Library Recycles Its Collection

I took my two kids to the library over a recent weekend.  We had to return some overdue books (my wife’s fault) and take out books about Australia.  My eight-year-old was doing a report about the Crocodile Dundee land mass.  My five-year-old daughter busied herself with a communal iPad that featured an interactive game.

Perhaps it was a sign of the times.  Digital is integrated with print.  But what really got my attention was an arts and crafts project at the library, which I equate with being a shrine to books.  Kids were making things out of discarded audio tapes and VHS recorder tapes.  Some of them were 30 years old and apparently no longer a part of the library’s valued collection of information.

Will we one day see books being used as trays, frisbee a, or poster board for a child’s art project?

I know there’s a normal evolution taking place with information technology devices, so it shouldn’t surprise me that old learning tools are as physically outdated as some of its content. 

Yet, I never want to see anything in the library shredded, dumped, recycled or deemed no longer of value.  Today it is old tapes, tomorrow it’s the dictionary. 

Digital Entertainment By The Numbers

Did you know, according to Nielsen’s US Entertainment Consumer Report (as reported by Adweek June 3^rd), that:

E-book buyers (18+) are 21% more likely to be female.

Further, e-book buyers (18+) are 22% less likely to be Hispanic and 11% less likely to be Asian.

The e-book buyer tends to be 35-44 or 55-64; 19-24-year-olds and 65+ tend to buy fewer e-books than other age segments.

CD purchases declined by 13.5% last year, from 223 million units to 193 million. 

Sales of digital music albums rose 14.1%, from 103 million to 118 million.

Movie DVD purchases declined 1%, while subscription streaming rose 12% and online streaming, one-time purchases rose 32%.

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2013