New England Prep School Library Goes Entirely Digital

sad by MickyTheIdiot · 2009-09-04 09:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

I love computers, but I love books. This makes me sad.

Re:sad by Em+Emalb · 2009-09-04 09:33 · Score: 2

Yep, nothing says a nice evening home alone like "curling up next to the fire with the kindle"....
Oh wait. I would hate that. I already "read" a screen for 9+ hours a day, why the hell would I want to do it for recreation* as well?
*I'm not in school, any reading I do these days that isn't research is done via paperback.

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Re:sad by Em+Emalb · 2009-09-04 09:47 · Score: 1, Funny

Wow, troll? Me thinks someone needs to actually READ what I wrote.

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Re:sad by iamacat · 2009-09-04 10:01 · Score: 1

So what are you doing here reading slashdot instead of curling up next to the fire with a newspaper and writing letters to editors instead of commenting on blogs. Nobody is taking away your books, candles, LPs or fireplaces. It's just most people prefer central heating, electric lights MP3s and digital text when efficiency is needed.
Re:sad by grumbel · 2009-09-04 10:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

If eBook readers would be more solid and common place with everybody owning them and the whole copyright trouble and DRM issues with eBooks would be solved I could see some point in getting rid of paper books, but doing such a thing today sounds like madness. One just as to look at the numbers: They replace 20.000 books with 18(!) eBook readers...
Re:sad by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2009-09-04 10:18 · Score: 2, Funny

Wow, troll? Me thinks someone needs to actually READ what I wrote.
I think a paper-hater must've gotten mod points... can't we all just, you know, get along?

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Re:sad by Narpak · 2009-09-04 11:13 · Score: 1

And to replace those old pulpy devices that have transmitted information since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1400s, they have spent $10,000 to buy 18 electronic readers made by Amazon.com and Sony. Administrators plan to distribute the readers, which they're stocking with digital material, to students looking to spend more time with literature.

Those who don't have access to the electronic readers will be expected to do their research and peruse many assigned texts on their computers.

"Instead of a traditional library with 20,000 books, we're building a virtual library where students will have access to millions of books," said Tracy, whose office shelves remain lined with books. "We see this as a model for the 21st-century school."
Seems to me that whoever wrote the summary and the guy who is quoted don't get what's going on. Reading a good old book might have its charm, and something I personally enjoy immensely, but with an eye for education, research and the future, a "virtual library" were you can, potentially, search through an index instantly, and even search and cross-reference passages from different works have quite a few practical advantages. Among which is that the number of students that can access any specific work is limited only by the numbers of computers and readers availible; and not by the number of copies in stock.

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Re:sad by bonius_rex · 2009-09-04 13:56 · Score: 1

I actually prefer reading on my Kindle to most paper books. My eyes go buggy reading on a computer screen, too, but the idea that you can't "curl up" with a Kindle is nonsense. I read my Kindle in my comfy chair, in bed, on the toilet, in the waiting room at the doctor's office, etc.
The Kindle's display does not make my eyes go buggy at all.
Really, the only advantage paper books have is that you can't "thumb through" the Kindle, and that graphics / diagrams / photos look like crap on the Kindle.
Re:sad by Hal_Porter · 2009-09-04 14:35 · Score: 1

I would have modded you up if you sent me the comment printed on high grade paper in Baskerville MT.

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Re:sad by mikael · 2009-09-04 15:20 · Score: 1

For me, reading 100+ year old mathematics books is a wonder (printed in 1880 or even earlier). For a book that vintage, the language is no different from that used today, but it's a strange feeling to realize that someone's thoughts are being conveyed across time by so many years, even though they are no longer present, except through their great-grandchildren.

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Re:sad by petermgreen · 2009-09-04 17:48 · Score: 1

Among which is that the number of students that can access any specific work is limited only by the numbers of computers and readers availible; and not by the number of copies in stock.
The natural limits imposed by real books (only one person can borrow each copy at a time and photocopying too much of it is a PITA) are almost certain to be a replaced by artificial limits imposed by the digitial library system. At least at the uni i'm at most electronic resources are restricted to current students and staff due to licensing issues whereas the physical resources in the library are accessible to anyone who can get a library card.
And what happens when there is something like the kindle incident we saw recently? Books dissapearing in that way would be just as worrying (yes physical books can get stolen but as long as there is a copy in an academic library somewhere in the country researchers who need a copy can get it, when books get so rare that is no longer the case libraries start taking MUCH better care of them) if it was happening to an academic library system than when it is happening to individuals.

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Re:sad by sonicmerlin · 2009-09-05 01:29 · Score: 1

What about in the rain, on a train?
Re:sad by Narpak · 2009-09-05 01:50 · Score: 1

The natural limits imposed by real books (only one person can borrow each copy at a time and photocopying too much of it is a PITA) are almost certain to be a replaced by artificial limits imposed by the digitial library system.
Maybe, maybe not. Hard to predict, though I would speculate that different nations will probably implement it differently. Though a virtual system itself have no inherent "limits" like you suggest. And if, for instance, the library increasingly over the next decades start using publicly available material and books then the licensing issue becomes moot. This is of course pure speculation from both of us and not in anyway a problem with the concept of a virtual library itself.

And what happens when there is something like the kindle incident we saw recently?
Now I don't know what incident you are referring to, but I wouldn't worry about any "kindle incident" unless the library for some reason decides to store all their material entirely on kindles. Digital storage can, and should, be backed up every which way.

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The Long Now Foundation
Re:sad by petermgreen · 2009-09-05 09:53 · Score: 1

Now I don't know what incident you are referring to
The one where amazon remotely deleted copies of 1984 due to licensing issues.
and not in anyway a problem with the concept of a virtual library itself.
The inherent problem is any digital library without drm will be used as a source to download stuff from and keep it forever (yes some people make copies of physical books but it's enough of a PITA and produces a result of sufficiantly low quality that only the desperate tend to do it). I highly doubt most people would buy a book when they can quickly and easilly download it for free from a legit source.
So the publishers are almost certain to insist on DRM to ensure books are returned and that any loan limitations (whether in the form of copy counts or user limitations) are complied with. Afaict most of the major publishers won't even let thier books be SOLD without drm. It is IMO very likely that the publishers will insist that said DRM includes a revocation feature.
So until/unless the major commercial publishers go away or the governemnt forces the issue (possible but I doubt it at least in the west) any library is going to have to either use drm (with all the badness that implies) to implement the publishers demands or stick to paper for thier collections of major publishers works.

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Terrible idea by Brian+Gordon · 2009-09-04 09:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

Let the Ministry of Truth references fly.

Anyway I can get any book I want digitally already. I go to the library to get a real book to take to waiting rooms and restaurants and such.

Re:Terrible idea by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 09:31 · Score: 0

Let the Ministry of Truth references fly.
Stick it in yer memory hole.
Re:Terrible idea by arthurpaliden · 2009-09-04 09:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

My son's middle school was built at the height of the 'dot-com' craze. It did not have real library (broom closet) just a bunch of computer labs. Two years ago they refit three of the classrooms next to the 'library' and built a real library full of real books.

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Re:Terrible idea by Locke2005 · 2009-09-04 10:33 · Score: 1

Let the Ministry of Truth references fly.

Your attitude is double-plus ungood. Please report to the Minstry of Love for retraining.

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Re:Terrible idea by Frosty+Piss · 2009-09-04 11:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

My son's middle school was built at the height of the 'dot-com' craze. It did not have real library (broom closet) just a bunch of computer labs. Two years ago they refit three of the classrooms next to the 'library' and built a real library full of real books.
Indeed. In a few years, the Prep School will end up regretting getting rid of those books, as they budget money for new books for their new library.

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Re:Terrible idea by Maxmin · 2009-09-04 12:36 · Score: 1

Anyway I can get any book I want digitally already.
O'Really? Willing to go online Safari but not into the stacks for a classic, eh?
Joking aside, it's inevitable that new books will be only digital, though that'll take decades to manifest around the entire world.

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Re:Terrible idea by Reziac · 2009-09-04 16:31 · Score: 1

Indeed... and right now I wish I was close enough to score some volumes from the massive book sale they'll probably hold.

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Books are good by emj · 2009-09-04 09:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

Everyone knows you can't beat a book, when you are off grid, but while on grid an ebook is far superior. Libraries are veïry much on grid and should not just contain lots of books, they should make it easy and free to access all this data that is locked up in DRM. We are stuck with DRM at the moment maybe libraries could help us get sane access to the books encumbered with them.

Re:Books are good by Brian+Gordon · 2009-09-04 09:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

I hate DRM as much as the next guy but libraries seem like one of those cases where it's either DRM or no digital content at all. Without DRM I doubt that many books would be copied less than a hundred times a year per library-owned copy. It's absolutely not going to happen for commercial publishers and not going to happen with most academic publishers either.
Re:Books are good by emj · 2009-09-04 09:44 · Score: 1

DRM is despicable, it's even worse for libraries. Being able to access DRM-less book on library systems would be very important for an e-library to work. You can't have instant access to all book in your home (because of publishers) but you should be able to have this in an Library.
I rather not have ebooks if they are DRM:ed.
Re:Books are good by Brian+Gordon · 2009-09-04 09:53 · Score: 1

Wait that makes no sense. You just want to be able to access ebooks with no DRM from library computers? If it's from a library computer why do you care if they're DRMed or not? A non-DRM library system out of which you can't get ebook data is functionally equivalent to a DRM library system.
Getting data out of the locked down non-DRM system does sound like a fun problem though. Maybe you could manually type in and compile a QR code generator and hold up your phone and record a video of the screen while it flashes the data past :)
Re:Books are good by emj · 2009-09-04 10:12 · Score: 1

Yeah maybe it's stupid but I want DRM-less access to books, it doesn't matter if the terminal has no net connection, as long as a I can do analysis on it.
Mmm, QR codes, I've tried that, turns out taking good quality photos of a screen is harder than it looks.. :-) Meaning it's almost easier to photograph-scan a book than to use QR-code. (Though I've only did the QR thing for 10 minutes, and I've spent 10 days scanning books with a camera, so I guess it will probably work if you spend some time on it).
Re:Books are good by iamacat · 2009-09-04 10:15 · Score: 1

This doesn't make any sense. A library book or DVD can already be checked out free of charge many times per year and yet bookstores are still around. Why would digital content be any different? Are you saying the MAIN reason people buy a book/movie is because a library copy is checked out or needs to be returned in two weeks?
Re:Books are good by emj · 2009-09-04 10:22 · Score: 1

No they buy stuff because they want to collect them. If you can just download all books in a library some ppl would do this.. :-)
Re:Books are good by mckinleyn · 2009-09-04 14:01 · Score: 1

Do you understand DRM? With a five digit UID I would think so. Your posts are a bit muddled, though, let me see if I can clarify. Correct me where you think I'm wrong.

