Friday, November 21, 2008

Afternoon Thoughts

Michelozzo Di Bartolomeo Library 1396-1472, Marble 1437-1451, Convent of San Marco, Florence. A different view of what a library looks like. Books were rarer then.


Afternoon Thoughts
I am on vacation next week for Thanksgiving week. I'll probably go visit relatives and eat turkey and stuffing until I am bursting. In a way, I am looking forward to it.

This morning, I wrote my monthly annual report because I am gone next week. I also did a little bit of organizing files. I am about half way through my files. There is the usual clean up of small things to make sure everything goes smooth when I am on vacation.

This morning, I got up very early and the trains ran perfectly, too perfectly. I got to work a little early so I spent a few minutes drinking tea and reading the Daily News waiting for the building to open.

I put in a small order for financial literacy books, then tried to convince my boss to order some monster movies unsuccessfully. He was willingly to do a few Godzilla films, but that was it.
I also did a small amount of weeding. The head of the library might want me to pick up the pace on weeding so we have more space.

Right now, I have three books which came in for me, The Green Collar Economy How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems by Van Jones, The Ten Roads To Riches by Ken Fisher, and The Host by Stephenie Meyer. I also picked up another book, Big Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell because of an article in Bookselling this Week, http://news.bookweb.org/6431.html

It was rather interesting. I learned that U.S. News and World Report will no longer be in paper next year, PC Magazine is also going to online only in January 2009, The Christian Science Monitor in 2009 will only be available as an online edition. These are big changes for the world of magazines. I guess the online world is thoroughly shaking up the magazine business.

More people use the computers to look up information than read magazines right now. I can imagine as the technology for blogs and websites get cheaper and more accessible, many magazines will go the way of the dinosaurs.

The only magazine I ever subscribed to online was Consumer Reports. I did it when I was buying a car. I didn't renew the subscription, but I found it to be quite useful. It is articles like this which make Consumer Reports a great resource. How to save $500 a month.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/money/personal-investing/saving-money/overview/saving-money-ov.htm

2 comments:

NathanKP said...

It seems to me that the news industry is having some serious money problems. There was recently a post about it at the Entrecard blog:

Six Apart’s “Journalist Bailout Program” -they need more than that.

I don't necessarily think, however, that it is a bad thing if magazines/newspapers go online. I still like printed material a lot better, but I don't read as many magazines as I do books.

Nathan

Book Calendar said...

I think magazines could do fine as syndicated content online. I don't think they could charge as much money though as they did before or have the same amount of staff.

I think the magazines that are heavily illustrated and have a lot of artwork will still remain in print, but the ones that are mainly content like the economist or the nation will end up being completely online.