NYT: Do School Libraries Need Books?

Image by promaine via Flickr

A not terribly interesting debate at the Times's RoomForDebate blog on school libraries and whether they should have books. The discussion (not the right word for a handful of interested parties talking/emailing to a reporter) shaded into future of the book, and "they should both exist!"

(And why the illustration: it's a tile cutout for a mosaic in the Times Square subway station: there was no There There.)

(h/t for the story to my friend Molly G.)

Books and Twitter: Neither Luddite nor Biltonite (George Packer in the New Yorker)

Neither Luddite nor Biltonite: Interesting Times : The New Yorker

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George Packer at the New Yorker writes:

Just about everyone I know complains about the same thing when they’re being honest—including, maybe especially,, people whose business is reading and writing. They mourn the loss of books and the loss of time for books. It’s no less true of me, which is why I’m trying to place a few limits on the flood of information that I allow into my head. The other day I had to reshelve two dozen books that my son had wantonly pulled down, most of them volumes from college days. I thumbed idly through a few urgently underlined pages of Kierkegaard’s “Concluding Unscientific Postscript,” a book that electrified me during my junior year, and began to experience something like the sensation middle-aged men have at the start of softball season, when they try sprinting to first base after a winter off.

Packer also comments briefly on Twitter, journalism, and information overload.

Interesting to compare the February 5, 2010 Chronicle of Higher Education articles on attention span, memory and distraction from multitasking (David Glenn, "Divided Attention", Chronicle Review, pB6, 2/5/2010).

(h/t Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish)