The Rise of E-Reading

In case you missed it: Our director, Lee Rainie, shared findings from our new report on e-book lending at libraries at the 2012 ALA Annual Conference on Sunday, June 24. He also discussed general reading trends, the rise of e-books, and library patrons’ experiences with e-book borrowing. His slides are available here.

(Want to read more? Most of the data in his talk came from our new report, “Libraries, patrons, and e-books,” as well as our previous e-books report, “The rise of e-reading.”)

Lee will also be discussing this material at the ALA Virtual Conference on July 18 starting at 11:45 a.m., EDT.

Digital Differences

I also had a great time discussing our research at a session of the ALA’s Spectrum Leadership Institute on Monday, June 25. We talked about trends in technology access and use among various demographic groups, as well as what these changes might mean for libraries. My slides are available here.

As I mentioned during my talk, senior research specialist Aaron Smith just wrote a new report on “cell mostly” internet users—the 17% of cell phone owners who do most of their online browsing on their phone, rather than a computer or other device. It not only updates our 2011 data, but explores the data in greater detail. As always, it’s available in full online and as a PDF.

At my session, there were a number of great questions about our research methodology, especially why we do not report findings related to Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders. Our surveys cover people in all groups, but there are some pretty technical reasons why we do not cite statistics on relatively small demographic groups. A post on the main Pew Internet website explains some of the reasons.

Be sure to check back later for more blog posts exploring different aspects of our latest report, coming soon!

Note: Links to slides updated 7/1/2014