint-based libraries never became really comprehensive. The commercial companies that did most of the filming naturally concentrated on more marketable texts, while nonprofit sponsors concentrated on the texts that mattered to them. No over-all logic determined which texts were reprinted on paper, which were filmed, and which remained in obscurity.

It is estimated that between five and ten per cent of known books are currently in print, and twenty per cent—those produced between the beginning of print, in the fifteenth century, and 1923—are out of copyright. The rest, perhaps seventy-five per cent of all books ever printed, are “orphans,”

If you visit the Web site of the Online Computer Library Center and look at its WorldMap, you can see the numbers of books in public and academic systems around the world. Sixty million Britons have a hundred and sixteen million public-library books at their disposal, while more than 1.1 billion Indians have only thirty-six million

The supposed universal library, then, will be not a seamless mass of books, easily linked and studied together, but a patchwork of interfaces and databases, some open to anyone with a computer and WiFi, others closed to those without access or money. The real challenge now is how to chart the tectonic plates of information that are crashing into one another and then to learn to navigate the new landscapes they are creating.

Specialist engines like Google Scholar can discriminate with astonishing precision between relevant and irrelevant, firsthand and derivative information.

And yet we will still need our libraries and archives. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid have written of the so-called “social life of information”—the form in which you encounter a text can have a huge impact on how you use it. Original documents reward us for taking the trouble to find them by telling us things that no image can. Duguid describes watching a fellow-historian systematically sniff two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old letters in an archive. By detecting the smell of vinegar—which had been sprinkled, in the eighteenth century, on letters from towns struck by cholera, in the hope of disinfecting them—he could trace the history of disease outbreaks.

these streams of data, rich as they are, will illuminate, rather than eliminate, books and prints and manuscripts that only the library can put in front of you. The narrow path still leads, as it must, to crowded public rooms where the sunlight gleams on varnished tables, and knowledge is embodied in millions of dusty, crumbling, smelly, irreplaceable documents and books.

For now and for the foreseeable future, any serious reader will have to know how to travel down two very different roads simultaneously. No one should avoid the broad, smooth, and open road that leads through the screen. But if you want to know what one of Coleridge’s annotated books or an early “Spider-Man” comic really looks and feels like, or if you just want to read one of those millions of books which are being digitized, you still have to do it the old way, and you will have to for decades to come.

Tags: bibliothèque_numérique book digital_collection digital_library google_books

Posted by: bibliothecaire

Steve Jobs Was Only Half-Right: People Do Read - Even Kids - They Just Do It Online - ReadWriteWeb

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:42:42 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

young news readers are less likely to read printed newspapers

The problem is not in readership decline, it seems, but in teen readership decline.

the younger generation like to consume media for free and they have come to expect free content through online extensions.

So is a diet of only digital media bad?

I wonder if reading novels is really better for you than reading online source about current events in terms of stretching your mind.

And because of blogs, forums, and email, I probably write several dozen pages worth of text each week, which is probably more than many members of previous generations can claim!

It is perhaps not accurate to consider all kinds of writing, as well as all kinds of reading, as equivalent. This lack of distinction between different types or levels of reading/writing looks like a major flaw in most of teh discussion about reading decline, etc.. posted by bibliothecaire

What is txt'ing if it's not reading?

It's extremely helpful to use hyperlinks to flow between information, especially if you need to find specific interest points, but it hinders as you haven't had the full picture as the author intended.

Digital reading (but the story began much much earlier) tends to reduce information to facts, which is a good thing when you are looking for facts. But the thinking part, the "knowledge" part is now up to you, with little help. See Wikipedia, which is unchallenged (more and more) to give facts but totaly lacking of style in the writing of the articles. posted by bibliothecaire

An article now should be constructed with an executive summary (less than 100 words, preferably less than 255 charcaters), and links to directly related information. If the entire article if covering a range of different topics, then it should be split into different posts. The entire Article length should not be more than two pages of A4. Otherwise it's rambling and should be split across more than one article.

Reading fiction is being replaced by multimedia story-telling (on the web, TV, movies, elsewhere).

I asked Steve Jobs about your post, and he said that people don't read posts that long any more.

Yes, I read the Newspaper and news online, but I have become a big Science and non-fiction reader now.. I find myself buying books and looking for used book stores or the local library....So, on the weekends. I am reading more then ever beofore...

The secrete about the internet is that you need to know how to read to use it...

Give people a mobile reading capable phone (e.g. iPhone) and great reading tool (e.g. www.textonphone.com for iPhone book reading) and people will quickly replace their other mobile snacking activities with the book reading.

I am sure I am not alone in being able to say that I have never read as much during my life as in recent years

I did watch way too much TV

Tags: Steve_Jobs reading reading_2.0

Posted by: bibliothecaire

Response, Sunil Iyengar and Mark Bauerlein: There is good reason to be worried about declining rates of reading | Comment is free | The Guardian

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:28:05 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Steven Johnson diminished the significance of reading problems in the Britain and the United States, and misrepresented our research into the issue

"From undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal, 'flicking' behaviour in digital libraries. Power browsing and viewing appear to be the norm for all ... Society is dumbing down."

Tags: decline literacy reading reading_2.0

Posted by: bibliothecaire

Dawn of the digital natives - is reading declining? | Technology | The Guardian

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:25:48 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

"Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media, they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading."

I challenge the NEA to track the economic status of obsessive novel readers and obsessive computer programmers over the next 10 years. Which group will have more professional success in this climate?

internet users generally are better educated and more interested politically. And among young people under 30, use of the internet to learn about the campaign has a greater impact on knowledge than does level of education.

if people are reading less, why haven't scores dropped more dramatically? The answer gets to the most significant sleight of hand of the NEA study: its studies are heavily biased towards words on a printed page

A recent study by the British Library of onscreen research activities found that "new forms of 'reading' are emerging as users 'power browse' ... "

The only reason the intellectual benefits are not measurable is that they haven't been measured yet. There have been almost no studies that have looked at the potential positive impact of electronic media.

Tags: digital_natives reading reading_2.0

Posted by: bibliothecaire

National Endowment for the Arts Announces New Reading Study

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:23:51 -0000

Americans are reading less - teens and young adults read less often and for shorter amounts of time compared with other age groups and with Americans of previous years.

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Americans are reading less - teens and young adults read less often and for shorter amounts of time compared with other age groups and with Americans of previous years.

Americans are reading less well – reading scores continue to worsen, especially among teenagers and young males. By contrast, the average reading score of 9-year-olds has improved.

The declines in reading have civic, social, and economic implications – Advanced readers accrue personal, professional, and social advantages. Deficient readers run higher risks of failure in all three areas.

Tags: USA decline literacy nea reading

Posted by: bibliothecaire

The Evolution From Linear Thought To Networked Thought - Publishing 2.0

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:29:16 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

I was thinking last night about books and why I don’t read them anyone

there’s something about the print vs. online dialectic that always seemed superficial to me.

Books are linear and foster concentration and focus, while the web, with all its hyperlinks, is kinetic, scattered, all over the place.

If I’m such a digital guy, then why do I have no interest in ebooks?

What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?

We still retain an 18th Century bias towards linear thought.

Why 18th Century? Non-linear reading and in consequence praise for linear reading vs non-linear is way older. See Illich about monastic vs scholastic reading. posted by bibliothecaire

When I read online, I constantly follow links from one item to the next, often forgetting where I started. Sometimes I backtrack to one content “node” and jump off in different directions. There are nodes that I come back to repeatedly, like TechMeme and Google, only to start down new branches of the network.

Is there such a thing as networked human thought? Certain there is among a group of people enabled by a network — but what about for an individual, processing information via the web’s network?

online reading has a very important negative result:
lack of concentration.

Before reading, people networked to obtain and validate information.

The real question is how we manage the change from linear cognition to non-linear cognition.

Are we going to recognize that this is an evolution in human consciousness and start valuing the types of effects that non-linear thought processes elicit? OR will we treat this as a plague to be eradicated and spend untold sums of money and energy trying to kill off the next great leap in human development?

I don’t feel a lack of concentration while reading/absorbing info in this way - if anything I feel it’s easier to concentrate for me. Isn’t that weird? Maybe it’s because I’m following my own train of thought (in the sense that I’m determining the narrative by deciding where to go next) rather than someone else’s?

When I do read fiction I find that I can’t put it down until I have read the whole story.

No fiction at all.

Tags: networked reading reading_2.0

Posted by: bibliothecaire

Du lisible au visible / Ivan ILLICH.- Paris : Cerf, 1991. « cercamon

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:39:09 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Nos prédécesseurs, qui vivaient solidement insérés dans l'époque du texte livresque, n'avaient nul besoin d'en explorer les débuts historiques. Leur aplomb se fondait sur le postulat structuraliste selon lequel tout ce qui est est d'une certaine façon un texte. Ce n'est plus vrai pour ceux qui sont conscients d'avoir un pied de part et d'autre d'une nouvelle ligne de partage. Ils ne peuvent s'empêcher de se retourner vers les vestiges de l'âge livresque afin d'explorer l'archéologie de la bibliothèque de certitudes dans laquelle ils ont été élevés. La lecture livresque a une origine historique, et il faut admettre aujourd'hui que sa survie est un devoir moral, fondé intellectuellement sur l'appréhension de la fragilité historique du texte livresque.

