lite : : : lite : racy

Lionizing a Library Lion:
Paul LeClerc has done fantastic work leading the NYPL

Under his stewardship, the library has become one of the most important electronic resources of the information age while strengthening its roots as the place to go when you want to, well, take out a book.

Last year, 26 million visitors from around the globe trolled the library's digital catalogue of more than 500 million items - including 700,000 images and 26,000 downloadable e-books - in English, Hebrew, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Greek.

In a city where the average citizen has limited discretionary income, the NYPL is plainly invaluable. LeClerc, whose resignation will be effective in 2011, is owed many thanks for not only maintaining, but elevating and modernizing one of the New York's great cultural institutions.

READ MORE ! @ Daily News: 11/24/09 Editorials

America's Star Libraries

LJ Index of Public Library Service 2009, Round 2: America's Star Libraries - best libraries - top-rated libraries
Library Journal: November 15, 2009 by Keith Curry & Ray Lyons

Library Journal's national rating of public libraries, the LJ Index of Public Library Service 2009, Round 2, identifies 258 "star" libraries. Created by Keith Curry Lance and Ray Lyons and based on 2007 data from the IMLS, it rates 7,268 public libraries. The top libraries in each group get five, four, or three stars. All included libraries, stars or not, can use their scores to learn from their peers, expand service to their communities, and improve library awareness and funding. (see Round 1)

The LJ Index divides libraries into categories by operating expenditure to compare like to like. It is about what libraries deliver to their users with the money they have, based on:

Circulation Per Capita
Visits Per Capita

and on 2 statistics that more clearly define libraries’ increasingly crucial role in their communities, especially in these tough economic times:

Program Attendance Per Capita
Public Internet Computer Use Per Capita

Stars by State
There are no libraries on this chart from Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, or Tennessee.

Find a Library
Tally of Libraries Not Included - 1949
293: Do Not Meet Federal-State Cooperative System [FSCS] definition
234: Total Expenditures Less Than $10,000
670: Population Less Than 1,000
752: 1 or more data Not Reported in 2007

literacy : : : lite : racy

Alabama Illiteracy has an Economic Fallout

A Birmingham News analysis of the 2008-09 Alabama High School Graduation Exam, reported Sunday, Nov. 22, 2009, shows that 130 public high schools either failed reading or were classified as "borderline" failing, based on 11th-graders' performance on the Alabama High School Graduation Exam. The analysis involved 367 high schools, all of the state's public high schools that are not spe­cialized in some way.

Three groups are especially hurt when schools fail to teach students to read well: The students, who are unprepared for meaningful work; the companies that can't find the employees they need; and the overall community, which loses a chance to increase prosperity.One example was Newnan, Ga., where employer Yamaha went to educators in the late 1990s and said it would have to build a planned automated facility elsewhere, because Cowetta County didn't have the work force the company needed.

"They said, 'We're not so interested in tax breaks; we're interested in a skilled work force,' " said Mark Whitlock, CEO of the Central Educational Center in Newnan.

But the county school system and businesses fought back by creating the CEC, a charter school that allows students to take free two-year college courses in addition to their high school classes. CEC has become a model for its ability to graduate students who have the skills needed for a 21st century work force."

Our young people are facing a new economy that is very difficult and very complex," said Whitlock, formerly with Bank of America. "It's only going to get more complex and difficult. We have to add skills at a more rapid rate."

READ MORE ! @ Birmingham News: 11/23/09 by Jeff Hansen

Empire of the Word - The Origin of Reading

Empire of the Word
WORLD PREMIERE - TVO Canada
Wednesday, November 25 at 10:00 pm

Eight years in the making, Empire of the Word is a compelling look inside the act of reading and traces its impact on more than five thousand years of human history. Introduced and narrated by one of the world's great readers, Canadian writer Alberto Manguel, the series traces reading's origins; examines how we learn to read; exposes censors' attempts to prevent our reading; and finally, proposes what the future might hold for this most human of creative acts.

Empire of the Word Online is also an interactive Alternate Reality Game. It is fantasy, but the story it tells derives from histories of real, courageous people who have risked all to preserve and defend the freedom to think, write, and read freely.

