Growing Trend Toward Library Collaboration in Indiana

Cannelton Public Library.....

....now a member of the Perry County Public Library

Small Ind. libraries team up, share to stay open,   (Northwest Indiana Times, 4/7/2012)

Excerpt:   Consolidations can have financial benefits, such as by reducing technology and administrative costs, said deputy state librarian Jim Corridan. 

He said merged libraries can cost less because they often don't need two of everything, including administrators, subscriptions to the same databases or licenses for the same software. 

More than 150 of the state's 237 library districts have agreements to share books with each other. And nearly 100 districts have joined a consortium that allows the residents to check out more than 6 million items from libraries throughout the state, he said. Others have teamed up to get better deals from publishers on e-books and digital audio books. 

"We've seen a growing trend toward collaboration," Corridan said.

Es Klingelt, Teil Zwei

Curiosities: How can phone political polls be accurate if they miss certain voters? (Wisconsin State Journal, 4/8/2012)

Excerpt:   Response rates have plunged. In the 1970s, 75 to 80 percent was fairly easy to achieve. Today, a 20 percent response is considered pretty good. 

Despite that fall-off, "there has been no trend at all in the accuracy of pre-election polls, which is the strongest evidence that response rates do not correspond to political attitudes," said Franklin.

Well, let's see what Nate Silver has to say about this "trend".

The Uncanny Accuracy of Polling Averages*, Part IV: Are the Polls Getting Worse? (FiveThirtyEight, 10/4/2010) 

1. Response rates to all types of polls are decreasing, as Americans become more aggressive about screening their phone calls. 

2. Many young Americans — and an increasing number of older Americans — rely primarily or entirely on their mobile phones, which many pollsters do not call. 

3. The proliferation of “robopoll” firms like SurveyUSA and Rasmussen Reports may in and of itself be a problem, or may exacerbate the other problems. 

4. An increasing number of voters are most comfortable speaking a language other than English, and are unlikely to complete surveys unless the interviewers are trained in their native tongue. 

5. Internet polling has yet to really mature.

Trendy Manhattan: Libraries in Residential Buildings

Buildings with Libraries: A Soft-Spoken Amenity. (The New York Times, 4/6/2012)

Excerpt:   When Martin Semjen first looked at the Stanton, a co-op at Broadway and 94th Street, he was delighted by the sauna and fitness room. His wife, Lynn Schnurnberger, on the other hand, fell hard for an unpretentious basement library that doubles as a meeting room and is lined on three sides with floor-to-ceiling wood bookcases.

[snip]
In the highly competitive New York marketplace, where developers of residential buildings seem to be engaged in an amenities arms race — cold storage, wine cellar, gym, pool, hot tub, children’s playroom, ’tween playroom, party room — the library is a low-cost frill. “You don’t need a lot of space to create a small reading room. It can be carved out of the lobby,” said Kathy Braddock, an owner of Rutenberg Realty.

And even though in this age of eBooks a library can seem like an anachronism, some of New York’s glossiest and highest profile new developments boast of having one.