DRM is the "feature" that makes it so you only have one copy of a digital file (something that would normally be trivial to copy). DRM means, in this case, that the hypothetical digital library can only check out as many copies as they've purchased, and that the users cannot copy the files and keep them.
DRM is an attempt to make digital files media-dependent (you need the CD to play, you need the DVD to watch, etc) and is largely anachronistic, but in this case, it actually makes a reasonable amount of sense, and a DRM free digital library is simply implausible.
Re:Books are good by Hal_Porter · 2009-09-04 14:44 · Score: 1

Do you understand DRM? With a five digit UID I would think so. Your posts are a bit muddled, though, let me see if I can clarify.

Uhhhh dude. You're on his lawn!

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Re:Books are good by petermgreen · 2009-09-04 18:06 · Score: 1

I believe there are a few reasons people buy books rather than borrowing them from the library.
1: conviniance. If I want to borrow a book I have to find a library with it in stock (often much harder than finding a bookstore with it in stock), either go there and borrow it (if i'm allowed to, I may not be depending on what library it is in) or pay for an interlibrary loan request and wait ages (vs with purchasing I can just get it shipped in a couple of days from amazon). Then when I do get the book I have to remember to return/renew it under the threat of (often quite steep) fines and it may be recalled at the least conviniant time. If i'm travelling I probablly won't be anywhere near any library i'm allowed to use and even if I am I still have the problem of returning the books.
2: wanting to keep a book long term. Yes some library systems will let you renew indefinitely but not all and even when yours does you still have to remember to do it, have the threat of recalls, have to remain a member of the library system (e.g. my undergrad card has expired and I don't yet have either my alumni card or my postgrad card) and are limited in the number of books you can have out at once.
3: marketing, bookstores do far far more marketing of thier services
If you had a non-drm digital library reason 2 would dissapear and reason 1 would likely either dissapear or be seriously reduced. I doubt marketing alone would be enough to keep book sales alive.

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Re:Books are good by Dan541 · 2009-09-04 19:44 · Score: 1

Books will always be superior to electronic copies.
I can buy,sell,swap or give away many books to another person, I can also keep the books I own for an indefinite time and will not lose my house if I am caught selling one of them to another person. The same does not hold true for electronic copies, digital media and copyright are incompatible they simply cannot co-exist.

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Re:Books are good by Dan541 · 2009-09-04 19:47 · Score: 1

There is not DRM on paperbooks so why should there be on electronic ones. I see people selling second hand books all the time.

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Re:Books are good by bemymonkey · 2009-09-04 21:13 · Score: 1

I guess the logic is that a paperback isn't copyable in a completely lossless way, whereas a digital copy is 3 clicks away from 1000+ seeders on Isohunt... It's a bit different from CDs, since those are digitally copyable anyway.
The thing is, with book DRM we'll have the same problem as with DRM'd music - the DRM servers will go offline or the files will be incompatible with the new eBook reader you've just bought, or some jackass at the eBook store will decide to pull all the copies of your book including the annotations you've made (see Amazon & 1984...). That's why DRM is inherently shitty...
Why don't any of the corporate bigshots realize that people would be more than willing to pay for a decent eBook service? Price 'em appropriately (not $10-$20 for a freakin eBook of a novel), make sure they're good quality, and make 'em available in a variety of formats (including hosted HTML versions in a decent reader that can be accessed via mobile devices)... actually ADD VALUE instead of just restricting how much of the already existent value can be utilized.

They better watch out! by MarkvW · 2009-09-04 09:26 · Score: 1

The Gutenberg brothers are coming . . . and they won't be happy.

Re:They better watch out! by ubrgeek · 2009-09-04 09:38 · Score: 1, Insightful

In Soviet Russia ... this doesn't happen ;)

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Coffee Shop? by TenBrothers · 2009-09-04 09:26 · Score: 1

A coffee shop in a prep school library? I've been away from New England for a while, but is this that common?

Re:Coffee Shop? by Nadaka · 2009-09-04 09:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

absolutely. Nothing says proper education like monetization of a captive audience with the twin addictions of caffeine and sugar... In public schools they now have vending machines and snack patrols for those who need candy in the five minutes between class, but don't have the athleticism required to walk all the way down the hall and back.
Re:Coffee Shop? by Shadow+of+Eternity · 2009-09-04 10:57 · Score: 1

No, they don't. My school had ONE teacher that sold suprisingly healthy muffins between classes at a fixed location and the rest of the "vending machines" were $2 per mini-gatorade ripoffs.

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Re:Coffee Shop? by Nadaka · 2009-09-04 11:40 · Score: 1

I am sure that not every school has them. I should note that the last high school I was in was in the state of Mississippi, one of the top states for obesity and one of the bottom states for education. That may throw some bias on this topic for me.
Re:Coffee Shop? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2009-09-04 12:21 · Score: 1

Not wildly; but, for a subset of New England prep schools, the competition between secondary schools to build new infrastructure is very similar to the competition between colleges(and, at some of these places, the endowments aren't so far of, either).
Re:Coffee Shop? by Shadow+of+Eternity · 2009-09-04 12:24 · Score: 1

Florida.

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Re:Coffee Shop? by moosesocks · 2009-09-04 16:12 · Score: 1

"Snack patrols" sound a lot like "death panels." Sounds like a scare-phrase cooked up by the media based around an isolated incident taken out of context.
My High School had a soda machine in the cafeteria when I went there. I returned to collect a transcript earlier this year, and noticed that the machines had been removed.
Apparently the administration was concerned about the students' health. Additionally (even dating back to my time), all students are required to take gym, including athletes. Gym class might be a bit of a joke, although the effort's clearly being made to get kids in shape. Things might be going differently in other parts of the country, but schools in the northeast appear to have at least nominally taken an interest in their students' health.
Personally, I find that my physical well-being is directly tied to my mental acuity. Although I've got the metabolism to tolerate the occasional unhealthy meal, I notice myself dramatically "slow down" if I pig out, or haven't been for a run or to the gym in a few days.

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Coming to a former library near you... by Duradin · 2009-09-04 09:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

I guess they couldn't fit the starbucks in with all those shelves taking up space.

Re:Coming to a former library near you... by Duradin · 2009-09-04 10:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

Using caffeine to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the system isn't going to help you get your recreational drug of choice to be government approved.
Re:Coming to a former library near you... by TheRaven64 · 2009-09-04 11:19 · Score: 1

I don't see why not. Have you read the AMA reports on the side effects of caffeine? If you discovered coffee today and tried to get it approved, it would be illegal. It's only because half of the anti-drug campaigners are addicted to caffeine (and freshly ground coffee tastes sooooo good) that it's remained legal. My recreational drug of choice is legal, but that doesn't stop me from seeing the hypocrisy of my fellow addicts who push for drugs with similar or lesser medical effects being criminalised.

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Re:Coming to a former library near you... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 20:50 · Score: 0

Well if you have any better ideas, we're listening.

I find it easier ... by neonprimetime · 2009-09-04 09:27 · Score: 3, Insightful

... to read a book on paper than on a computer screen.

Re:I find it easier ... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 09:44 · Score: 0

The question is how long have you been doing it?

Younger generations have an easier time adapting to new technology. It's just nature and we have to cut the cord sooner or later.
Re:I find it easier ... by rolfwind · 2009-09-04 10:45 · Score: 1

That is what e-ink is trying to correct.
Re:I find it easier ... by TheRaven64 · 2009-09-04 11:21 · Score: 1

I find it easier to read a book on paper than eInk too, but only just. The big advantage eInk has is that I can pack enough fiction to last a month and a decent reference library onto a device that almost fits in my pocket. The big disadvantage is that I can't use it in the bath.

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Re:I find it easier ... by Dan541 · 2009-09-04 19:49 · Score: 1

Another disadvantage would be for the publisher to be able to delete the books you already purchased.

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Re:I find it easier ... by TheRaven64 · 2009-09-04 22:10 · Score: 1

Not sure how a publisher would do that. The device only connects to the Internet when I tell it to, and most of the time I just grab PDFs from FeedBooks on my laptop and copy them onto the memory card. Of course, I wasn't stupid enough to buy an eInk device that is Defective By Design.

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The Paper Book Remains King by curmudgeon99 · 2009-09-04 09:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

As I look around my room I see all the books that I have finished or want to read. When I have finished a paper book, I see the pages dwindling as I reach the end. The book has weight and after I've read it I feel that heft and know that I've done something worth while.

I don't have a kindle and doubt I would ever buy one. I love turning physical pages. I like the durability. I like that I can have four books going and open at the same time. I like the book jackets and am very close to getting a novel of my own published.

The paper book is not at all threatened by the kindle. Not in the slightest.

