Review of 2012 and Trends to Watch in 2013

Paula Hane's article in ITI's newsletter NewsBreaks provides valuable information on important technology trends in 2012 and an insight into what to expect for 2013. Here is a brief overview:

Hot Topics in 2012

• Big Data was the buzzword of the year
• Data analytics
• Smartphone adoption skyrockets (45% of U.S. adults now own a smartphone)
• Mobile apps
• Blending of offline-online worlds
• Gesture-based computing
• Increased geo-tagging of information
• Watching news on multiple devices simultaneously—TV and (mobile) internet
• Fewer Americans read print newspapers and magazines (some big titles such as Newsweek move to online only)
• Voice interfaces
• MOOCs—Massive Open Online Courses
• Increasing business engagement with social media
• Video, video, video… (“Video is the fastest-growing digital content category; we forecast that more than 90% of the online population will regularly watch online video by 2017.”
• Ebook self-publishing market grows (and is expected to surge in 2013)
• Growing popularity of e-singles (“stories somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000 words, usually nonfiction, and sold as inexpensive ebooks”)
• Tablets sales rise, sales growth of dedicated e-readers slows
• Apple maps—big blunder and embarrassment (with iOS 6 Apple dropped Google Maps)
• Facebook’s botched IPO
• Publisher consolidation
• Web-scale discovery for library collections
• Evolving roles for librarians
• The rise of monograph e-platforms (Books at JSTOR, University Publishing Online, University Press Scholarship Online, University Press Content Consortium Book Collections of Project MUSE )
• Privacy and security concerns dominate policy discussions
• Government tries to regulate the internet (SOPA and PIPA, ACTA, WCIT)—expect more battles in 2013
• Progress in Open Access initiatives

Looking Ahead to 2013

• Apple versus Google versus Facebook versus Amazon—battling on hardware and search (“The Lines Between Software and Hardware Continue to Blur”)
• Battle of the mobile devices (Apple iOS, Google’s Android, Microsoft Windows)
• Intelligent objects—The Internet of Things
• More predictive personalization
• Expansion of peer power
• Growth in open source innovation/problem solving (e.g., more installations of Solr)
• Expansion of cloud computing and thus a greater need for security and data center redundancy (outages are much more a problem than data breaches)
• Work anywhere
• More Big Data (as one search technologies expert said, “There’s plenty of hype around big data, but underneath there are compelling applications to be implemented which combine the best of enterprise search and business insight technologies.")
• Publishers will use metadata in more sophisticated ways
• Publishers will still grapple with testing new business models—library pricing, subscription models, DRM-free sales, etc.
• Companies will increasingly have to deal with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) issues
• Looking forward to Microsoft Surface Pro with full version of Windows 8
• Enterprises may choose to bypass Windows 8 (because of interface issues) and wait for “Windows 9”
• Anticipated launch of “iPad 5” and “iPhone 6”
• Anticipated next Android launch—“Key Lime Pie”
• More sales of near-field-communication (NFC) enabled mobile devices—and adoption of customizable NFC tags
• Biometric security becoming more prevalent
• T-Mobile targets AT&T customers
• More publisher consolidation
• Consumers with content stored in the cloud may encounter problems when they want to move to another provider

Read the full article here

Pew Report: Reading Habits in Different Communities

Summary of Findings


Reading is foundational to learning and the information acquisition upon which people make decisions. For centuries, the capacity to read has been a benchmark of literacy and involvement in community life. In the 21st Century, across all types of U.S. communities, reading is a common activity that is pursued in myriad ways.

As technology and the digital world expand and offer new types of reading opportunities, residents of urban, suburban, and rural communities at times experience reading and e-reading differently. In the most meaningful ways, these differences are associated with the demographic composition of different kinds of communities — the age of the population, their overall level of educational attainment, and the general level of household income.1

Several surveys by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reveal interesting variations among communities in the way their residents read and use reading-related technology and institutions:

Book readers: Some 78% of Americans ages 16 and older say they read a book in the past 12 months. Urban (80%) and suburban (80%) residents are especially likely to have read at least one book in the past year. While rural residents are somewhat less likely to have read a book in the past year (71%), the book readers in rural areas read as many books as their counterparts in cities and suburbs.

Purposes for reading: Most of those ages 16 and older read books for pleasure, and that is especially true of suburban readers: 82% of suburbanites read for pleasure, compared with 79% of urban residents and 76% of rural residents. Urban residents (80%) and suburban dwellers (79%) are also especially likely to read to keep up with current events. Some 73% of rural residents do that. More than three-quarters of suburban residents (77%) read to research topics that interest them, compared with 74% of urban residents and 70% of rural residents. Finally, 57% of suburbanites and 58% of city dwellersread for school or work, compared with 47% of rural residents who do that.

Americans and libraries: The majority of Americans ages 16 and older (58%) have a library card and even more (69%) say the library is important to them and their families. Some 71% of city dwellers say the library is important to them and 59% have library cards — and 69% of suburban residents say the library is important and 61% have library cards. At the same time, 62% of rural residents say the library is important and 48% have library cards.

Book recommendations: Family and friends are the primary source of book discovery for Americans 16 and older, especially so for suburban (66%) and urban residents (66%). Some 60% of rural residents say they get book recommendations from family and friends. Similarly, city dwellers (25%) and suburbanites (24%) are more likely than rural residents (18%) to have gotten recommendations from book stores they visit. Residents of all three kinds of communities are equally likely to say librarians and library websites are sources of book recommendations.

