Tag Archives: poverty

Southern librarian’s thoughtful criticism of Gates Foundation survey unwittingly shows need for TWO national digital library systems—one public, one academic

Mindful of the record number of poor Americans, a thoughtful “Front Line Librarian” in a Southern state is asking an essential question in effect: Why care so much about library e-books and the rest when millions of low-income people lack computers or at least the skills to use them? Front Line says more reliance on [...]

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Amazon – IPG battle shows need for libraries to buy OverDrive and control their own destinies

More than 4,400 e-books—from the Independent Publishers Group—have vanished from the Amazon site. Why? Pressured by Wall Street, Amazon wants to jack up its profits at IPG’s expense while still keeping e-book prices low enough to entice people to buy Kindles. If Amazon succeeds with IPG, then Jeff Bezos and friends will move on to [...]

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E-book strategies for Rockford, Illinois: LibraryCity’s guest column in local daily

The Rockford (Illinois) Register Star, the local daily, has just published LibraryCity’s guest column: How to Make Rockford an E-Book Leader. Rockford’s library planners are right that e-books deserve a higher percentage of their budget than now. But the city should take care to digitize properly before going on a major e-book spree. How about [...]

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Low-income people vs. e-books? Illinois controversy shows why the Harvard-based e-library initiative must not downplay nonelite’s needs

Welcome, Rockford visitors! Also check out Novel helped young thief turn into judge. – D.R. The e-book debate in Rockford, Illinois, was bound to happen somewhere. And, as a way of spotlighting the need for a national digital library system for all Americans, not just the affluent, I’m glad it did. The local NAACP and [...]

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On gadgets and gumption and a Forbes blogger’s myopia: You can’t just Google your way out of poverty. Lesson for the DPLA here?

Can you really Google your way out of poverty—no small issue when 146 million Americans are poor or at least in the “low income” category? The Digital Public Library of America isn’t saying that, but so far, the DPLA has shown more interest in upper-level academic needs, such as better-than-Google reference tools, than in libraries [...]

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How a national digital library system could help promote early childhood learning—and academic and vocational success later on

“People need people to learn, at least when they’re young.” Toddlers at a kid-low wooden table—drinking orange juice. Four decades later, as a ex-poverty beat reporter, I still remember that scene from the Head Start program for an Ohio factory town. The juice made sense, given the long-known link between nutrition, brain development, and learning [...]

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