Re:The Paper Book Remains King by emj · 2009-09-04 09:34 · Score: 1

I have a hard time seeing you reading ebooks at all, at least when you say this. But I must agree with you that there are some types of books that are wonderful to read in paper. Though most books are just cheap pulp from dead trees between an even cheaper looking cover, and these gain from the feel sturdiness of an daylight readable OLPC, with backlight for the nighttime. The cheap books are good to read as ebooks.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by raddan · 2009-09-04 09:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

I, too, am a big fan of the physical book. I have lots of them. They're the thing that makes moving to a new apartment unpleasant, but they add so much to my life that they're worth it. And I especially love to browse a bookshelf, pick one up, and flip to a random page.

That said, e-books are very compelling to me for one reason: I could carry my entire library with me at all times. My 32GB hacked iPod mini really changed the way I listen to and enjoy music. Before, if I went somewhere, I had to think ahead of what CDs I might want to listen to. Now I put my entire music collection on one tiny device. Awesome! I can even take it with me when I go for a run.

I think e-books will end up being the same kind of enabler. We're just in the same place we were with MP3 players before Apple entered the game: functional but kind of unpleasant to use. If other technology serves as a guide, I have no doubt that we'll solve these problems. I'm looking at this early tech as a fun time to be a computer scientist and programmer.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by gad_zuki! · 2009-09-04 09:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

>I don't have a kindle and doubt I would ever buy one.
This is like my grandpa saying he'll never use email or the horse and buggy guy sneering at the first car.
>The paper book is not at all threatened by the kindle. Not in the slightest.
When was the last time you wrote a letter? Or bought a CD? Or used an old fashioned card catalog? Digital books are damn convenient and once these readers start hitting 99 dollars its really over for the paper book. What a waste of resources they are: The growing and cutting of trees. The inks. The printing, etc. And all the room they take up!
Ironically, the only kindle owner I know is a 68 yo woman who has no love for technology. She got it as a gift and really loves it. If amazon is winning over technophobes like this then its really just a matter of time until they come around as they realize the convenience. Right near its early adopters only, but its getting there.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by Brian+Gordon · 2009-09-04 09:42 · Score: 1

The paper book is not at all threatened by the kindle. Not in the slightest.
Books are becoming luxury items. A starving student might get a hard copy of her very favorite book, but she can get the same content over the internet without paying. If you can stomach reading on a computer screen then you don't really need books.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by couchslug · 2009-09-04 10:02 · Score: 1

"As I look around my room I see all the books that I have finished or want to read. When I have finished a paper book, I see the pages dwindling as I reach the end. The book has weight and after I've read it I feel that heft and know that I've done something worth while."
Very well for those with the money and storage space. I don't care to pay for a book I'll read once and either have to store, sell, give away, or take to be recycled.

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Re:The Paper Book Remains King by curmudgeon99 · 2009-09-04 10:16 · Score: 1

By the same logic, if you can stand drinking gutter water and eating out of trashcans, you never need to spend money on food. (In other words, that's a pretty big 'if'.)
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 10:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

As I type this comment I have in front of me the 1892 edition of Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader. At the foot of page 105 I can read the signature of a Jean Macalister dated March 15 1909. This signature personalizes the particular volume across time and I feel a bond with Jean even though our only link is our common the struggle with Sweet. Kindle can never provide this. However, another question arises: What Kindle version will be required to read the 2009 ebook edition in 2109?
I hold the same physical volume that Jean held a century ago. It requires no software or hardware upgrades to enable me to read it. No owner of this book has ever had to re-boot it because it was locked up. No one has ever had to recover it from backup. Its battery has never died. And because of its content, no one but another Anglo-Saxon scholar is likely to want to steal it. None of these statement is true for Krindle (or any other gadget).
I think people who use electronic readers are consumers of text (and there's nothing wrong with that). But for people for whom a book has a longer life, factors other than information content, narrowly defined, are more important in determining a book's value. A book is easy to use, it's portable, robust and you own it. The last point is worth noting, since your bookseller could not legally come into your house to retrieve a book that he claims was sold to you in error.
Summary: ebooks are useful but they certainly aren't books.
PS: AFAIK The Oxford University Press is not planning a digital version of Sweet's classic text.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by curmudgeon99 · 2009-09-04 10:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

There are many examples of retired technology. I don't use floppies, don't write code in COBOL or VB and don't use CDs. I stopped watching TV a long time ago. I write software for a living and have for a 13 years.

However, I still write the first draft of my fiction on a 1917 Royal manual typewriter, listen to Mozart and Haydn and read hardback books such as the current one I'm reading about the fight to build the Hubble Space Telescope.

There are some things that have not been surpassed.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 10:21 · Score: 0

So true... it is far cheaper to buy a kindle and then convert pirated pdf files to read on it then to buy just a single semester worth of textbooks. The kids who grow up with this technology will never use or care about the backwards old paper books: we are witnessing the last generations of non-digital text.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by curmudgeon99 · 2009-09-04 10:23 · Score: 1

You're wrong on all accounts. I live in a tiny New York City apartment and have at least a thousand books.

There is nothing better than walking up to a friend at work and just springing a book on them. Just last week I went and handed a project manager I know a biography of Jack Kerouac. His weekend was made. You can't give away your kindle books, can you? Or see them after you close the file, except for a line in a directory, right?
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 10:25 · Score: 0

I can sympathize completely; I have loads of books, many read, many not, some in the process of being read. At the same time, a Kindle is intriguing. For school, having the ability to search through a book would be beyond useful, and being able to carry around a load of books in a small device would be good for my back. The same goes for any time I want to carry more than a couple of books. There are many pluses to a Kindle.
But I purchase most of my books used. I just finished a book I got for $1 (cover price: $5), and I've just started two books I got for $1 and $7 (cover prices $10 and £11, respectively). Granted, my local used bookstores don't have all the books I want, but if Amazon can't compete on price with those that they do carry, I have no use for a Kindle.
Also, I'd be deathly afraid of losing/breaking my Kindle. While I don't like losing books, I can deal with losing something that cost me, say, $10 a lot better than I can deal with losing something that cost $300.
Plus the whole 1984 fiasco worries me.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by curmudgeon99 · 2009-09-04 10:30 · Score: 1

Bravo!
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by Brian+Gordon · 2009-09-04 10:56 · Score: 1

Well I can read from a computer screen. It's not that unusual
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by LordNimon · 2009-09-04 10:56 · Score: 1

When was the last time you wrote a letter? Or bought a CD? Or used an old fashioned card catalog?

The difference is that the replacement for these items are not DRM-encumbered. And before you go saying that downloaded music (the replaced for a CD) is DRM-encumbered, let me say that I only purchase real MP3s.

The Kindle may have many benefits over a real book, but until Amazon removes all DRM, I consider it a technological step backwards, not forwards.

--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by Lawrence_Bird · 2009-09-04 12:10 · Score: 1

You hit on a number of important reasons why books are advantageous compared to e-readers. There is also the issue of format. Real books come in a very wide variety of sizes, many times for a reason. Some things just aren't meant for a 5 or 6" screen. e-readers are also sterile when compared to a real book which offers tactile and other sensory input (smell, look, sounds).
However what e-readers do offer is convenience and an easy to read screen (unlike lcds). They have their place and I do own one. But I will still continue to buy new (real) books. I find I am using the e-reader more for older books which I would otherwise probably never spend money to buy.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by curmudgeon99 · 2009-09-04 12:35 · Score: 1

Well, standing in the parking lot eating a doughy half-warm microwave chicken sandwich for $2.75 and sitting down at your grandmother's to a table full of turkey, stuffing, potatoes and gravy are both 'eating'. Reading on a screen is fine but it's not what launched a nearly 600-year-old technology that has still not been equaled--the bound book. The extreme pleasure of reading books is what kept reading high on the list of pasttimes and helped our world to benefit from many educated people, from women who sit in their apartments on Central Park West reading to people in India who squat under a hut in the rain, holding a tattered book. The book is a tremendously successful medium, still readable with READING 1.0, using native wet hardware (the eyes and brain).
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by nbauman · 2009-09-04 13:47 · Score: 1

As I type this comment I have in front of me the 1892 edition of Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader. At the foot of page 105 I can read the signature of a Jean Macalister dated March 15 1909.

I picked up a copy of Vergil's Aeneid in a thrift shop for fifty cents. When I got to the part about Dido and Aeneas, there were hearts and flowers drawn in the margin in a feminine hand.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by westlake · 2009-09-04 13:54 · Score: 1

Or used an old fashioned card catalog?
The old fashioned card catalog was cross-indexed by subject and I miss it.
What a waste of resources they are: The growing and cutting of trees. The inks. The printing, etc. And all the room they take up!
What you see as waste, I see as craft.
I discovered a long time ago that I cared about materials and workmanship. Color. Illustration. Design. Typography.
There are books on these shelves more than a century old - and others that should remain intact and readable for 250 years.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by SilverJets · 2009-09-04 16:05 · Score: 1

Ironically, the only kindle owner I know is a 68 yo woman who has no love for technology. She got it as a gift and really loves it. If amazon is winning over technophobes like this then its really just a matter of time until they come around as they realize the convenience. Right near its early adopters only, but its getting there.
Unfortunately she doesn't understand that when Amazon goes out of business her "books" will no longer be accessible. When Penguin, or Bantam Spectra, or Addison Wesley, or O'Reilly go out of business the paper books I have will still be accessible. I have books from I read over 30 years ago and they are still readable. Will the current e-books still be readable 30 years from now? (Oh, and those books of mine will still be accessible in another 30 years.)
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by SilverJets · 2009-09-04 16:09 · Score: 1

A starving student might get a hard copy of her very favorite book, but she can get the same content over the internet without paying. If you can stomach reading on a computer screen then you don't really need books.
Not true. A lot of books are not available online. One of the biggest areas of books that is not online is textbooks. Publishers of textbooks are not willing to give up their cash cow for convenience to the students.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by Reziac · 2009-09-04 16:24 · Score: 1

You can't just browse an ebook -- or at least it's a lot harder to do.
I've also found that a work I just couldn't get into as an ebook, I find quite readable as a real book. (And I'm quite accustomed to ebooks, so unfamiliarity with the medium is not the issue.)
I think this will quite effectively discourage casual reading and fuzzy research, by limiting it to what is readily available, AND happens to fit the search terms you can remember at that moment. No more "that looks interesting" and "I thought I saw something like that over yonder" moments.
Personally, I wouldn't want to attend a school that lacked a real library. Ebooks have their uses, and can sometimes be just what you needed, but they are not and do not replace real books.
As to the comparison with scrolls... I guess they won't be teaching archeology or history at this school anymore, either.

