It's Texting, Social Networking and TV?

The Pew Research Center released a report this week titled Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change. In terms of technology use, there is nothing earth shattering here: 18-29 year olds are more likely to text and tweet than other generations.

I think some of the more interesting information is about where Millennials get their news: 59% get most of their news from the Internet but 65% still get most of their news from television. While the survey asks about CNN and other news channels as sources of news, I wonder if many Millennials actually get most of their news from entertainment sources like The Daily Show. I wish Pew would have asked about that in their survey...

New APA Style Guide

Cook Library has updated its APA style guides to reflect the changes that the American Psychological Association implemented last summer. These guides cover in-text citations, and how to cite print, electronic, and other sources. You can get a copies of the guides through the Cook Library Citing Sources page or at the Reference Desk.

Getting Customers to do the Advertising

Having almost a week off because of the snow gave me some time to finally catch up on some reading. I just finished 'I love you more than my dog': Five decisions that drive extreme customer loyalty in good times and bad by Jeanne Bliss, a customer service expert. The book argues that customers will naturally want to sell your product/service when your organization is genuinely guided by principles of putting customers first. Jeanne Bliss notes that this can be difficult for many organizations to actually implement because it requires a radical shift in how business is done -- It requires asking "Do my customers even want a chair?" before asking "Since we make chairs, what kind of chair should we make make?"

As Erik van Ommeren pointed out during his Me the Media lecture at Towson last fall, companies and other organizations are no longer driving how the marketplace thinks about their products/services. Potential customers are developing their opinions based on what other customers are saying. (Customer reviews are king.) In order for companies and other organizations to regain some control of how their products or services are seen in the marketplace, they need to get their customers to be willing to sell their products/services. If Jeanne Bliss is right, getting this to happen on a large scale won't just require marketing executives to learn how to write compelling tweets; it will require a massive organizational overhaul. Those of you in advertising may have your work cut out for you...

Editor & Publisher is Alive!

E&P was sold to Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc and is planning a February issue. The "bible of the newspaper industry" lives on!

Pay for Hulu?

According to a recent article in the LA Times, It looks like Hulu, the website created by studios to disseminate TV content, may not be free for much longer. It sounds like they are considering creating a subscription model where users would get access to the most recent episodes for free, but would have to pay to access older content. It also seems like they are thinking about charging for some of the most popular shows like House or 30 Rock.

I'm sure Hulu is hoping that it will have more success than Newsday, which has only had 35 people willing to pay $260 per year for unlimited access...

Looking for some speech inspiration?

Dr. Michael Eidenmuller of the University of Texas at Tyler has created Speech Bank: a free online database with full-text, audio, and video of over 5,000 speeches.

So whether you're looking for the text of Elle Wood's speech from Legally Blonde or video of Obama's last State of the Union address, this is a great place to find what you need.

News News about Old News

I know you all think nothing is more exciting than microfilm, but what if I told you that Cook Library now has a new way to look at microfilm!

ProQuest, where we get our newspapers on microfilm, has begun offering microfilm for specific newspapers digitally. Basically, it’s the same as looking at microfilm, but instead, you can do it through the web, on and off-campus, instead of coming to the library and using a microform machine.

For those of you who can't live without the microfilm machines, don't worry - we will continue to get the microfilm at the end of the year.

The newspapers covered are: Barrons, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, all 2000 forward.

You can access the ProQuest Digital Microfilm archive through the database list on the library website.