Thing 12

Digg and its ilk make one happy to a an elementary librarian. One supposes that a public reference librarian might need to keep up with what the world is reading/viewing/thinking and would find the socially edited "news" sites useful. Admittedly, Miss Shelved does take a periodic peek at Disney, Nickolodeon, and movie trailer sites, for example, to keep up with what the little darlings are talking about. However, one would never confuse keeping a finger on the pulse of mass publicity with being truly informed.

The most worrisome part was the amazing uniformity of the sites , with the same soundbites and images topping the charts. The ease of voting also leads to fears of manipulation -- does ubiquity start to equate to plausibility? What an excellent reminder to get one's real news from a variety of sources. The BBC never headlines the same news as the New York Times -- or the Wall Street Journal, for that matter. And don't simply read those of similar political persuasion. Lowest common denominator news is not likely to expand one's mind.