--
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by Dan541 · 2009-09-04 19:54 · Score: 1

At least with music people could convert their own CD collection to iPod. This will be harder to do with physical books, but on the otherhand they are much smaller to torrent.

--
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by smoker2 · 2009-09-04 23:26 · Score: 1

Digital books are damn convenient and once these readers start hitting 99 dollars its really over for the paper book. What a waste of resources they are: The growing and cutting of trees. The inks. The printing, etc. And all the room they take up!
You missed "the permanence". ebooks are fine for quick reference on the move, but they don't actually exist in the real world. They are just the latest representation of what was once reliable and dependable. You can't in good faith supply references to ebooks, because the content could easily have changed by the time somebody reads your reference. Sometimes this is for good reasons, but a lot of times it is for bad. How can you prove libel if the document no longer exists in that state ? Screenshots and printouts can be faked, all the power is with the publisher of the work. At least with a real paper book, there are thousands of them in the wild that can be referred to and cannot be edited later without issuing a whole new print run, which doesn't negate the existence of the original.

If you want 1984, make information malleable, impermanent and arbitrary by only publishing electronic versions. This is why DRM is necessary, to prevent 3rd parties from altering the content. Note that this doesn't prevent the author/publisher from altering the content, just the end user. This does not help the pursuit of knowledge, it helps the authoritarian control of information.

Future civilisations will not find any sacred scrolls, or early works of genius, or even an accurate account of history. It will all have been edited to fuck right up to the apocalypse that wiped it out. You can't beat actual physical writing on a relatively permanent medium for ease of use and access. Sneakernet is more reliable long term, and if you're going to transmit the information by hand anyway, why make its access dependant on electricity or technical gadgetry ?

Remember, we have ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia.

Arguing for a paperless society is akin to arguing for credit cards over cash. Yes credit cards are more convenient, but they can be turned off at the source. It is not real money, it is dependent on the goodwill of the provider. Cash or gold or gems will always have more real use than credit, simply because they physically exist, and do not disappear if the power goes down. All you need are a few strategically placed EMPs or a cunning virus and your whole electronic library is, somewhat ironically, history. Real books might suffer from termites or water but they exist in sufficient numbers to mitigate that risk.

OK this time Amazon gave access back to those customers whose copies of 1984 were revoked, but imagine if it had been deleted from their servers too. Without a paper copy, that work would have ceased to exist in an authoritative form. You can defend corporations as much as you like, but they should not have control over our history.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by JohnPombrio · 2009-09-05 14:09 · Score: 1

Agree with this reply completely. Books will go digital sooner rather than later. Paper books have an LONG history but it is just a way to get the printed word to a reader. The only thing holding e books back is large format books/magazines with color photos or figures. Once there is a non LCD reader for this, the age of "books" will be numbered. I use the SONY e-reader for most fiction books these days and much prefer them to actual books. I can change the font size for instance so a "paperback" is now a "book". Total in the past 2 years or so, must be over 200 books read on the e-reader. They are all stored on a SDMC card 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch in size. I have not bought a fiction paper book in over a year and a half.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by JohnPombrio · 2009-09-05 14:20 · Score: 1

LOL. REAL MONEY is a piece of paper or a diamond! Books are permanent and last for ages! Hate to break it to you bro, but both are false. Paper money is only as good as the FAITH people put into it. Diamonds are only worth money as they have had the LONGEST ad campaign out of pretty much any product. The Library of Alexandria (the largest ancient library) was burned to the ground wiping out generations of unique and one of books. The Library of Congress books could all conceivably be copied onto a few hard drives. What preserves knowledge is REDUNDANCY not just preservation.
Re:The Paper Book Remains King by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-05 15:11 · Score: 0

Yeah, the product made of a renewable resource is the wasteful one, not the planned obselescent piece of plastic and rare-earth metals.

Unlimited Budget.. yeah, and? by popo · 2009-09-04 09:28 · Score: 4, Funny

"Unless every student has a Kindle and an unlimited budget, I don't see how that need is going to be met,' "

What part of "New England Prep School" did you not understand, Keith?

--
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )

You know, I saw a lot of things coming* by geekoid · 2009-09-04 09:30 · Score: 0

In the 70's a called the Coffee craze and said there would be coffee shops everywhere and people will wlak in and out.

I predicted computers i every houshold in 1980, I predicted digital libraries. At no point did I think having a coffee shiop would be needed to consider a library 'modern'.

* There is no money in predicting things unless you ahve Money, and I know many other people had the same ideas.

Next prediction: Baring a break through in Nuclear technology, we will have to go to a Solar option withing 25 years. The person that creates massive Industrial Solar Thermal plant that turns out many GW will have his/her family line set for ever.

--
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Re:You know, I saw a lot of things coming* by cmiller173 · 2009-09-04 09:48 · Score: 2, Funny

Next prediction: Baring a break through in Nuclear technology, we will have to go to a Solar option withing 25 years.
My prediction: Baring a break through in Solar technology, we will have to go to a Nuclear option withing 25 years.
Re:You know, I saw a lot of things coming* by tenco · 2009-09-04 10:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

My commentary: solar is the smarter choice, because we have a virtually infinite supply of it as long as this rock in space is habitable for humans.
Re:You know, I saw a lot of things coming* by Locke2005 · 2009-09-04 10:38 · Score: 1

many GW?!? One GW is more than enough!!! Wait... you mean you're not talking about Bush? You mean GW is really the correct abbreviation for gigawatt? Uh... never mind!

--
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Re:You know, I saw a lot of things coming* by Convector · 2009-09-04 14:18 · Score: 1

So, for about six months?
Re:You know, I saw a lot of things coming* by dangitman · 2009-09-04 16:58 · Score: 1

Did you predict the horrendous decline in your spelling abilities, or was it always this bad?

--
... and then they built the supercollider.
Re:You know, I saw a lot of things coming* by selven · 2009-09-04 21:27 · Score: 1

I prefer nuclear - even though solar is "free energy", nuclear power is cheaper per kilowatt hour, including the cost of the environmental damage,
Re:You know, I saw a lot of things coming* by tenco · 2009-09-04 22:36 · Score: 1

No, it's not. Nuclear would be unaffordable if businesses had to have liability insurance for their power plants. Just as everybody else. In Germany every business must have liability insurance - except for nuclear power plants.
Re:You know, I saw a lot of things coming* by selven · 2009-09-06 06:08 · Score: 1

The risk for nuclear power plants with proper safety features is extremely small. You might as well add a 0.00005 cent/kWh tax to cover the possibility.
Re:You know, I saw a lot of things coming* by tenco · 2009-09-06 06:45 · Score: 1

According to a recent study from Greenpeace this would be more in the range of about 2.70 EUR/kWh. The risk itself maybe small but the damage can be vast.
P.S.: /. still sucks at Unicode

Wouldn't send my kids... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 09:31 · Score: 0

I guess they are a prep school and could do whatever they like...I just know I wouldn't send my kids to a school that got rid of all it's books in exchange for digital copies.

Not the REAL problems by Monkeedude1212 · 2009-09-04 09:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

As computers are completely interchangeable, and if the library is in fact Digital it can easily be backed up somewhere. So long as the data is stored on a backup server you won't lose it on the library end. And Netbooks around here are becoming cheap as dirt, you can get one of those for under 300 dollars, or an old old lappy for under 200. Cheaper than a vehicle, which a fair deal of College students can afford.

They mention that books online aren't free, no, they aren't, but assuming your going digital you should be able to get digital copies (manual scans if you have to) of the books you already have and offer them for free, that way you aren't taking away any of the content they'd regularily have to. You're essentially making it easier for those who DO have money though.

The REAL issues you come across are sources and citations. A friend of mine is majoring in Ancient Mideivel history and Archeology (I know, good luck with that, right?) and the biggest issue when he has to write a paper is some crap about it having to come from a peer reviewed source or some scholarly document. BASICALLY, in order for them to use any quotes or facts in their papers (which they must have at least 10 quotes in every paper) they have to go through the trouble of FINDING a book that has a check mark by some organization or another (Unesco? Maybe? I don't know).

The internet has tons of information but little of it will be credible for humanities students.

Re:Not the REAL problems by Brian+Gordon · 2009-09-04 09:46 · Score: 1

The REAL issues you come across are sources and citations. A friend of mine is majoring in Ancient Mideivel history and Archeology (I know, good luck with that, right?) and the biggest issue when he has to write a paper is some crap about it having to come from a peer reviewed source or some scholarly document. BASICALLY, in order for them to use any quotes or facts in their papers (which they must have at least 10 quotes in every paper) they have to go through the trouble of FINDING a book that has a check mark by some organization or another (Unesco? Maybe? I don't know).
What is he trying to source, a personal web site? It's academic writing: if you use external sources then they need to be peer reviewed by a "trusted" publisher.
Doesn't his school have access to EBSCOhost or something?
Re:Not the REAL problems by raddan · 2009-09-04 09:50 · Score: 1

The internet has tons of information but little of it will be credible for humanities students.
This just highlights a problem that's always existed: what cognitive authority do you trust? Before the Internet, you really only had the appearance of authority, because very few people could afford the expense of publishing a book. The cost of publishing on the Internet is negligible (by comparison, at least), and so more people can do it. But I'm not sure that the wackjob:scholar ratio has changed; e.g., Andrew Weil's alternative medicine empire has been spewing out unsubstantiated claims for years.

