I guess my thoughts began even before I saw the Pew Research Center for the People & The Press report from December 2008. The Internet Overtakes Newspapers As News Outlet released survey findings that showed the Internet bypassed all other forms of media, excepting TV, as a source for both national and international news.

Since then, there have been many big stories from the US mainly, about newspapers closing down or downsizing, as their sales slide down.  That’s not to say that people aren’t interested in news, they are just finding it in different ways.

During the February 09 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, I was on the Herald-Sun newspaper website several times a day, looking for the latest information and images from the disaster.  That was also the place I went to when we experienced two earth tremors within a few weeks of each in March 09.  I found that besides Twitter (which by the way, the Herald-Sun was also monitoring), that this was the quickest source to pick up the news.

Great for the paper, that people are turning to them online to read that up-to-date content, now they just have to try and make money out of it, so that they can keep providing that content.  What model they will take up is unknown as yet, but it will have to be one that doesn’t scare people aware from using their content, ala New York Times with their paid subs.

Interestingly though, there is a definite interest in the physical act of reading a newspaper, but in an online environment.  A number of years ago, my library subscribed to an online database that enabled the reader to read the newspaper online looking like the actual paper itself. So when you get the newspaper on screen, it looks exactly like the paper copy.  You click on the bottom corner and can turn the page and can continue doing so, from front to back and to front again.  Alternatively, you can skip to particular pages or sections as you like.

We subscribed to that database initially to give our users access to international newspapers, so that local residents could read their home country newspaper, in the language of its origin.  No waiting for airmail deliveries etc, you could read it within a day of its publication (allowing for time differences of course). What has happened in the last year, is that our users are using it to access our major daily newspapers and reading them online as they would physically.  Use of that database has increased exponentially in that time and the vast majority of that use is around the major dailies.

On the otherhand, use of the databases that indexes the same newspapers, the one that students use a lot for assignments etc, has remained fairly static in comparison.

Which brings us to the local level. Our local newspapers have had online presences for a while, but no archive to speak of.  One of our local newspaper chains is now available through a newspaper database, but only beginning this year.  After nearly 10 years of archives of our major dailies, this is long overdue.  But with the disappearance of local papers in the US, I wonder how long our local papers will remain with us and whether this is too little too late.

And if it is, what will happen to local news.  Again the US gives some idea of direction with new Web start-ups looking to fill that gap. Hyperlocal web sites deliver news without newspapers ironically appears in the New York Times.  Go check it out and then think about where your local news will come from if the newspapers themselves disappear.  Is this a gap that the public library can step into and if so, how?

Interestingly, I do still sometimes read the physical newspaper, but only if it happens to be in front of me, I don’t go to seek it out.  With the major dailies, its usually to acquaint myself with the important (or on slow news days, not so important) topics of current interest, but more importantly, to catch up on the comics and the sports I am interested in.   I also read my local papers (we get 3), mainly for things of personal interest or that of my family, or that relate to my local area or promote the library.

Do you still read the physical newspaper, local, major daily or national,  or do you prefer to do all your news seeking online?  Is the format you use dependent on whether you browse or particularly seek, like me?  Would love to hear your habits and thoughts as we all might have to change them in coming years.

Uncontrolled Vocabulary uses Talk Shoe to host the live discussion and to record the hour for dissemination through podcast. The discussion is on newsworthy library-related items that have arisen during the week and are often suggested by listeners, through the use of an unvocab tag in del.icio.us. Greg has an Uncontrolled Vocabulary blog and also a Facebook group which sends out reminders about the upcoming episode.

It is 32 episodes strong now and I have been listening in since the 1st episode. It is entertaining, informative and a fun way to keep in touch with library news, whilst also doing some professional development activity.

So this week, I finally got onto the call – Uncontrolled Vocabulary #32 – Cranky people make good audio. The few communications issues I had encountered in the previous 2 weeks were finally bypassed through the use of Skype. I had a great time being a part of the call, even if I didn’t contribute all that much and I am looking forward to joining in again where possible.

If you haven’t listened to the podcasts, I highly recommend them. Greg is a accomplished moderator, there is a great group of regular callers and some very interesting topics arise, with conversations sometimes taking unexpected turns or presenting points of view you may not have considered.

Thanks Greg, from grateful listener and now participator. It is a lot of fun and I appreciate what you do to make it happen (nearly) every week.

“Digg is a user driven social content website. Ok, so what the heck does that mean? Well, everything on digg is submitted by the digg user community (that would be you). After you submit content, other digg users read your submission and digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of digg visitors to see.”

Now I am a very slack Digg user, I only subscribe to the RSS feed, which delivers the top stories from the Digg homepage. I have yet to join up or submit anything, I guess I haven’t found anything worthy of submission, so haven’t felt the need and I don’t have the time to troll the stories and digg the ones I like, I leave that job to dedicated others. I am a fan though and it took great restraint for me not to use “I dig Digg” as the title of this blog entry.

I read a Digg post today that celebrated a milestone -

Digg Hits One Million Story Submissions!

That’s a lot of story submissions, a very small proportion of which, if ever gets the diggs needed to get it to the front page. Not bad for just over 2 years of existence.

I get anywhere between 50 and 100 posts each day from Digg, most of which I delete because they are generally of little or no interest to me. Many are plain fun, some are fascinating, some are very weird and others very informative.

So what do I get out of Digg? For me personally, of the posts I do check out, I get a lot of laughter, some great information and an awareness of what’s going on in the world. Some news I read on Digg, before I hear it elsewhere. Others I never hear about anywhere else other than Digg, especially US focussed stories, as I am in Australia. For example, the recent case of James Kim – CNet editor.

Digg also gives me an insight into popular culture. Stories only get onto the front page and then I get the RSS feed, if they get a lot of diggs. For them to get a lot of diggs, either the people posting the stories have to know a lot of people who they encourage to digg their entry, or it is an entry of great interest to a wide variety of people. Either way, its something that’s of interest to a lot of people and therefore I think that I, as a public librarian, should be aware of.

Its also one of the few RSS feeds that I get that is not library related and therefore helps to keep me in touch with life outside of the LIS profession.

If you want to know more about Digg, check out their website or the the blog entry “Beginner’s guide to Digg” from ProNet Advertising.

So thanks to Digg and all their members who post and digg those entries for me to reap the benefits. Here’s looking to the next million story posts. Long may you digg!