Chart: How long it takes to read the books you’ve been putting off

"I love reading, but there's just no time!"

Chances are good you've heard this excuse or maybe even used it. It's not a bad excuse, either: reading doestake time, and sometimes, it takes lots of it. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, literature worth reading doesn't offer quaint tl;dr summaries. It may be time to implement a strategy to help you get to those books you've been putting off for the past 17 years.

It might be good to start by planning out your reading by the length of time it will take you to finish a book. A nifty infographic from Personal Creations can help here. The website calculated the hours it takes for an average reader — which they define as reading 300 words per minute — to finish 64 of the world's most popular books

Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well will take you just under two hours, which is about the length of a romcom you might watch on Netflix. The Great Gatsby and A Wrinkle in Time will both take you less than three hours. Some books, like Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, will require a slightly longer commitment (six hours), and some, like Gone With the Wind, will require almost an entire day to read.

Here's the infographic to help you plan your literary schedule. Happy reading!

The Great Library Way

Library Way Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary

I bet you didn't know that the New York Public Library is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Library Way this month. You may have no idea where it's even located.

Library Way extends from Park to Fifth avenues along 41st Street. And it's distinguished by 44 bronze sidewalk plaques featuring quotes from the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, Julia Alvarez, Mark Twain and Tom Stoppard.

There are actually 98 plaques, according to library spokeswoman Amy Geduldig—an equal number on both sides of 41st Street that are identical to each other. I have to take her word for it, because when we strolled the street Monday afternoon with library officials Ann Thornton and Christopher Platt, we stuck to the north side. (For the full article and samples click here).

Younger Americans and Public Libraries

How those under 30 engage with libraries and think about libraries’ role in their lives and communities

BY KATHRYN ZICKUHR AND LEE RAINIE

Summary of Findings
Younger Americans—those ages 16-29—especially fascinate researchers and organizations because of their advanced technology habits, their racial and ethnic diversity, their looser relationships to institutions such as political parties and organized religion, and the ways in which their social attitudes differ from their elders.

This report pulls together several years of research into the role of libraries in the lives of Americans and their communities with a special focus on Millennials, a key stakeholder group affecting the future of communities, libraries, book publishers and media makers of all kinds, as well as the tone of the broader culture.

Read the whole article

B&N Quarterly Sales Fell 7%, But Losses Cut

By Jim Milliot    

Sep 09, 2014

Revenue at Barnes & Noble fell 7% in the first quarter ended August 2, to $1.23 billion, but the retailer cut its net loss to $28.4 million from $87.0 million in the first period of fiscal 2014. The company also reported that it hopes to announce a strategy for its Nook Media business by the first quarter of 2015, but that there are no assurances a final decision will be announced in that period. B&N said that as it looks to the future of Nook Media (which includes the Nook segment, as well as College Bookstores), it is talking to Nook partners, which include Microsoft and Pearson, as well as third parties.

For the rest of the story

B&N Tests Espresso Book Machines in Stores as the Kodak-OnDemandBooks Partnership Falls Through

Once hailed as the future of the book industry, print on demand has a solid niche in said industry but lately it seems to be treading water. Whenever we read of potential steps forward like Books-a-Million or B&N installing  Espresso Book Machines in their stores, the great news is cancelled out by similar pilots falling through.

I am happy to report today that Barnes & Noble is starting a pilot program in three of its stores, but the good news is tempered by by the news that Kodak’s partnership with OnDemandBooks has collapsed. PW reported today that B&N has installed Espresso Book Machines in three of its stores in the northeast, including the flagship store at Union Square plus stores in Paramus, NJ and Willow Grove, PA.

Rad the full article

6 Ways To Become a Power User of the Public Library

You have a library card and you know the library is more than just a “Netflix for books.” Maybe you know about your library’s ebook offerings and maybe you know you can borrow audiobooks or DVDs. But how can you make the absolute most out of your local library? Here are 6 tips for becoming a power user of the public library.

Worth noting: not all public libraries offer the same services, so not everything mentioned here will be available to all users. Some libraries offer more and some may offer less. These variations exist because of funding differences, library size, location, and a host of other factors, most of which are out of control of the library itself. The one common denominator among these tips, though, is that they’re all things you can ask about at your library.

Likewise, this is geared toward the American public library system, so your mileage in other countries may vary.

CLICK HERE FOR SIX TIPS

600 Million Library Books Provides Source for Images

Academic Collects 2.6M Copyright-Free Images on Flickr

By Dianna Dilworth on August 29, 2014 1:30 PM

American academic Kalev Leetaru has been going through the Internet Archive to build a database of copyright-free photos online.

He has uploaded the collection and tagged them on Flickr. So far the collection boasts more than 2.6 million images.

BBC has the story: “The photos and drawings are sourced from more than 600 million library book pages scanned in by the Internet Archive organization. The images have been difficult to access until now. Mr Leetaru said digitisation projects had so far focused on words and ignored pictures. ‘For all these years all the libraries have been digitising their books, but they have been putting them up as PDFs or text searchable works,’ he told the BBC.”