Scientists always check their facts. This is how our body of knowledge grows. There's no way around it.
Re:Not the REAL problems by Monkeedude1212 · 2009-09-04 09:55 · Score: 1

I mean I understand the need for such a system to be in place, I mean I personally have never had to encounter it because I took computer sciences, if something was false it was apparent and obvious. So when he complains he can't get the book he needs from the University Campus because someone else has it checked out... So I tell him to Google the topic, he tells me about how that isn't going to help him much. What he ends up having to do is either looking up a list of books and trying to find the ones that might have approved publishing, OR he has to look at a list of approved publishings and pick the closest to the topic he's talking about.
Thats one reason why Regular Book libraries stand out on top of digital libraries, because a University campus (at least the one in Calgary) doesn't keep books that aren't useful for its students. ANY book they check out can be used for citation. Digital libraries don't have that luxury since its inexpensive to get digital media about anything, so campuses like to load up on all the info they can store.
Re:Not the REAL problems by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 10:48 · Score: 0

when he has to write a paper is some crap about it having to come from a peer reviewed source or some scholarly document... The internet has tons of information but little of it will be credible for humanities students.
Ah, those poor humanities students and their punctiliousness! Good thing that we science students don't have to reference peer-reviewed sources and can happily write papers citing The Onion, Geocities, and Weekly World News as acceptable sources.
It's a shame, really, that there's no way to access peer-reviewed journal publications online. Seriously, someone should get onto this! I think that Adobe's new "PDF" technology might be an ideal format for electronic distribution of articles. I'm gonna get on the phone to Elsevier now, this is going to blow their minds!
Re:Not the REAL problems by nbauman · 2009-09-04 14:06 · Score: 1

if the library is in fact Digital it can easily be backed up somewhere.
Yes, but it may be backed up on a publisher's server behind a pay for access firewall.
I used to subscribe to the New York Times online for $50 a year, and I could get any article 150 years back -- in other words, any article I ever read in the NYT in my entire life. Then they changed the terms of service, and made the archive free back to (I think) 1980, and then $4 or something an article before then. I'm not going to pay $4 an article, so as far as home access is concerned, it's gone forever.
Science librarians are complaining about that problem. If you subscribe to a print journal, you put it on the shelves and it's there for good. If you subscribe to an online journal, it's accessible only for as long as you subscribe. If the publisher raises his subscription price and your library decides they can't afford it any more, you can't read the old issues any more.

you should be able to get digital copies (manual scans if you have to) of the books you already have
I think Google got the cost of scanning a book down to $1 a page, with some heavily automated expensive equipment.
Re:Not the REAL problems by SilverJets · 2009-09-04 16:12 · Score: 1

They mention that books online aren't free, no, they aren't, but assuming your going digital you should be able to get digital copies (manual scans if you have to) of the books you already have and offer them for free, that way you aren't taking away any of the content they'd regularily have to.
Sure if you don't mind violating copyright. Most libraries won't even consider violating copyrighted works and risk pissing off publishers.
Re:Not the REAL problems by celle · 2009-09-04 16:22 · Score: 1

You left out the real risk is that any group can change the books text in the servers to reflect their bias. Paper books have the advantage of being unalterable once they are out. Ebooks, like wikipedia, can be altered at will by anyone, for any reason, at any time.

Defeats the purpose of libraries by Azureflare · 2009-09-04 09:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

This defeats the whole purpose of the library. You go there so you have free access to books. If you end up having to pay for them, how is that different from buying it anywhere else?

Sounds like they just wanted to get rid of the library and use the building space for something else. Oh yes, here we go:

Tracy and other administrators said the books took up too much space and that there was nowhere else on campus to stock them. So they decided to give their collection - aside from a few hundred children's books and valuable antiquarian works - to local schools and libraries.

Oh look, beancounters deciding to abandon the literary arts! What a surprise. Except not, since this is America after all. At least they donated them rather than burning them or throwing them out.

The sad part is they additionally justify this by saying the library wasn't used very much.

Tia Alliy, a 16-year-old junior, said she visits the library nearly every day, but only once looked for a book in the stacks. She's not alone. School officials said when they checked library records one day last spring only 48 books had been checked out, and 30 of those were children's books.

How can they possibly tell how the library is utilized by checkout rates? The whole point of a school library is to go there, find a book you need to reference, make copies of the relevant pages, and go.

Re:Defeats the purpose of libraries by emj · 2009-09-04 09:39 · Score: 1

they checked library records one day last spring only 48 books had been checked out, and 30 of those were children's books.
How can they possibly tell how the library is utilized by checkout rates? The whole point of a school library is to go there, find a book you need to reference, make copies of the relevant pages, and go.
But you can still do that, just just print out the pages you want.
Re:Defeats the purpose of libraries by Azureflare · 2009-09-04 10:09 · Score: 1

Oh, I suppose it wasn't totally clear from the story. So they will have free access to all those books they mentioned, and they'll be able to find what they're looking for and print it?

If so maybe it won't be such a bad deal.
Re:Defeats the purpose of libraries by CharlyFoxtrot · 2009-09-04 10:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

Libraries are on their way out, we're already slipping into an information dark age. The modern library wouldn't have a chance in hell if it were invented today. I mean just imagine trying to convince publishers today to not only let people read their books for free, but to let them take them home, you'd be thrown out on your ass. We're living in a time where there's a wealth of information, but it's so locked up that you can't do anything with it unless you're wealthy.

--
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Re:Defeats the purpose of libraries by Locke2005 · 2009-09-04 10:42 · Score: 1

The whole point of a school library is to go there, find a book you need to reference, make copies of the relevant pages, and go. I thought the whole point of a school library was to go there, check out the back issues of Playboy on microfilm, and make prints of the best pic... er, articles. Sorry, my bad! (Yes, the UofA library did have back issues of Playboy on microfilm when I was in highschool. For reasons I could never fathom, they appeared to have concentrated on preserving the text and skipped over most of the pictures. Of course, microfilm is all black & white anyway, so it works much better on text.)

--
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Re:Defeats the purpose of libraries by Narpak · 2009-09-04 11:06 · Score: 1

Libraries are on their way out, we're already slipping into an information dark age.
I don't know how things are going where you live, but in Norway the public libraries are going on as before. Not only that but many, soon enough all, are digitizing their archive of books, newspapers and other papers so that they can be accessed by computers in the library. Some of the computers also provide internet access for free.

--
The Long Now Foundation
Re:Defeats the purpose of libraries by Reziac · 2009-09-04 16:36 · Score: 1

I think you are right, despite the ubiquity of the internet and digital copies of stuff. When I hear of an institution as fundamental as a school disposing of their durable paper library in favour of a relatively-ephemeral digital format, I think of where we'd be if all information were digitized -- then *lost*.
It could happen. And that would result in a dark age indeed.

--
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?

"dusty stacks" - as opposed to "broken tech"? by fantomas · 2009-09-04 09:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Dusty stacks" - hmm... you mean books which still work even though they are 5, 10, or more years old. How many people would be happy with their children learning using ten year old computers? Most tech is useless after 3 or 4 years, let alone ten years.

Works for a super rich private school, not going to happen in the public sector.

Re:"dusty stacks" - as opposed to "broken tech"? by Planesdragon · 2009-09-04 10:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

Most tech is useless after 3 or 4 years, let alone ten years.
consumer-level tech is essentially value-less after 10 years... but it's not useless any more than a chalkboard is.
Re:"dusty stacks" - as opposed to "broken tech"? by shbazjinkens · 2009-09-04 16:59 · Score: 1

Most tech is useless after 3 or 4 years, let alone ten years.
Most data, however, is not. That's what we're talking about with e-books. So long as there isn't any outrageous DRM the book can last as long as you want it to.
Re:"dusty stacks" - as opposed to "broken tech"? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 19:42 · Score: 0

Works for a super rich private school, not going to happen in the public sector.
Already happening in some state libraries in Australia. I believe they think it's "progress" and "meeting the demands of the current generation" - but what will it be when it's full of 5 year old PC's and Wii's?

Oblig. Futurama by Dragonshed · 2009-09-04 09:38 · Score: 1

The Wong Library, it houses the largest collection of literature in the universe.
http://theinfosphere.org/File:MarsUniversityWongLibraryLitCollection.png

Can anyone think of the major advantages? by HalAtWork · 2009-09-04 09:45 · Score: 1

Will it cost a lot more to run, since they will be drawing extra power, compared to maintaining books (re-binding, protecting covers, etc)? Will they allow the loaning of digital books, and will the amount of copies be artificially limited? Will this cost less than buying books? Will they be sponsored by any groups that will have an exclusive deal on what encyclopedias, atlases, and other reference books are available, or will they be unbiased and allow access to all "brands"? They say they will only have 18 book reading devices, and everyone else will be expected to use laptops. Will they require special software, or will there be a web interface? They will have 3 large TVs to display information from the internet on. Will this really be useful, or disruptive?

I guess I have a lot of questions, but hopefully this will be a good test case and give us all insight on the possible advantages.

--
Twinstiq, game news

Re:Can anyone think of the major advantages? by Reziac · 2009-09-04 16:45 · Score: 1

Books get "brodarted" (adding those protective plastic covers) ONCE, at a cost of around a dollar apiece (including labour). And it's fairly rare that a book needs to be rebound, but it must be cheaper than replacing them, or it wouldn't be done at all. And they don't require any ongoing maintenance other than a grunt to reshelve them, nor any particular environment for storage and use other than a normal weathertight building with normal lights (and you'd need all that, plus a network admin, for an ebook system with any sort of public access, so where's the savings??)
So -- one-time and occasional costs vs. ongoing 24/7/365 costs in a market where energy is increasingly expensive -- I think that's a no-brainer, myself. Especially since the hardcopies are already PAID FOR, as is the building and incidentals. But firing the librarians... that will probably even out the ongoing costs.
But if you're a student doing obscure research, there is nothing quite like a savvy librarian for locating what you need. NOW who has that job??
I think I smell a contractor and a lucrative backroom deal...

--
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?

Doesn't anybody else read in the can? by northernboy · 2009-09-04 09:48 · Score: 2, Funny

I know I could take a Kindle into the 'executive reading room', but just seems so wrong.

Re:Doesn't anybody else read in the can? by Locke2005 · 2009-09-04 10:45 · Score: 1

Well, you can tear pages out of a book when you run out of paper, but a kindle just doesn't seem to work nearly as well (as kindling for building a fire... now get your mind out of the gutter!)

--
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.

Open book exams... by HockeyPuck · 2009-09-04 09:51 · Score: 1

In some of my classes in the past were "open book." So this made me wonder, if I was at this school and my eBook reader had an issue (crashed/battery dead/accidentally deleted the book) what would happen? With a physical textbook, I'm not sure there's any equivalent, since you're really only allowed the exam, the book and a pencil/eraser.

If eBook readers were allowed, what would prevent a student from carrying a library worth of books with them?

To me this smells like someone got the "Hey! Computers will solve everything!" This is sad since most schools in Mass can't afford paper/pencils/textbooks. Atleast they're not doing it with tax dollars.

I find it funny though that they are replacing 20,000 books with $10,000 worth (or 18) eBook readers from Amazon/Sony. I guess they'll force every kid to purchase their own reader. Welcome to the private school of 2009 which will cost $35k/yr. It's almost cheaper to get your MD from Harvard.

Re:Open book exams... by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · 2009-09-04 10:05 · Score: 1

If eBook readers were allowed, what would prevent a student from carrying a library worth of books with them?
Why would any sensible society want to stop students from carrying a library full of books with them, even into tests? If your test is on memorizing facts that can be easily looked up in a library of books, then the test is crap. There are a few, very specific cases where specialists actually need data memorized for use cases where they won't have access (EMT for example) but for all the rest we should not consider rote memorization to be education. Tests should be on the ability to apply knowledge usefully in a field of study.
I'm all for modernizing the education system. We've moved past the technological phase where outdated memorization is particularly useful. Forget multiple choice tests on atomic weights, let's see students actually put together reagents in a computer simulation such that they achieve the desired result. Let's see students infer physical properties based upon limited chemical data. Lets see kids apply the scientific method correctly via virtual experiments to determine what a compound is.
By all means make the entire library available to every student in class, during tests, and throughout the rest of their lives. Then we can get on to the important business of learning how to apply knowledge and logical methods to actually do something more than memorize lists for the short period of time between a segment of class and the examination.
Re:Open book exams... by HockeyPuck · 2009-09-04 10:30 · Score: 1

Let's see you close the divide between the "Haves" and the "Have nots." Not every family can afford to send their kid to a $45k/yr school http://www.cushing.org/admission/tuition.shtml. Let's see what would we rather do... spend $500k to eliminate the library, or pay for teachers, licensing fees for books, pencils, specialists (art/music/gym teachers)....
Let me know when you get back to reality from your "let's see students actually put together reagents in a computer simulation such that they achieve the desired result."
Either that or please write to your local Legislator that you're willing to pay 60% taxes.
Re:Open book exams... by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · 2009-09-04 11:31 · Score: 1

Let's see you close the divide between the "Haves" and the "Have nots."
We've certainly been working on it and project pioneered at wealthy private schools often are later implemented at public schools. But this isn't a question of money, since it is a private school, simply of effectiveness. Maine, for example, now gives every student a laptop. Since they have already committed to that expense, e-textbooks, especially free ones as well as e-curriculum such as I describe become an increasingly viable and cost effective solution. Pay some people to write the software once and such work can be shared among schools everywhere, very much undermining the argument that this is some sort of financial extravagance. Given the support of higher education in this sort of enterprise, it can be much more beneficial than maintaining the status quo, which is, frankly, hiring under qualified people to teach large groups of students how to pass tests which don't do much towards actually teaching them useful skills and abilities in favor of easily testable metrics that perpetuate said status quo.

Let me know when you get back to reality from your "let's see students actually put together reagents in a computer simulation such that they achieve the desired result."
Yes, because providing very reasonable and doable simulations via computers is so out there we should just stick with our current, misguided programs. Our educational system is much as a method of sorting students as it is a valid attempt at educating. People who resist change given the current system, baffle me. I honestly don't understand the perspective that better funding for a broken model is somehow going to create real benefit.

Either that or please write to your local Legislator that you're willing to pay 60% taxes.
Hyperbole. I am willing to pay more in taxes for a better educational system, but computerizing libraries and moving to books whose copyrights are publicly owned by the schools as well as implementing more interactive programs can be quite cost effective in this day and age. A few smart implementors can disseminate good implementations widely at little or no additional cost, which is pilot programs into this is so important.

Paper vs. phosphor by mollog · 2009-09-04 09:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

I buy lots of books. And when I get access to pdf files that are user manuals, I frequently print them. Sorry, but I just don't like reading from a computer screen. I do it all day already.

Yes, digital media is superior in many ways, but I find it easier to browse a printed document than a digital document. Perhaps it's merely a matter of technology; browsing on a computer is not as easy.

And, I agree that browsing through books on shelves allows for serendipity. Weird, sometimes out-of-print books show up on library shelves and turn out to have unexpected value. Doing a family genealogy in Seattle, I came across a little book about grave markers in Shelby Co, Ohio. Yup, some ancestors were in that book.

--
Best regards.

Re:Paper vs. phosphor by 7213 · 2009-09-04 10:15 · Score: 1

This I can not understand: you print you're PDF manuals?
Most PDF manuals I get are very well bookmarked and emenantly searchable.... How is killing a tree 'easier to browse'?
To me, this is simply an unwillingness to embrace a different way of doing things not a realistic evaluation of what's easier.
I much prefere teh computer screen, I have many & they are always near me... I read 75% of Atlas Shrugged from a .txt file. If I can do that, I think you can stop wasting paper for manuals.
Re:Paper vs. phosphor by grumbel · 2009-09-04 13:06 · Score: 1

Most PDF manuals I get are very well bookmarked and emenantly searchable....
Search is a different thing then browsing, as with search you have to know exactly what you are looking for. With a book you can grab it, flip through the pages and just look at random stuff. With a PDF on a computer that is already uncomfortably slow as the rendering often can't keep up with quick page flipping. When you take a ePaper device its even worse, as those tend to take a solid second to flip a single page, so instead of taking a few seconds to flip through a 300 page book, it takes you 5 minutes to do the same task with the glorious new technology. Then there is of course the matter of screen space, a few books on the desk don't waste screen space, a PDF viewer on the other side does. Having multiple ePaper devices would of course fix this issue, but those are still to expensive to have multiple of them.
Now that isn't to say electronic reading is inferior, I prefer my OLPC to a regular book when it comes to linear text. As having a flat display instead of a curly paperback makes things more comfortable, but when it comes to quick page flipping paper just is a few orders of magnitudes faster and more comfortable then a PDF. Technology however might fix that in a few years.
Re:Paper vs. phosphor by Dan541 · 2009-09-04 19:37 · Score: 1

I buy lots of books. And when I get access to pdf files that are user manuals, I frequently print them. Sorry, but I just don't like reading from a computer screen. I do it all day already.

I hate reading lots of text of a screen aswell.
The other day I was wondering if it is possible to get a special monitor with a screen similar to the kindles. So I can paste the text and read it.

--
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Re:Paper vs. phosphor by Xabraxas · 2009-09-05 08:13 · Score: 1

I read 75% of Atlas Shrugged from a .txt file
Regardless, reading Atlas Shrugged in any form is a complete waste of time.

--
Time makes more converts than reason
Re:Paper vs. phosphor by EL_mal0 · 2009-09-05 08:20 · Score: 1

Most PDF manuals I get are very well bookmarked and emenantly searchable.... How is killing a tree 'easier to browse'?
Easier to search? Yes, undoubtedly. Easier to browse? That's a matter of opinion. One of the reasons I prefer paper media, say a magazine, is that you can flip through it and read whatever catches your eye.
Yes, you can do that, to an extent on websites, but it's not the same thing. I can't browse through ALL of Slashdot and start paying attention when I find an interesting comment. I have to go to a page, the Main page, Linux page, etc. and then pick a story. I find digital media to be very, very linear.

I read 75% of Atlas Shrugged from a .txt file. If I can do that, I think you can stop wasting paper for manuals.
What an ironic book to chose to prove your point! In Ayn Rand's world, if he wants to print out the manuals, good for him. He's doing what he perceives as being in his best interest, and he's giving his money some paper manufacturer.
Re:Paper vs. phosphor by iamhassi · 2009-09-05 08:28 · Score: 1

"Search is a different thing then browsing, as with search you have to know exactly what you are looking for. With a book you can grab it, flip through the pages and just look at random stuff"

Exactly. I also like to browse. I have tons of movies I've never seen stored on a HTPC, yet have no way to browse them as easily as I can at a real Blockbuster store. There's just something different about walking down an aisle and looking at all the books and picking up whatever catches your eye and reading the first page or two.

