Magazines for Kids June 24, 2006
Posted by Laura Pearle in : ALA2006 , add a commentI attended this hoping for more than a plug for a major publisher, but that seemed to be 2/3 of the presentation. Luckily, there was some history included in the remaining 1/3, which I found fascinating.
Did you know that there are over 60,000,000 readers of children’s magazines?
Did you know that by the early 1900’s, 250 different titles were being published?
The children’s magazine industry runs on a low profit margin, because the readership keeps changing (today’s 10-year-old won’t read the same magazine in 5 years, unlike the adult magazines, where readers continue subscribing for years). There are over 17,000 magazines published in the US, pretty much one for every taste (this runs the age gamut from very young to very old). This is despite competition from TV, social software, etc.!
Magazines tend to become like family: we value their voice, because they feed our desires/interests/beliefs. This is increasingly true given the specialization and diversification in the industry. And, with each issue, you get variety of content, yet sameness of tone from issue to issue.
How did children’s magazines start? In 1740, John Newbury (yep, the medal guy) founded Liliputian Magazine. In some ways, it was very similar to what we see in children’s magazines today: games, puzzles, recipes, etc.. Youth’s Companion, the most successful children’s magazine to date, had over 100,000,000 subscribers during its 100+ year run.
The one magazine most of us know, St. Nicholas was so popular that the publisher started St. Nicholas’ League, which ran a contest for young readers. Among the published winners were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna [not yet St.]Vincent Millay, E.B. White and Rachel Carson.
It seems as though, despite the passage of time and growth in the industry, the children’s magazines haven’t really changed.
Tag: ala2006
Knowledge Quest Editorial Board">Knowledge Quest Editorial Board
Posted by Laura Pearle in : ALA2006 , add a commentThe KQ Editorial Board met on Friday in a lovely museum, The Historic New Orelans Collection, where we saw the Common Routes: St. Domingue-Louisiana exhibit.
During the business meeting, a major topic of discussion was forthcoming changes to the publication. In a recent survey done to help the Board shape the future of Knowledge Quest, many readers mentioned that they thought the magazine was “old” looking.
Well, check your mailboxes: the September/October issue on Adolescent Literacy is anything but “old”. New graphics, new use of space, new fonts: new new new. It’s really exciting to see these changes and to know that, as we as a profession and an organization change, our communications change as well. KQWeb will also be changing, with better navigation and “look” but continuing to provide additional and expanded articles. We also have plans to link from this blog to KQ, increasing our collaboration with other divisions and the outside-libraries world.
The editorial calendar for 06/07 looks great: Adolescent Literacy, the Global Citizen, Facilities 2.0, ICT Literacy and biennial AASL Conference Issue.
The Ultimate Debate: Who Controls the Future of Search?
Posted by fharris in : ALA2006 , 1 comment so farThis afternoon I attended a LITA session entitled The Ultimate Debate – Who Controls the Future of Search? Will libraries continue their vital role in the evolution of search, or will we be left in the dust by Google and their ilk? Moderator for the session was Roy Tennant, User Services Architect for the California Digital Library and owner of the Web4Lib and XML4Lib electronic discussion lists. He had the unenviable task of managing a debate between two giants of library search issues — Stephen Abram, Vice President for Innovation for SirsiDynix, and Joseph Janes, Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academics at the Information School of the University of Washington. These guys are live wires! Here are some (slightly paraphrased) choice quotes from one of the questions:
Question: Will libraries incorporate some of the better dot-com search technologies into their own search products, such as their catalogs? For example: better interface design, relevance ranking, alternate spelling suggestions, faceted browsing, etc.
Abrams:
It’s already starting. One good example is the Endeca product and how it displays faceted search results of the North Carolina State University catalog. The barrier is the librarian mind-set that believes it’s the alpha user. This view doesn’t like visual interfaces. But that’s the primary way people see content, NOT as lists. Visual constructs and tiles results sets. New search engines (notably, not Google) show clusters and categories. We need to get better at understanding that and how important that is.
Janes:
Librarians are librarians because they love to search. Dialog searching was like librarian porn. We are annoyed that all these new interfaces and systems makes searching look easy. It fries our collective cheese. And we’re afraid they’ll need us even less than they do now.
Abram:
Librarians killed Dialog by convincing Dialog that only they and chemists could search it. Getting to the end of a Dialog search is like “squeezing a diamond out of your ass.” [note: I am not making that up!]
Janes:
The OPAC isn’t going to change because the MARC record isn’t going to change. There’s so little to it. In 1966, the MARC record was beautiful. It was a great innovation, as was OCLC. An algorithmic ranked search engine just doesn’t have that much to work with.
As flip as their comments may sound, both of these terrific speakers peppered their comments with very compassionate statements about the importance of library services now and in the future. I’m VERY happy to report that I’ll get to hear Stephen Abram again tomorrow morning when he speaks for the YALSA Technology for Teenagers Committee (my committee!) at 8:00 a.m.
Tag: ala2006