Newspaper and journal readers: Some 58% of those ages 16 and older say they regularly read newspapers. There are not noteworthy differences across communities in the numbers of people who regularly read newspapers. But suburban residents (57%) and urban dwellers (56%) are more likely to say they at times read their newspapers on handheld devices than rural residents (45%). When it comes to magazines and journals, 52% of the suburbanites ages 16 and older say they read them regularly, compared with 47% of urban dwellers and 44% of rural residents. Among those who read magazines and journals, 36% of urban readers and 33% of suburban readers read their magazines and journals at times on handheld devices. That compares with 24% of rural readers who read magazines and journals that way.

Preferences for e-books vs. print books: Some 14% of readers read an e-book and a printed book in the past year. Those book readers in dual platforms were asked which type of book is better for different reading activities such as sharing books with others, reading in bed, reading with a child, or reading while traveling. Generally, urban readers in both formats are more likely to prefer e-books for many reading activities, while rural readers who have read in both formats tend to prefer print.

Click HERE to Read Full Report

World Digital Library

Developed to expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet, the World Digital Library makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures from around the world on one site, in a variety of ways. These cultural treasures include, but are not limited to, manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings.


Items on the WDL may easily be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item, and contributing institution, or can be located by an open-ended search, in several languages. Special features include interactive geographic clusters, a timeline, advanced image-viewing and interpretive capabilities. Item-level descriptions and interviews with curators about featured items provide additional information.

Navigation tools and content descriptions are provided in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Many more languages are represented in the actual books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and other primary materials, which are provided in their original languages.

The WDL was developed by a team at the U.S. Library of Congress, with contributions by partner institutions in many countries; the support of the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and the financial support of a number of companies and private foundations.

Visit WDL by clicking here

New Findings Reaffirm Library Borrowers Are Also Buyers

An extensive online poll of library ebook readers finds that these patrons purchase an average of 3.2 books (both print and ebooks) each month, and a majority would consider purchasing books discovered on a library website. These ebook borrowers, who are at OverDrive-powered public library websites in the U.S., also report that their digital content purchases have increased in the past 6 months. Sponsored by OverDrive with the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP), the survey constitutes the largest study of library ebook usage to date, with more than 75,000 people responding.

Confirming earlier studies, such as the Pew Internet Project’s “Libraries, Patrons, and E-books,” the survey found that a significant percentage of library users regularly purchase books they first discover at the library. In fact, 57% of those surveyed said that the public library is their primary source of book discovery.

Library ebook borrower: Highlights
Public library is primary source of book discovery (57%)
Purchase average of 3.2 books per month (including print and ebooks)
Would consider purchasing books discovered on library website (53%)
Visit both the physical library and download ebooks (53%)
Digital book purchases have increased in past 6 months (44%)
Purchased book (print or ebook) after borrowing that title (35%)

Library ebook borrower: Demographics
Female (78%)
Adults aged 40-64 (55%)
Household income $75,000+ (48%)
College degree or higher (74%)

The survey also found that dedicated ebook reading devices—including Kindle, Sony Reader, and NOOK—were the devices most used to read ebooks from the library (8%). Desktop or laptop PCs (20%), smartphones (19%) and tablets (18%) rounded out the top four types, which reflects the rapidly escalating trend of borrowing on mobile devices recently reported by OverDrive. (In August, mobile devices accounted for 30% of checkouts and 34% of web traffic at OverDrive-powered library websites. Both statistics are up nearly 100% year-over-year.)

The survey took place between June 13 and July 31, 2012, at thousands of OverDrive-powered public library websites in the U.S., with 75,384 respondents completing all or part of the survey. The intent of the survey was to gain insight into the borrowing and buying behaviors of library ebook readers and is not representative of the U.S. population as a whole. To see the full survey data, visit OverDrive’s Digital Library Blog.

Source: Information Today Inc. Newsletter NewsBreaks

Libraries in the U.S.: A Snapshot of Priorities & Perspectives

These reports detail findings from a study OCLC conducted with libraries in mid-2011 to learn about their priorities, initiatives, thoughts on the future of their service points and the sources they use to keep up with developments in the library field. Full reports can be downloaded by clicking here:

Select Key Findings for Academic Libraries

Most academic library staff:

•Consider licensed e-collections to be a top priority

•Are focusing on e-books, other e-resources and discovery tools as top current initiatives

•Believe their current library location structure will be the same in five years

•Rely mostly on listservs and email to stay current—a few use social media


Select Key Findings for Public Libraries

Most public library staff:

•Are focusing their priorities on Internet access, demonstrating value to funders and delivering e-content

•Are concentrating on e-books as their top current initiative

•Rely mostly on listservs and email to stay current—while just a few use social media

•Opinions are split on the make-up of service points in the future

•The top priority for public library directors is demonstrating the library's value to funders


Select Key Findings for Community College Libraries

Most community college library staff:

•Consider licensed e-collections and e-books to be their top priority and current initiative

•Believe their current library location structure will be the same in five years

•Rely mostly on listservs and email to stay current—a few use social media.

•Community college library staff are less likely than other academic library and public library staff to expect that a national digital library will exist in the next five years.

•Community college libraries are distinctively putting more focus on outreach and library instruction and their back-end office technology compared to other academic libraries.

Get your library in Goodreads

Goodreads (one of the leading social book-review websites)  has pledged to help libraries receive greater visibility with their more than 12 million site members. How? Now libraries can create their own "Group" pages, and a library group page will be listed first in a reader's group listings. In the future, they'll also highlight libraries that are geographically close to a reader's IP range, encouraging them to find their next read at their local library.

Goodreads site members can affiliate with their local library and find their next great read. Plus they're also likely to find other passionate readers in their area and be able to connect with them through social media.

Follow the simple steps to get your library going in Goodreads by clicking here