Until we reach head mounted displays, where i can virtually walk around and pick up books I see and read them, I don't think we should be getting rid of the books. However..... I do like the idea of browsing for the book, then transferring a digital copy to a ereader. There's really no reason carry out 20 lbs of books and no need for a library to order multiple copies or tell people "sorry, we're out. Should be back next month". My local library has formed a partnership with Overdrive.com to provide audio books. I can download and listen to audio books for free. I can only hope that someday they offer ebooks and even movies for free, and I hope all libraries eventually go that route, although that would eliminate late fees.

--
my karma will be here long after I'm gone

You can not stop progress by iamacat · 2009-09-04 09:56 · Score: 1

Agriculture, organized government, dynamite and computers all had negative side effects on society, but few would go back to hunting and gathering. Similarly electronic books bring problems of overused DRM, device durability and availability of titles and loss of library/bookstore culture. Yet most people are used to many conveniences of Internet and will not take advantage of availability/durability/fair use of paper books if they are not able to find them through a search engine, immediately get a copy over the air from wherever they are, carry hundreds of books in a handback/backpack/pocket or search content for specific topics. I know I read maybe 4 books per year before getting a Kindle and now get through at least one per month and end up discovering new authors rather than just the bestsellers. I am also saving 4 books worth of trees.

We will just have to control use of DRM in our society just as we regulate environmental impact of agriculture or indiscriminate use of dynamite. And for paper book lovers - hey, you can still take a steam train tour nowadays. It's just not our most common mode of transportation.

Major advantage: selling to the parents by NoYob · 2009-09-04 10:01 · Score: 1

The major advantage is, when those rich parents are touring the school, the school's administrators can say "WE have a paperless library and WE will expose your child to the latest technology and editions of material preparing them for their future academic careers at whatever Ivy League College they choose to go to." (Notice that it's not whatever school they can get into like the rest of us poor slobs)

It's a marketing gimmick to get well to do parents to send their pampered gold plated snowflakes and spend the money and maybe give some money for the endowment to said school. With the hopes that their soon to be platinum snowflake will graduate and one day become the elite that rules over us peons and makes millions of dollars with their hedge funds, whilst feeling something like pity (feels like a little gas) when they see folks losing their homes in economic downturns because those folks actually bought into the myth propagated by the said elite that they could actually have a piece of the American pie by working hard, climbing that corporate ladder, and investing in their 401K.

Geeze! I'm getting really cynical and bitter. Oh well.

--
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.

As a future librarian... by Rival · 2009-09-04 10:03 · Score: 1

I am presently going back to school to get a Master's in Libary and Information Sciences. After having worked 15 years in various IT fields, I am looking forward to getting into a career with books.

Innovation is great, and appreciated in libraries when it serves a useful purpose. But as has been mentioned by others, technology changes quickly, and becomes obsolete just as quickly.

This prep-school library is trying something new, and I'm all for them trying. But getting rid of tried-and-proven technology in favor for the next buzz-word seems very foolish. Why not store the stacks in locking, rolling-shelf systems? This would save a great deal of space and still provide a reliable backup.

What they've done is like discarding bicycles in favor of Segways. If they want to show they have money and like new technology, fine. But when their new toys break, unexpected problems arise, or their needs change, I will be reading my books and chuckling at them.

Serendipity by steveha · 2009-09-04 10:04 · Score: 1

I'm not sure if this is a great idea or not, but I have to say that if they do it right, a digital library would make it easier to find things through serendipity. Consider digital music.

Before the Internet, the way to find new music were limited: magazines, word-of-mouth, or hearing it on the radio. If you went to cool record stores with cool people working there, they could tell you about cool new music; or maybe you could listen to a radio show with a DJ who would find new stuff and share it with you. Well, those ways still exist, but now we have the Internet, and I'm finding way more new music than I ever used to. Rhapsody and Pandora have found me a ton of new stuff that I would never have found back before the Internet. And I can flip through the tunes quickly; if I just hate a song, I stop listening to it and find another one, which drives up my hit rate on stuff I actually like (compared with radio, where the DJ is going to play the whole song whether you like it or not).

Even Amazon.com can be a way to find new stuff. "Customers who bought this also bought..."

So, imagine a crazy Web 2.0 sort of card catalog, with "People who checked out this book also checked out..." Imagine the card catalog having user reviews.

One major way I have found new books is the "our staff recommends" shelf. Well, in a paper books library, they can only put four or five books there, and the books change regularly; with some sort of web recommendation page, you could click on a link and go back to see other books previously recommended by the same librarian.

And every library can have a complete collection of every public-domain book. (Now if we could only modify the copyright system so that stuff starts going into the public domain again...)

The biggest down-side I would see in this would be DRM. Paper books just don't have a DRM issue. If you want to make a photocopy of a page under fair-use, you can just do it. Of course DRM doesn't actually work, other than to let people sue you under the DMCA; if we can't get the DMCA repealed, it would be cool if we could get an amendment to it that specifically allowed defeating a DRM system in order to have fair-use of the material.

Also, don't forget that you don't need a Kindle to read an ebook. Any portable device with a decent screen could be used. I read most of my books on my ancient battered Palm PDA. (For reading in bright summer sun, or for long plane flights, I have an even-more-ancient Handspring Visor; still works great for reading books.) It probably won't be long before everyone is walking around with a phone that can be used as a book reader.

You may object that you love the feel of paper in your hands, the sound as you turn the pages, the smell of the library dust, or some other part of the paper experience that ebooks just won't give you. That's fine, and I'm not proposing to destroy all the paper books. But I'll point out to you that with digital books, the library would never need to get rid of old books to make room for new books, and even a small library could have as many books as a big library. For me, books are about the content, not about the paper.

To the extent that ebooks keep people from accessing the content of the books, I'm against them. So I'm against Draconian DRM, and I'm against funky proprietary formats that require you to buy a $500 reader. But overall I like ebooks.

steveha

--
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely

Re:Serendipity by vonFinkelstien · 2009-09-04 21:13 · Score: 1

Don't forget that it would be trivial to show a "virtual" stack with the spines of all the neighboring books. If they can be catalogued and displayed physically, they can be catalogued and displayed electronically.
Re:Serendipity by selven · 2009-09-04 21:33 · Score: 1

You can take a photograph of an electronic page too. DRMed E-books are not harder to copy than paper ones.
Re:Serendipity by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-06 10:53 · Score: 0

You can take a photograph of an electronic page too. DRMed E-books are not harder to copy than paper ones.
Heh, "analog hole" to the rescue. I like it.

Paper books are not a waste of resources by emj · 2009-09-04 10:06 · Score: 1

I just spent 20minues trying to find an environmental effect analysis of ereaders vs reading news papers delivered to your door step. I couldn't find it but I know it exists and it says they have more or less the same effect.

Library of Alexandria by Councilor+Hart · 2009-09-04 10:13 · Score: 1

When the library of Alexandria was burned down (or the scrolls used as fuel), most of the ancient world was lost. Is this how we will lose our current world? Through unaccessible electronic bits?

Some good points by mollog · 2009-09-04 10:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

I know I'm a bit of a Luddite, but I, too, don't consider buying ebooks. And I would buy more CDs if they would lower the price to something reasonable. Like $5. But I do buy CDs.

But you make good points. My (baby boom) generation won't be the consumers of this new media as much as the following generations.

One of my complaints is that technology turns out to be so disposable. Today's whizzy book reader is tomorrow's broken, toxic waste. I've got old computers, old CRT monitors, old disk drives, printers, scanners, motherboards, TVs, you name it. You say that books are a waste of resources that take up space. I say books are easily recyclable and that Kindles are yet another flash-in-the-pan piece of go-seh.

You can have my books when you pry them from my cold, dead hands. ;)

--
Best regards.

Good Luck with Those Millions of Books by ancarett · 2009-09-04 10:29 · Score: 1

How many of the books that they're pulping are actually available out there with no additional cost? Not that many. This school will either be putting out a lot of money to license content in the digital format(s) that it previously owned in print or their students will learn the joy of researching from "snippet" view in Google Books.

Project Gutenberg and various free sources are good enough for accessing some pre-copyright books but, honestly, even as a researcher who specializes in 16th century books, it's hardly a drop in the bucket. Most of those 16th century books aren't freely available online but scanned as part of a wonderful but pricey subscription service (Early English Books Online). Not to mention that a lot of the freely-available Victorian editions are error-ridden or almost illegible.

And what of scholarship since the 1920s? Sure, there's the California Open Source Textbook Project and other similar endeavours. Haven't really gotten them all robustly off the ground and it doesn't help students who're looking for current scholarship on topic A when all we have are textbook-level summaries of B and C.

I know a lot of students like the idea of reading books online but very few of them are truly happy with what's out there so far. If there's no money for OCR conversion, you have a lot of scans in PDF or image format, sometimes dauntingly grainy. Even Google Books at its best has a hard time identifying the index properly in open-access books so have fun trying to look up your subjects in these multi-volume early twentieth century reference works which is what you have on hand. Or just give up and say that Wikipedia will be the default resource for everyone's research (but don't be surprised when your students complain that not all of their university professors agree with this approach!).

What's wrong with having a bit more of a learning commons feeling and some more carrels while still keeping most of the books? Do a shelf-read (your librarians do know what that practice is, I hope!), and cull out those "Personal Computing and You" volumes from 1998 (unless you're running a historical archive of the computing community). But, for the love of Pete!, don't get rid of all the books. The students won't be thanking you as they realize you still expect them to read and research but you're hamstringing them at the same time.

--
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer

Too many unanswered questions by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2009-09-04 10:33 · Score: 1

Okay, I read the entire article (strike one, I know...). There's very little info there, unfortunately. I came away with the impression that this "step into the future" was conceived, driven, and promoted by someone who had the power to do so but probably lacked the necessary technical knowledge to do it successfully - or even to ask the right questions.

