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Media Habits of the Librarian of Congress

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Bill Powers of National Journal has debuted a neat, recurring feature about how ?leading figures in government, politics, and other spheres? get their information from the media. He chose Dr. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, as its first subject because he ?runs America?s first great information outlet.?

From the article:

I think daily newspapers are still very important. My media habits are like my book habits. I wolf through a great many things. I?m a fairly fast reader. I prefer to have a lot of inputs.

Comments (5)

  1. Using the media for information is not bad…
    Media is an open book!
    The bad thing is when you only follow the media to take decisions and use the media to see what you should do to distract the others!

  2. Hmm. Not exactly a “man of the people” huh? He gets his “key associates” to surf the net and report back to him verbally! Then he reads his Russian, Swiss, and French newspapers. To top it off, he listens to hip-music on NPR to stave off road rage (although he’s actually driven to work every day in a fancy, chauffeured government car.) No wonder the LC is having trouble keeping up with Google, YouTube, and the like.

  3. No wonder the LC is having trouble keeping up with Google, YouTube, and the like.

    I’m not sure that’s the way to look at it. We’re quite happy that there are more and more ways for people to do research and get information. And, in fact, an enormous portion of our website traffic comes via search engines.

    We’re also working to take advantage of more Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube, Flickr and many others. Probably not as fast as some would like, but then again, a lot faster than much of the rest of government.

  4. Matt, I think the del.iccio.us in your “share this” area will help. As their site is used by more people as a resource your blog will receive more traffic. I found this blog using the google option of searching government web-sites. I am new to blogs and wanted to see how much much luck our government is having with them.

  5. Media is kinda the only way you can get the right info…

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