june09ff.indd


G a r y  P a t t i l l o  

Teens and online news 
A new study looks at how online newspapers can engage with young people. 
About 41 percent of the U.S. population has come of age since the dawn of 
the Internet in the early 1990s. Teenagers constitute 10 percent of that cohort. 
In general, they feel overwhelmed by, and are reluctant to, follow the news 
online. The study suggests Web sites that are visually appealing and focus 
attention on only a few items are more likely to catch their attention. Teens 
prefer short summaries on news home pages, along with relevant visuals, less 
scrolling, more context, and less clutter. Teens prefer news aggregating sites to 
single­source news sites. 
Newspaper Association of America Foundation and The Media Management Center at Northwestern University, “Teens 
Know What They Want from Online News. Do You?” Newspaper Association of America Foundation, www.naafounda­
tion.org/upload/teens_know/teens%20know%20report.pdf. Retrieved April 30, 2009. 

Library marketing 
Two useful Web sites to help plan for marketing your library are “Marketing Our 
Libraries” and “Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki.” Each contains a wealth of 
links to marketing plans, success stories, articles, and numerous other resources 
for successful marketing of your library and its services. 
“Marketing Our Libraries: On and Off the Internet,” librarysupportstaff.com/marketinglibs.html, and “Library Success: A 
Best Practices Wiki,” www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Marketing. Retrieved May 8, 2009. 

Google Sky 
Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, NASA and ESA’s Hubble Space 
Telescope, NASA’s Chandra and GALEX satellites, and other sources, Google 
has produced a tool that enables easy browsing of astronomical objects using 
the Google Maps interface. The site provides access to images in visible, infra­
red, and microwave wavelengths. One may also view an overlay of the 1792 

unc.edu 

C&RL News June 2009  380 

Gary Pattillo is reference librarian at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, e-mail: pattillo@email. 

Giovanni Cassini sky map. Google Sky is fully searchable and includes current 
positions of planets in our solar system. 
Google Sky, www.google.com/sky/. Retrieved May 8, 2009. 

Exaggerating health research results 
Press releases from academic medical centers often promote research that 
has uncertain relevance to human health and do not provide key facts or ac­
knowledge important limitations. Researchers at Dartmouth found that out of 
200 randomly selected academic press releases, 58 (29 percent) exaggerated 
the importance of research findings. Among 95 releases about primary human 
research, 23 percent omitted study size and 34 percent failed to quantify results. 
S. Woloshin, L. M. Schwartz, S. L. Casella, A. T. Kennedy, and R. J. Larson, “Press Releases by Academic Medical Centers: 
Not So Academic?” Annals of Internal Medicine, 150(9), 613–18, www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/150/9/613. Retrieved 
May 7, 2009. 

Spam 
Unsolicited spam accounts for 94 percent of all e­mail traffi c. 
Brad Stone, “Spam Back to 94% of All E­Mail,” The New York Times, March 31, 2009, bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/ 
spam­back­to­94­of­all­e­mail. Retrieved April 7, 2009. 

www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Marketing
www.naafounda