Here is an interesting blogpost considering the future of libraries.
I admit, I tend to be one of the "old fogies" who likes the paper-and-ink books. I don't own an e-book reader, don't want one. (Even though, yes, I hurt my shoulder every time I travel because of the weight of the four or five books I carry with me).
I agree with the writer's arguments about the cost of digitization. I've seen similar things, serving on the library committee. Stuff in electronic form can be wonderful (and I love the data base access we DO have), but it's enormously expensive. And you have to have the technology for it. And you have to update your technology when it updates. (Another personal hobbyhorse: I am annoyed by the rapid obsolescence of consumer electronics. I don't own an mp3 player, and it took me forever to decide on buying a dvd player, because I had this sinking feeling that, "I'll buy one, and a year later there will be some new format, and they'll stop making "old" dvds. Well, blu-ray is coming...)
I ran up against another bit of the issue this morning: the de-localization of information. One of the textbooks I use, the company that publishes it used to include a CD-ROM of all the "chapter art" - so if you were preparing a lecture and wanted to show a couple of the diagrams, you could just download them into a Powerpoint presentation and there you were.
They don't do that any more. Now, they tell you, "Oh, it's all on our website, you can just download it from there." Except. There's a positively Byzantine process to register for access the first time, and woe unto you if you forget your password to get in. Even logging in takes multiple keystrokes and a lot of surfing about to get to where you need to.
And then this morning, they were performing "critical site maintenance" - so I could not download the figures I wanted to put into my updated lecture. (Luckily, it came back up about 20 minutes before class time so I could quickly pop the figures in).
So, I don't know, but for me, you can keep your e-book readers and your digital forms of everything; I'll keep the books that are slowly taking over my house. (Maybe they even work as insulation, if I totally line the walls with shelves?)
I think sometimes people get too hepped up on "new technology" and forget that old technology is still around because it worked well. (You can't read stuff online in a power outage, unless you have unlimited battery life or are going to hook a stationary bike to your computer a la Ed Begley Jr.)
4 comments:
A prep school was recently featured in the local newspaper because they were getting rid of all their library books since so many kids just didn't use books for reference anymore. The library would now be called the "media center."
I do want an e-book reader but I don't want any of the ones that exist now and I don't want to pay two or three hundred dollars for one. If I was going to spend that much I'd just get one of the cheap mini-notebooks.
I still like libraries and real books. The only reason I want an e-book reader is so I can have more books than I can afford or have the space for. Some of the library websites sell discs of their entire collections - sometimes thousands of books on one disc. That's what I'd like to be able to do... carry around thousands of books and read or browse through them any time I feel like it.
Also, it would be great if kids could carry all their textbooks on an e-book reader. My kids had to carry around a ton of books when they were in school. They couldn't keep them in their locker because they weren't allowed enough time between classes to go to their lockers and the school policies about being even a minute or two late to class were positively draconian. I always felt really bad about them having to carry around so much weight all day.
i use my mp3 player to load ripped book cds onto. my annoyance is that w hile what i'm doing is perfectly legal (ripping is copying the discs to my computer, then loading the files on my mp3 player, for my own personal use, and i don't share with anyone but my family (my eldest boy has had "feet of clay" on his mp3 player for months, lol), they've made cds harder to rip. i've actually had one t hat took DAYS to rip.
btw, these are library copies. as soon as i'm donelistening, i delete them from my mp3 player, and i just move the files, rather than copy t hem, when loading to my mp3 player.
and i agree about the annoyance of "site maintenance" at the most inconvenient hours. i pay a lot of bills on line, and to have that pop up when i'm TRYING to do what i'm supposed to is the heighth ofannoyance.
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