Want to argue about games?

Whenever life in the library gets to feeling slow, you can generally stir up some excitement by starting an argument about the value of video games and whether libraries should encourage children to play them. Now a respected young writer has given us a book describing and defending the value of video games as entertainment and art form. Tom Bissell has had literary success with his short stories, but his new book "Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter" goes in an entirely different direction. Bissell confesses that he has spent many hours of his life playing video games, sometimes obsessively. He acknowledges the violence of the games, but nonetheless claims they are, or can be, an exciting new art form. Not all the reviewers are convinced by his arguments, but they are worth paying attention to. At the very least they can give us a better understanding of why so many young people are fascinated by these games. Librarians ought to read this book and perhaps reconsider their opinions about games in the library.

New twists for e-books

There will be a lot of children's publishing news made at the American Library Association's annual conference in Washington, D.C. this week. One exciting new product that's being introduced by Lerner is a new line of e-books for children who are struggling with reading. According to a report in PW, these books will have an audio component with varying speeds that can be adjusted to the child's reading speed. There will also be a feature that will highlight each word in the text as the child reads. Additional content and quizzes to reinforce learning will also be part of the package. At $39.95 each, these books are aimed at the school and library market rather than at families, and they should serve their audience well. It's another example of some of the exciting innovations that e-books can bring to enhance a child's reading experience. How sucessful the line will be is impossible to predict, but it's an open market with plenty of chance for tweaking and experimenting. As librarians we can look forward to more help in bringing literacy to children who need a little extra help in the struggle toward reading.

More on multitasking

The issue of whether or not new media has caused a drastic drop in people's ability to concentrate has sparked continuing discussion. The most recent contribution in the N.Y. Times points to the advantages of being able to gather and share information quickly. Steven Johnson points out that most innovation comes from a shared social context--the coffee houses of the Enlightenment period or the college campuses of the 1990s. The new Kindle inovation of indicating the most popular phrases and ideas that people highlight as they read books enables readers to get a sense of how others are reacting to ideas. We all know the pleasures of coming across a pencilled note on the pages of a print book that suddenly gives us the feeling another human being has been struck by the same idea we had. Reading an e-book may soon offer a similar experience, only enlarging the experience as if thousands of people read the same copy of a book. That's something to look forward to, not to fear.

Why such gloomy books?

Adults often wonder why young teens choose painful, depressing books to read, but they often do. Laura Miller in the New Yorker has a fresh take on why dystopian fiction is so popular with tweens and teens. She points out that with the restricted movements generally allowed young people these days with parents hovering over them as they are taken to sports practice and lessons there is very little chance for adventure. The popularity of books like the "The Hunger Games" and other dystopian fantasies give young teenagers a chance to experience the desperation and hope of live and death struggles. Perhaps the struggles of the heroes of these books reflect the anguish of high school society these days. It seems that hovering parents cannot protect their children from all suffering no matter how intently they try. Librarians will surely continue to stock these books, but perhaps they should also encourage some young people to try the less gloomy, but more realistic stories in earlier fiction. There are still life lessons to be learned in the works of Robert Cormier and even Harper Lee.

Will online schhols replace home schooling?

The New York Times today (June 4, 2010) reports a movement in California and other states to offer online schooling as charter schools. By signing up for this system, parents can have the flexibility of home schooling, avoid the local public schools, and still ensure their children receive a sound education. At least that is the way it is supposed to work. Education experts differ on whether elementary and high school students really receive a comparable education from a home-based online school to the one they would get from a face-to-face school. The social interaction of classrooms and the mix of children from many different kinds of homes certainly offers a different experience from home-based learning. Also missing at home are the gyms, libraries, and extracurricular activities offered in many schools. Nonetheless, charter schools are encouraged and will probably continue to grow. Public librarians will have to take over more and more of the work of school libraries to fill the gaps left by bypassing brick and mortar schools. Are we ready for that?

What do librarians do?

People who think librarians spend all their time shelving books and helping children to find a good book ought to read about how one school librarian worked fast to create a lesson on the Gulf oil spill. Putting together online information from a variety of sources is going to be a greater and greater share of a librarian's job. Teachers and students want to learn about what is going on in the world right now and want to understand how to get information about current issues as well as history, science and all the traditional school subjects. Librarians are well positioned to be leaders in finding information and putting it together in meaningful packages for students. The world moves too quickly for books to keep up. We have to supplement books with all sorts of digital information that makes connections between the lasting truths of books and current news headlines. Three cheers for librarians who become leaders in this task.

