Getting the Message Out

My last post was generated from an article in Men's Health magazine, and the importance of libraries. Well, when I returned from vacation - writer Kyle Western had shot me an article he came across on CNet: Steal this book? Don't bother

The lead sentence in the article: When it comes to outsmarting the content establishment, your library may be your best accomplice.

So, the questions, how do libraries maximize and deliver their message in a content cluttered environment? Who, not what, is our PR machine?

Snaps for Kyle

In the July/August edition of Men's Health magazine (page 36) under the title, "Be a patriot - no musket required", Kyle Western writes about three things we can do to be more patriotic. One of the items has to do with libraries and it mentions South Carolina:

Read Locally:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt noted that public libraries are "essential to the functioning of a democratic society."

But libraries are often the first to go when local budgets are cut. Support yours by always paying your fines and by donating used books, CD-ROMs, and DVDs. And instead of buying from Amazon, check librarybooksales.org first - it sells books from local libraries across the country. Back your library and you'll strengthen the state economy, too; a South Carolina study found the return on investment for every $1 spent on public libraries was $4.48-that's nearly 350 percent.

Click on the blue cover to read the study.

MySpace vs. Facebook

I have been following a discussion around a PhD student's study (complete study) on the perceived class divisions between MySpace and Facebook users. The study's developer is PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley.

Language from the BBC's website (full story) and interview with Boyd:

Broadly, Ms Boyd found Facebook users tend to be white and come from families who are keen for children to get the most out of school and go on to college.

Characterising Facebook users she said: "They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities."

By contrast, the average MySpace teenager tends to come from families where parents did not go to college, she said.

Ms Boyd also found far more teens from immigrant, Latino and Hispanic families on MySpace as well as many others who are not part of the "dominant high school popularity paradigm".

Wow. Is it true? Has cyber-space become a reflection of our socioeconomic class system? If so, how do libraries respond to this?