Libraries as Information Transportation

I get questions from time to time about how we pull together so many news items each day. My process includes RSS feeds through Feedly collected over the last 15 years or so and key word searches in Google News as well as social media. All in all I skim 1,500 news items every day. It’s a lot of different places and I’m sure there are some things that fly past my radar, though I think we process everything eventually one way or another.

But I also get asked about the endless proliferation of subscriptions services and how people can read many of the ones that are behind a paywall. I subscribe to a fair amount of papers but I honestly can’t do all the ones I want. Sometimes I just don’t post something, usually from the Wall Street Journal, because most folks here would not be able to read it.

Several folks have asked recently if anyone has tried to create a way to pay for individual articles or bundles of subscriptions. Apple News kind of does this and there was a Dutch company called Blendle which tried for a while but ultimately stopped. There’s just too many possibilities in a huge news environment.

Then! As if they were listening to the back and forth I was having, a poster on BlueSky shared an item about what we can access with our public library cards. It turns out if you use Libby/Overdrive or PressReader, you can get access to magazines, news, audiobooks through your phone or on your desktop. I recently used Libby to listen to an extra audiobook for a podcast episode that I didn’t have time to sit down and read, but I did have time to listen to while running errands.

I will always tell folks that if they love a media outlet they should support it financially, and I really really thank those of you who support our work in all different ways, whether that’s supporting the podcast on Patreon, listening to the ads, or just reading this newsletter.

But I hope folks also can use the amazing resources of your public library if you can. And it likely helps them out too because they can count the number of people who are using their services. My library card is now on my keychain, where a car key would have been in the past. Seems fitting.

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