Catching on to e-books

More and more librarians are experiencing the pleasures of e-books and thinking about how they can be integrated into the library world. In his blog "The Civil Librarian" Chris Freeman writes about downloading a recently discovered title to his iPhone and having it available almost immediately and completely without cost. Why not have this service available in libraries, he asks. Why not indeed? Many of the classics read by high school and college students are freely available online. Instead of buying multiple copies, a library could lend out e-book readers and give directions for downloading the book. That's quite a saving of space and budget, although the cost-benefit calculations are still to be made. There are issues of the durability of e-book readers and their cost. Many library users, even teens and tweens, have their own e-book readers so all they need is a little help in locating texts. It's something for all librarians to consider.

Change or die!

Publisher's Weekly reports on one more conference in which publishes wring there hands and wonder what will become of the industry. As e-books sweep more and more of the market, what will traditional editors and print professionals fit in? Not to mention bookstores, which seem the most endangered species of all. There is no agreement on what will come next, how many printed copies of books will be produced or preserved, but everyone is worried. Are librarians worried enough? Perhaps not--especially children's librarians who go happily along planning story hours and choosing picture books. I think it's time to acknowledge that even doting grandparents will eventually surrender to the Kindle and iPad (many are among the early adopters of these handy technological aides to comfortable reading for aging eyes) and future grandkids may be raised on picture books on screens. Librarians had better not be the last people on earth to cling to printed books as the only worthy format. Yes, there are many advantages offered by print on paper, especially for long-lasting books that will survive through many technological shifts. But let's face it--most children's books are as ephemeral as adult bestsellers. Perhaps they are best downloaded electronically, given to as many children as want to read them, and then vanish into thin air (well, maybe one archival copy per library system). When you look at schedules for library conferences for children's librarians, you often seen the same old program titles that have been offered year after year. But the world is changing. Isn't it time that we push our professional organizations into the kind of future probing that the publishing industry is doing? It's time to stop listening to self-congratulatory speeches by yesterday's authors and start paying attention to tomorrow's children.

Which e-book is best?

Librarians may complain about the difficulty of reading text on an e-book, but most of us can't easily find the reason for the problem. That's why blogs written by specialists in typography and book design are so fascinating and valuable. Craig Mod writes a blog not aimed specifically at librarians, but extremely useful for them. A few weeks ago he discussed some of the problems of reading e-books and talked about how of them could be overcome by a more careful choice of font and attention to details. Hyphenation may not seem a serious problem to most readers, but when font size is increased for people with visibility issues, the absence of hyphens causes unacceptable blanks in lines and makes reading difficult. There's no doubt many book designers and programmers are reading this blog and learning. It's time librarians did the same. The more we know about what makes a readable book, the better we'll be able to serve our patrons, whether children or adults.

How much are you willing to read?

Most news that we meet online comes in small, manageable bites, but this morning I found an article that requires devoted attention through six long pages. Nonetheless, this article by James Fallows in the Atlantic rewards the effort (and the eyestrain). Fallows reports on the efforts Google is making to revive the news profession. Instead of pooh-poohing print media as many online types tend to do (Remember Steve Jobs saying "Print is dead"?) the folks at Google understand the importance of allowing ordinary citizens to get access to news. To do that requires more than just on-the-spot tweets from major events, it requires dedicated journalists with enough background to understand the background and history of stories. Video clips of David Cameron and Nick Clegg standing side by side at 10 Downing Street do not reveal the tortured history and uncertain future of coalition governments in Britain. So what are we to do as newspaper circulations drop and TV news becomes a series of one-sided blasts from opinionated political junkies? It may not seem that children's librarians need to trouble themselves with this question, but it is the children we serve today who will determine the future of media--of the country--in the future. The more we help them to understand the choices they need to make about which news is worth paying attention to and how to find it, the better they will be able to run the world. Google is working on various models to understand how news will be transmitted in the future; some will probably thrive and others will founder. It is important for those of us who work with information to understand the changes that are coming about and to help our patrons to understand them too. So yes, six pages on a computer screen takes some time to read, and printing it out may mean it will be buried on your desk for weeks, but it's worth setting aside some time to read Fallows article and to follow what Google and other companies are doing to salvage our right to hear the news we need.