Interesting Studies I Have Stumbled Upon

When I have some downtime, I like to read library/literacy related studies/articles (because I am a massive nerd). Some of the latest studies that I have come across I figured I would share!

1. College students’ use of Kindle DX points to e-reader’s role in academia

A study of how University of Washington graduate students integrated an Amazon Kindle DX into their course reading provides the first long-term investigation of e-readers in higher education. While some of the study’s findings were expected – students want improved support for taking notes, checking references and viewing figures – the authors also found that allowing people to switch between reading styles, and providing the reader with physical cues, are two challenges that e-readers will need to address in cracking the college market.

2. How Reading Improves Your Social Life

...a study[*] suggesting that fiction readers tend to be more empathic than non-fiction readers. This could of course be correlation rather than causation -- maybe the kind of person who likes fiction is more empathic to start with -- but the researchers think not.

*I can not seem to find this study, so if anyone actually finds an active link, let me know!

3. 21 Things that Will Disappear from Education in the Next 10 Years

While libraries as a whole are not schools, they are directly related to the education field and academic libraries are of course impacted even more. As a librarian at a two-year college, we are being asked right now to create our vision for the next ten years and then to extend that to what we believe the college classroom will look like in ten years.

4. Red letter day for Darwin Correspondence Project

The project mapping Charles Darwin's life and work in the 15,000 letters he wrote or received during his extraordinary lifetime will be completed after a £5 million funding package was announced. The awards, announced by Cambridge University Library and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), will ensure the full completion of the definitive, award-winning edition of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin.

5. Petition against HarperCollins ebook/library policy garners 53,786 signatures

Ok, so 5 isn't really an article, but more of a HUGE PAT ON THE BACK TO LIBRARIANS EVERYWHERE!! Libraries totally made their voices heard by boycotting HarperCollins over the eBook scandal of 2011. Go libraries!