Play Online: Lekha’s Journey – explore the past, present and future of the written word in this 8-part interactive mystery.

Follow Empire on Facebook

Episode 1: The Magic of Reading - Wed. Nov. 25 @ 10:00PM
How did the alphabet we know today come to be? What was the world's first novel? How did the concept of being free to interpret one's own meaning from a text evolve? The opener uncovers the genesis of the written word, including primitive animal paintings on cave walls, the advent of portable writing materials like papyrus scrolls and Alexander the Great's dream of the first universal library.

Episode 2: Learning to Read - Wed. Dec. 2 @ 10:00PM
In a prosperous western nation such as Canada, we take the ability to read for granted, yet one in six Canadian adults can't read a newspaper headline. How does the human mind learn to read? And how can the ability to read allow us to transcend difficult life circumstances?

Episode 3: Forbidden Reading - Wed. Dec. 9 @ 10:00PM
Readers and writers the world over have been punished and persecuted for expressing their ideas or by simply carrying the wrong book. Nazi book burnings, publisher Barney Rosset's legendary legal battles in the 1950s and 60s over the right to publish the uncensored works of Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence in the U.S., authors in hiding ... we witness how the determination of writers and their readers is not without revolutionary consequences.

Episode 4: The Future of Reading - Wed. Dec. 16 @ 10:00PM
How will the technological revolution change the way we read? Will electronic texts like cellphone fiction replace the traditional book? What ethical issues are at play when it comes to who owns the digital archives of the world's printed heritage? We get perspectives from Canadian interactive novelist Kate Pullinger (Inanimate Alice) and Google engineering director Dan Landry, among others.

literacy : : : lite : racy

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2009: Admonish

The list is based on actual user lookups to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Online Thesaurus. This year's traffic was generated by topics and events ranging from Michael Jackson to H1N1 to the recession and, of course, politics. The word of the year that received the highest intensity of searches over the shortest period of time is "admonish."

2. emaciated
3. empathy
4. furlough
5. inaugurate
6. nugatory
7. pandemic
8. philanderer
9. repose
10. rogue

READ MORE ! @ Merriam-Webster

literacy : : : lite : racy

Exercise Balls Get Education Rolling

Donna Yehl's fourth-grade students bob behind their desks, heads nodding up and down as if the children were on the deck of a ship.

But they aren't fidgeting.

The two dozen children in Yehl's Elgin, Ill., classroom read and write -- in fact, do all of their classwork -- perched on exercise balls.

The inflatable balls are commonly used in Pilates, yoga and exercise classes. Some teachers say they belong in school classrooms too because they sharpen students' attention and improve their posture.

This year, Yehl checked the Internet for ways to help her restless pupils sit still. She stumbled on a story about exercise balls improving concentration. So she replaced her classroom's chairs with bouncy 21-inch-high balls in colors students chose. She sees a difference.

"They're more focused," Yehl says. "They're sitting upright."

"You'd be surprised how many kids really need to move while learning . . ."

READ MORE ! @ LA Times: November 16, 2009 by Georgia Garvey

Driven To Distraction : Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood – Hallowell & Ratey

also previous post: Facelift For America's Classrooms

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Let’s face it: the library, as a place, is dead,” Suzanne Thorin, dean of libraries at Syracuse University reportedly announced last week at the annual Educause conference, adding, in case her audience didn't get it, "Kaput. Finito." To be sure, she was deliberately taking an extreme position for the sake of debate, but it's a commonly voiced sentiment. Nobody reads anymore. The book is dead. Libraries are deserted tombs full of the dust of vanished civilizations.

Yet all the evidence suggests otherwise.

Embarrassingly enough, our patrons—even college students, who use libraries more than any other demographic—stubbornly continue to identify libraries with books. The OCLC study that found we have a brand problem also found that people actually like books and libraries. But their fondness for books must be a problem because research shows young people don't read.

In the end I suppose it's all about which story is more compelling. Whether you love books and mourn their passing, or think libraries will perish if they don't change with the times, there's nothing like an impending apocalypse to make it exciting. Just so long as it's coming soon. Very soon. Just not right now.

READ MORE ! @ Library Journal: 11/12/09 by Barbara Fister