Library Champion: Are eBooks going to replace print books?
Library Champion,
I have been dealing with eBooks at public libraries for almost a decade. They took some time to catch on, but their use and demand has grown in the years since. The common question that always seems to come up is will eBooks replace print books?
Here are the facts: in 2019 we had 48,470 print books check out at our library, while 8,979 digital books (eBooks and eAudio titles) checked out. That is a difference of 39,491 and compared to previous years, that gap continues to be sizeable.
In September 2020, we exceeded our 2019 total of digital books checked out and finished 2020 with 11,108 total digital books checked out, a nice bump from 2019.
Faced with shelter-at-home orders and other pandemic restrictions in 2020, readers were able to easily read and listen to digital books at any time from anywhere.
The numbers above show that by-and-large print reading is not being outdone by eBooks and the two are not even close in comparison. And honestly, there doesn’t need to be a comparison or fretting over which way will be the future we read books. Bottom line: people continue to read and read MORE during the pandemic than in previous years. That should be cause for celebration!
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Here is one book I am reading and a book that I just bought.
I am reading The Drifter (Peter Ash Book #1) by Nick Petrie
In the prologue, someone identified only as “the man in the black canvas chore coat” buys fertilizer at a farm supply store, clearly intending to build a bomb and evoking parallels to Timothy McVeigh.
Meanwhile, Marine veteran Peter Ash sets out to repair the broken-down Milwaukee home of Jimmy Johnson, a comrade who’d committed suicide. Feeling responsible as Jimmy’s former commander, Peter tells widow Dinah Johnson that his work is part of a Marine program to assist returning vets. No such program exists, but he knows Dinah would refuse his charity, and he likes fixing old houses anyway. Under the porch he discovers a suitcase that’s guarded by a fearsome pit bull. He improvises a clever way to control the dog and finds $400,000 and bars of C4 explosive in the suitcase, hinting at a horrific attack in the wind. Ignorant of the explosives, Dinah wants no part of the money. But a scar-faced stranger is watching the house, and Peter wants to know why—perhaps the man is looking for the suitcase. The enormous dog had been Jimmy’s and is named Mingus, after the jazz great Charles Mingus. The snarling monster has an overpowering stench, “a stink sharp enough to cut.”
Throughout the story, Peter feels “white static” in his head anytime he’s indoors, a combat legacy that threatens to incapacitate him. Peter talks to detective Sam Lipsky about the suicide while Dinah and Peter try to find out where the money came from. Midden, the guy in the chore coat, is part of a small group of angry vets who want to teach big banks a lesson: “that the people run this country.”
Now the story is about much more than Peter defeating his demons; it’s about America’s sorry treatment of veterans and the desperate measures a few of them might take. Meanwhile, when Peter learns the truth about Jimmy, his mission changes. The relationship between Peter and Mingus is entertaining and reveals a lot about the man’s character.
Bottom line: A great debut thriller that raises questions about domestic terror and the way the American government treats its war veterans.
One of the books I purchased that you should check out: The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again by Robert D. Putnam
Every day I seem to ask myself: when will our country unite and not live so divided? Garrett and Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard and winner of the National Humanities Medal, portrays a prosperous nation driven by technological innovation but burdened by massive, concentrated wealth and widespread poverty: Corruption and sex scandals fill the media; politics is gridlocked; xenophobia and white supremacist violence are rising; substance abuse runs rampant. The author then delivers a jolt by revealing that this describes Gilded Age America (1870-1890), a time when “doomsday prophecies and despairing anxieties” filled the media.
Putnam’s inverted-U graph illustrates what happened since. Four nearly parallel lines rise, tracking economic equality, goodwill in politics, community social bonds, and cultural altruism. All peak during the 1960s when, although far from perfect, “America had been transformed into a more egalitarian, cooperative, cohesive, and altruistic nation.” Then all four steadily decline into the present.
There follows an insightful history of what Putnam labels an “I-we-I century.” Economic equality rose mostly through the explosion of education, high schools after 1900 and college after World War II and the Progressive movement, which produced government reform, encouraged unions, passed industrial regulation, and created the first social programs (“a veritable boom in association-building”).
The first half of the 20th century gave birth to iconic social institutions such as the Rotary Club, NAACP, and the League of Woman Voters. Startlingly, both political parties contributed. About half of Republicans in Congress voted in favor of Progressive and New Deal programs, nearly two-thirds for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The number voting for Obamacare in 2010? Zero. The 1970s saw the steady decline of this so-called affability: “The collective norm that ‘we’re all in this together’ was replaced by a libertarian…norm that we’re not.”
Bottom line: The narrative is brilliantly argued throughout, although the traditional how-to-fix-it conclusion could use a more specific action plan.
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For the littles: January Make-And-Take
❄️ January Take & Make Kits ❄️
ELEMENTARY (or preschool): Plastic Plate Snow Globe Craft ☃️
GRADES 6-12: Hot Chocolate Bombs ☕
Take & Make kits are available while supplies last during our business hours beginning January 4th. Since we’re doing contactless service right now, if you’d like any kits please message Jocinda (jrhinier@juniatalibrary.org) or call and ask one of us and we will be sure to set your kits out in the lobby. One kit per person, please.
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Your library misses you. We wish you and your family health and wellbeing during these (and all) times.
Vince
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