Tags: attention history: illich reading

Posted by: bibliothecaire

[Sciences de l’éducation - étudiants] 1.2 - Enquêtes sur les jeunes et la lecture

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:25:24 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Représentations de la lecture chez les lycéens qui estiment lire moins d’une année à l’autre :
- Soit la lecture scolaire, considérée non comme une vraie lecture mais comme un travail, est opposée à la lecture plaisir, synonyme de détente et de loisir. Les prescriptions scolaires concurrencent la lecture personnelle.
- Soit la lecture, quelle qu’elle soit, est considérée négativement, synonyme de solitude, de passivité, d’enfermement et d’effort. Cette représentation semble fondée sur une rupture radicale avec le modèle légitimiste selon lequel la lecture est un moyen de valorisation sociale et intellectuelle.

Selon François de Singly, l’examen des enquêtes Pratiques culturelles du ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (1973 ; 1988-1989) et Loisirs de l’INSEE (1967 ; 1987-1988) permet de constater une diminution importante de la proportion de grands lecteurs (plus de 2 livres lus par mois) chez les jeunes, avec une baisse de 16% chez les lycéens contre une baisse de 5% pour l’ensemble de la population.

Tags: reading teens france

Posted by: bibliothecaire

Alarmes sur la culture lettrée - Bloc-notes de Jean-Michel Salaün

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:36:37 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Les bibliothécaires ont besoin d'investir plus dans le recueil de données et dans l'analyse et de prendre exemple sur les leaders commerciaux (comme TESCO, par exemple, JMS : hypermarchés) qui ont une connaissance de leur clientèle et de ses préférences bien plus détaillée et éclairée.

Tags: libraries literacy reading

Posted by: bibliothecaire

Apprendre à lire par Alain Bentolila

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:14:19 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Alain Bentolila explique ici les mécanismes d’apprentissage à la lecture et pose les jalons d’un bon enseignement afin d’éviter aux enfants l’insécurité linguistique .

Tags: reading

Posted by: bibliothecaire

BrainConnection.com Library - Education Topics: Reading Fundamentals

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:24:26 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The concepts important for teaching reading in the classroom have been revealed by decades of research in both education and cognitive psychology. What are they and how can a better understanding of how they connect with one another improve reading instruction? Find out more in this six-part series exploring the fundamental building blocks for good reading.

Tags: reading

Posted by: bibliothecaire

Killian Newsletter 27 - The Post-Literate Era, Cover Letters From Hell

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:00:57 -0000

Tags: attention reading

Posted by: bibliothecaire

Stop Reading - Skim Dive Skim : eLearning Technology

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:10:28 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

no one reads these days - they play. Blogs are the last gasp before virtual interactive education takes over the schools.

actual reading of items from start to finish is pretty much gone.

Tags: blogging reading

Posted by: bibliothecaire

La fin des livres ? - Nonfiction.fr le portail des livres et des idées

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:05:11 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

On ne peut que supposer, comme le fait le New York Times, que le PDG d’Apple comprend que la numérisation des livres (on pense surtout ici aux livres "poches" et aux livres de non fiction, les premiers étant par définition destinés à une lecture "nomade", les seconds seront ceux qui devraient le plus profiter des technologies numériques (les moteurs de recherches par exemple remplaceront peut-être les index)), devra à terme être intégré dans un objet plus large qui regroupera toutes les fonctionnalités que possède déjà un Iphone, par exemple.

Tags: apple book e-books e_readers reading

Posted by: bibliothecaire

CNL - Synthèse de l'enquête sur la lecture et les loisirs multimédia des collégien(ne)s et lycéen(ne)s

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:21:57 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Ceux qui ne Lisent jamais ou presque jamais de Livres (25% des répondants)

Ce sont plus fréquemment des garçons ;
Ils jouent davantage que les autres à des jeux vidéo, font moins fréquemment du sport, visitent plus rarement les musées, expositions… et vont moins fréquemment au concert ou au spectacle ;
Ils ont plus souvent que les autres dans leur chambre un ordinateur, un accès Internet, une télévision, une console de jeux, un magnétoscope ou lecteur DVD, des cassettes vidéo ou des DVD ;
Plus souvent que les autres, ils jouent à des jeux vidéo plusieurs heures par jour ; ils vont plus souvent que les autres sur l’Internet plusieurs heures par jour ;

Leur activité préférée : utiliser un ordinateur et surfer sur l’Internet ;

Ceux qui lisent des livres plusieurs heures par jour (8% des répondants) :
Au cours des 3 derniers mois, ils ont plus souvent que les autres joué à un jeu de société, visité un musée, un monument ou une exposition, pratiqué une activité (musique, dessin, danse…) ou assisté à un concert ou à un spectacle ;
Leurs parents leur interdisent très souvent de jouer à des jeux vidéo ou d’aller sur l’Internet ;
Ils lisent également des journaux ou des magazines et des BD plusieurs heures par jour ;
Plus que les autres, leur goût en matière de littérature sont très éclectiques : romans classiques, policiers, science fiction ou fantastique, livres de philosophie, d’histoire, d’actualité, poésie, récits de voyages, livres scientifiques… ;
Ils lisent pour se faire plaisir, rêver ou imaginer, apprendre ;

Leur activité préférée est la lecture ;
Leurs parents lisent souvent et utilisent souvent un ordinateur ;

Tags: reading teens

Posted by: bibliothecaire

AFL

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:01:04 -0000

Tags: reading

Posted by: bibliothecaire

BBF 1989-05 | Sale quart d'heure ou bon moment ?

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:54:34 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Lire est un devoir qui doit prendre les apparences du plaisir et de la spontanéité. Pourtant seul un rapport satisfaisant peut déclencher et renforcer la pratique. Impossible de lire beaucoup à douze ans en vivant la lecture sous le mode de la contrainte. La logique de l'entraînement ascétique - qui peut s'appliquer au sport ou à la maîtrise d'un instrument de musique - ne s'applique pas au monde de la lecture. Le fonctionnement selon le principe de plaisir - que renforcent encore un certain nombre de personnes ou d'institutions 6 - a pour effet d'exclure encore davantage les jeunes pour qui lire n'est en rien associé à cette satisfaction. Ces derniers connaissent le principe sans pouvoir le mettre suffisamment en œuvre. Aussi le vivent-ils davantage sous le mode d'une injonction paradoxale:« Prends de la peine à être heureux en lisant ».

Tags: reading teens

Posted by: bibliothecaire

Lire ensemble - Le projet

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:01:12 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Sur un autre plan, celui du rôle général des enseignements NTE au sein des cursus littéraires (indépendamment des visées "pré-professionnalisantes" évoquées à l'instant), le projet de collaboration Université-Collège s'inscrit pleinement dans les objectifs pédagogiques du Département en matière de NTE. Notre but n'est pas de viser une compétence purement technique, mais de donner aux étudiants une "culture" qui leur permette de devenir des utilisateurs "actifs" d'outils auxquels ils seront inévitablement confrontés dans leur vie sociale et professionnelle : des utilisateurs qui maîtrisent – plutôt que de subir... – et tirent profit de l'outil, en mesurent les effets indirects, voire participent de ce que seront ses infléchissements futurs.

Tags: reading teaching

Posted by: bibliothecaire

http://www.liberation.fr - Finkielkraut: «L'enfant gâté a succédé à l'homme cultivé»

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:28:31 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

La beauté des livres, c’est qu’ils sont sans images et qu’ils offrent ainsi libre carrière à l’imagination. Quand on me raconte une histoire, j’ai besoin qu’on me donne à penser, qu’on me donne l’envie d’interrompre ma lecture et de lever la tête, pas qu’on dessine pour moi les héros. Mais les enfants gâtés veulent rester des enfants.

Je prends acte de cette mauvaise nouvelle : la démocratie est sortie de son lit et elle envahit des espaces où elle n’a rien à faire, notamment l’éducation et la culture. Or refuser la dissymétrie institutionnelle de l’école pour en faire une communauté éducative, c’est tuer l’école. Refuser la hiérarchie des valeurs esthétiques, la distinction entre la culture et l’inculture, ou même entre la beauté et la trivialité, c’est tuer la culture. Ce meurtre est-il de gauche ?

Tags: book finkielkraut reading school

Posted by: bibliothecaire

The Passion of Steve Jobs - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 08:49:59 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Mr. Jobs can be like that when he assesses the competition.

Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Tags: jobs kindle reading

Posted by: bibliothecaire