e-books

E-books and Libraries

/ rtrube54 / 2 Comments

In this article on the ALA Midwinter session, the discussion underscores the continuing evolution of libraries from places with shelves of books to an “information port” or “hub”.  One development is that publishers are no longer asking whether to do this but how–and in particular how they and their authors are payed under these models.

The larger and more interesting issue is the authors who are not working through publishers. How can libraries serve as an outlet linking readers to their works? Then tension is finding readers and getting paid. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Platform allows for this but the librarians are arguing that Kindle should not be the only option.

To me it seems that the question is not only royalties but distribution. How are independently published e-books to be distributed to the many different libraries in this country or around the world? It seems that there is a need for some kind of counterpart to Amazon that serves as clearing house and financial agent between independent authors and local library systems. I also wonder how acquisition would work. Will librarians still acquire the works they think readers want or will they “acquire on demand” or some mix of the two, which would make sense.

Libraries of late have been making themselves into a kind of “third place” community gathering spot as this article suggests. Yet I wonder if they can continue to sustain this if they become “all-digital”. Why can’t I just meander down to my local Starbucks and “go to the library” while sipping that latte’?

The other side of this is that there is an immutability about physically printed books that digital resources do not have. Digital text can be deleted or altered, or hacked. Physical books and periodicals are much more difficult to do this to. This writer contends libraries play a crucial role in guarding our civilization against 1984-like re-writing of history and everything else.  The honest question though is, should every library be part of this or simply places like the Library of Congress, major university libraries and the like.

For those interested, all the articles linked to in this post come from today’s PW Daily email, also available on the web. I’m finding this to be an interesting source on what is going on in the world of books and publishing

The Library of the Future?

/ rtrube54 / 6 Comments

Image

[Picture from NBC Nightly News]

Last evening NBC Nightly News ran a story on The Library of the Future.  The “Bibliotech” is a library without books. Its whole collection of 10,000 books is in digital format.  Patrons can either “borrow” books and download them to their e-readers (our own library also offers this) or read them on computers at the library.  Children can read stories on iPads at the library.  E-readers may even be borrowed (they de-activate if not returned).  What we saw on the video is a large, comfortable space with lots of computers and tablets–and that is it.

I think this story is prophetic.  My hunch is that within ten years, most libraries, and most bookstores (if they even exist as physical entities) will look like this.  I’ve already watched this transformation in process in our own library as the space given to stacks has steadily diminished to be replace with computer terminals and other forms of media. Cost and user demand will probably drive this.  But I wonder if it will spawn a new generation of readers–or not.

When I was young, I spent many a summer afternoon at our local library.  Probably my favorite books back then were sports biographies of my baseball heroes–Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, and stories of the teams they played on.  But I also found myself wandering into other sections of the library–the books on science, on history, works of fiction and more. Many I would browse and put back.  But often one or two would end up in the stack I’d take to the librarian’s desk.

I still browse, but rarely at libraries which seem to have less and less of what I’m interested in.  Most of the time, my browsing is in used book stores, as was the case this weekend.  I probably would never have searched for any of the books that I bought (four for under $12) on Amazon because I didn’t know they existed.  But each piqued my (admittedly quirky) interests:  Walter H Conser, Jr’s God and the Natural World because of my interests in religion and science conflicts, Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe because one of the editors of this collection of articles is Dale K Van Kley, an OSU professor of history with whom I’m acquainted, J Philip Wogaman’s Faith and Fragmentation because it explores how Christianity engages a pluralistic world, and China Wakes by Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn because I want to understand the generation of Chinese students coming to American universities and I’ve like Kristof’s op eds in the New York Times and read WuDunn’s Half the Sky recently.

I wasn’t looking for any of those books. And I admit that I’m taking a risk that they will be worth the price and the read.  But I wonder if these “libraries of the future” will afford the same kind of opportunity to make these serendipitous discoveries. Perhaps they will offer ways to browse that parallel my experiences.  (The closest parallel I find are the daily and monthly specials from Amazon for download to my Kindle). Perhaps I’m just nostalgic but I wonder if it will be the same, and if we’ll still be making those serendipitous discoveries of new authors and ideas. What do you think?