Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
I've been catching up on all the books that I should've read a long time ago, but hadn't had time. Freakonomics was one of those books...plus I was getting to a point where all of the recent books I've been reading are referencing these other ones I haven't...I figured I should read them. I absolutely love this book! Levitt actually made economics interesting, although I'm weird enough to think that it's probably already interesting (especially since I think math and numbers are interesting). Levitt shows us that there's probably a good reason for everything, and one that we probably didn't expect.
I think there will be a revised edition of this book coming out later this year, I'm curious if there will be more scenarios added, or if it's just elaborating on the scenarios already there.
On another note, I've been really interested in marketing lately. I think it's more than it just being interesting, I think a lot of this stuff can apply to libraries. Not a day goes by where I'm not thinking about how to market our materials to patrons in our branch. Usually it's visually by just tidying the place, or putting certain books, cds, or videos on displays. I always find the psychology of it interesting though...usually when I refresh the new book shelf, or if patrons see me refreshing the new book shelf, they want to go over there right away to see what's "new". I certainly don't get discouraged by that, I get excited when patrons check out new books that I put up there.
We got a new copy of "The Long Tail" in our branch last week and I snatched it up, that's what I'm reading now. There's an interesting line in marketing right now...there are those companies that bombard you with a whole lot of crap because they want to get their 2% return of people who will buy/see it, there's even "The Paradox of Choice" crowd (there's another book I need to read), where they've determined that too much choice overwhelms us (which I believe is quite true). But then here comes "The Long Tail", which makes me think that if you give consumers the right choices then they're less overwhelmed and more satisfied than if you shove a whole bunch of nothing in their face. What it boils down to is giving people what they want, without making consumers/patrons work hard to get it. Libraries can learn a lot from this, especially when technology will continue to shape library services faster than libraries are used to. I do believe that libraries have come the closest to serving the long tail with their physical collections, compared to traditional commercial outlets for books and other media in the past. How will libraries compare to the online commercial outlets though? Will they be able to compete with then? My favorite example of the long tail is with Netflix, because quite honestly I'm in love with Netflix. Just recently my husband and I decided to watch a whole bunch of documentaries, last summer it was all tv shows that were on dvd. If my husband goes out of town I load up on the "chick flicks", and if a friend reccommends an obscure movie, I've always been able to find it on Netflix, even if my library didn't have it. Plus, if there's a popular movie I do want to see, I can get it in a couple of days on Netflix, not a couple of months from my local library. Yeah my library is free, but for $10-$20 a month I get a better selection than even my local video store has...plus I don't have to leave my apartment to get it. So how do we compete with that? I don't know the answer but I think it's interesting to think about for sure...
