Blogging and Google

There is a lot of library and technology type news today among other things, but I will start with the library/techie related stuff first.

A recent PEW study has found that about 8 million people have online blogs that are read by 58% more of the American population then in previous years. A whopping 68% of the population is so stuck in the 90’s and has no idea what the word blog means. An interesting, though not unexpected note, bloggers are more likely to be under 30 or male. You can read the PDF file here.

An alternative to Google’s library project has been announced. Ten major world-wide institutions, including Carnegie Melon and the Library of Congress have agreed to participate. The Internet Archive, based in San Francisco, is a non-profit group that will host the million books that have been committed to the project. With the LC involved, it seems like it will be a good “one stop shop” for historical archives. It should be interesting to see how this pans out with the Google archive. There is an article from the World Information Review here.

–Jane, will report back later