Here are couple unanswered questions that immediately spring to mind - feel free to add your own:

- Are the students expected for the most part to only use the books while the students are physically in the library? Or are 18 Kindles really enough to meet demand? Cuz, you know, if you have 1000 paper books you can conceivably have 1000 people checking them out.

- An advantage to a correctly designed digital conversion would be that it'd allow many people to simultaneously access the same book. Is the Kindle-based system able to do that? Heck, does the Kindle-based system even understand the concept of "checking out" a book? If each book is linked to an individual Kindle, that would really suck.

- Heck, if books ARE linked to specific Kindles... I can think of so many practical issues. (okay, that's not phrased as a question)

I'd love to be wrong; but in my experience, in most cases the people with the power to make changes don't have the knowledge to do it correctly - and those who consider themselves the most "visionary" are the worst of all, because they're either too worried about having to share credit or else too arrogant to realize they don't have all-encompassing knowledge. The smart ones know when to ask for help and who to bring in; but they're in the minority, at least in my personal universe.

--
#DeleteChrome

Moving from tablets. by lexsco · 2009-09-04 10:39 · Score: 1

thousands of years ago there was the issue of moving from trusty clay tablets to this new fangled technology called papyrus.

Re:Moving from tablets. by westlake · 2009-09-04 13:13 · Score: 1

thousands of years ago there was the issue of moving from trusty clay tablets to this new fangled technology called papyrus.
The Gilgamesh Epic survives to this day on 12 clay tablets. Epic of Gilgamesh
The first modern translation was in 1880. The Andrew George edition was published for general readers by the Penguin Classics in 2003.
The Penguin Classics have the virtue of being readable and read.
You can't really say that for the surviving fragments of ancient Egyptian literature. The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians [1914]

They got scammed by Sloppy · 2009-09-04 10:41 · Score: 1

Although I prefer paper books as well, I don't have a big problem with electronic books, except .. where do you get them? Are they really available? As far as I know, most books simply aren't available in electronic form. Sure, Project Gutenberg has some, but that's obviously a highly limited selection.

Unless... wait a minute. (RTAing.) They're spending a shitload of money on Amazon Kindles. (Ooh, and everyone's fuck-you-in-the-ass company is mentioned too: Sony.)

Wait .. you mean DRMed books, from Amazon?! Holy fucking shit, if this is what they really mean, then once again, elements of RMS' preposterously ridiculously paranoid absurdly unrealistic "The Right to Read" story has turned out to be True, decades before its setting.

Hah, and $42000 for 3 TVs. Major major ripoff. This school is writing blank checks out to whatever snake oil salesmen show up. It is extremely obvious that not only does someone need to be fired, but a fraud investigation wouldn't be a bad idea. And that has nothing to do with e-books vs paper. This ain't about technology, it's about fucking someone over. If this were happening in my town, I would get a reporter on the scene.

--
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.

Re:They got scammed by Reziac · 2009-09-04 16:53 · Score: 1

I had similar thoughts involving someone's buddy the IT contractor. NEW! SHINY! MAKES SOMEONE A LOT OF MONEY! But in the process loses the single most critical anchor point of ANY institution of learning and scholarship -- the physical library, with the myriad advantages that come only with real books.

--
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?

Serendipity is not allowed in modern education by richardkelleher · 2009-09-04 11:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

It is simply not cost effective and may even be contrary to the goal of education in the US. Our educators are told they are in the business of making cogs (for business of course), not thinkers!

Touchscreen tablet + oled (+power source) by da5idnetlimit.com · 2009-09-04 11:13 · Score: 1

if we can get both (or all three), you could find yourself with a nice Star Trek tablet in you suit pocket.

Thinner (Oleds), can be ruggerized, with a nice modern multi-touch interface a la Windows7 / apple iphone, wifi + cell phone + bluetooth, webcam with autofocus and tracking, throw in a 30 feet IR emitter and a RF and you have the ultimate companion.

Ah yes. Lasers. I forgot them !
holographic messaging !
drools...

all of this is possible today. might be expensive, but :
10 inches OLEDS exist since late 2007,
the rest can almost all be put on a single chip + a 3D chip.
a full holographic system would need a lot of power. Add in special glasses as they do now for 3d TV, and your tablet becomes 3d.
Add in "augmented reality" in the glasses (they do small lasers in silicon now...for projection and tablet interaction/ movement tracking) and you have the future as far as you can hope this century.

(happy owner of a Sony ereader prs-505, avid reader, geek...)

--
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker

Most of Mr Fiels' issues, aren't by Simulant · 2009-09-04 11:13 · Score: 1

Though I do agree with him somewhat about browsing, I'm discovering that serendipity is equally possible on the internet. The only real issue I see here are the copyright issues when students 'borrow' a book from the library.

1) Cost (apart from a reader) isn't an issue for the students because it's a library, not a book store

2) I spilled coffee on my e-book reader this morning and it still works. Even if it didn't, the contents of the SD card would likely be safe and the copy on my computer definitely would be.

3.) My ebook reader is the only battery powered device I own that has never run out of power when I was using it (in nearly two years of daily use). That's not to say it can't or won't, but it's unlikely. (I typically plug it into a PC once a week to download content)

I like paper books too but damn, my e-book reader is convenient... and content is much cheaper (mostly free even) if you know where to look for it.

Abombination! by Hitman_Frost · 2009-09-04 11:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

And no - I am not over-reacting. I recently visited my home town and thought I'd check out the old city library which I heard had been given a big makeover.

It was like visiting a shopping mall. Modern and clean, but no character whatsoever. Most of one entire floor out of the five was nothing but PCs inhabited by large amounts of students who already have more than enough access to the net as it is. There was a coffee shop, a crÃche, another entire floor dedicated to meeting and conference rooms. One floor was labelled as storage - staff only. I know where all the books went now!

Out of five floors, only one and a half of them actually had books in them. Unbelievable for a major city library.

I had a larger science fiction collection at home than a library supporting hundreds of thousands of people.

The curious thing... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2009-09-04 12:35 · Score: 1

Is how old-school the guy pushing the change is. The world is full of techno-utopians pushing new media(Heck, I was pretty sure that one of Gates' dot-com e-academies had already built a bookless "media center" probably with Gates' precious tablet PCs). However, Cushing is an old New England prep school, not what you'd think of as a hotbed of new media-ism. And Dr. Tracy, the headmaster, isn't either:

"Dr. Tracy joined Cushing on July 1, 2006, after serving as Headmaster of Boston University Academy, an independent college preparatory school in Boston, for six years. Dr. Tracy has been a leader in the independent school community and is the editor of The NAIS Guide to Principles of Good Practice. He has written extensively on educational issues. Prior to his position at BU Academy, Dr. Tracy served on the faculty of the Hotchkiss School, where he was also a coach and dorm parent, and he was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of History at Yale University. Dr. Tracy received his Bachelor's degree in History and Religion from the University of Massachusetts/ Boston in 1984. He was awarded his Master's and his Doctorate in American History from Stanford University in 1993 and received his MBA in Nonprofit Management from Boston University in 2003. "

Educational background, BA to PhD, is pure history/humanities, with the exception of the MBA. Professional background is pure education/educational administration. This isn't some dude with green hair and an earring who made 250 million on the dubiousidea.com IPO.

I'm not at all surprised to see somebody doing this. I'd damn surprised to see this school and this headmaster doing this.

And here in Providence, RI by kilodelta · 2009-09-04 13:46 · Score: 1

The new Hanley Technical School also has a library bereft of books. It is technology friendly though.

I'm trying to go as paperless as I can but the powers that be and the DMCA kind of defeat the purpose in that.

Don't let it happen by SumterLiving · 2009-09-04 14:25 · Score: 0

If e-book are the avenue to getting people backing into reading then this is good. I still prefer a physical book over reading on a computer screen. I just don't envision myself dragging my kindle out to the porch on weekends to enjoy an hour or so of the book I'm currently reading. I certainly won't drag a screen along in the car when on vacation. I won't be dragging my kindle to the DMV or jury duty so I can pass away the day. I know my boss would frown upon me dragging my kindle around while he has no problems with a book. I use the library for my all my reading material...I'm frugal; not cheap.

New York Public Library is doing something similar by nbauman · 2009-09-04 14:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

The NYPL is doing something similar. President Paul LeClerc got a ton of money from wealthy contributors, and he's de-emphasizing the print collection and boosting the digital collections.

The signature example of that was selling the Donnell Library on 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue, directly across the street from the Museum of Modern Art. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/arts/design/07nypl.html The Donnell was a landmark library for 50 years, that people grew up with, and a magnet for teenage science nerds, poetry fans, etc., from around the City and neighboring suburbs. They had the best collection of science books for children and teenagers I've ever seen, and one of the first record and film collections. LeClerc made a deal with a hotel to tear down the Donnell Library (which he's already done) and build a hotel in its place, with a library half the size in the basement (that part of the deal fell through with the financial crisis). The theory was that the new library wouldn't need as many books, because it would have a big digital collection.

In general, LeClerc is leading the NYPL to build up its digital collection at the expense of the paper collection. This is good in some ways, if I want to look something up in their digital newspaper collection, or some of their digital science and technology journals. It's bad in other ways, since most of the major medical journals I want to read are too expensive for them to subscribe to online. (Most journals charge libraries a fee based on the number of students and faculty in their school, and a NYPL librarian told me that the New England Journal of Medicine would charge them a fee based on the entire population of New York.)

With infinite money (or far enough in the future), a digital collection could be as good as or better than a paper collection for most (but not all) purposes, and might be better overall. But with the money and technology they have now, a digital collection loses an awful lot.

The librarians told me that the Donnell had special collections, such as foreign language collections in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Polish, Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Yiddish (!), and every language they speak in New York -- more languages than Google. When they closed the Donnell, they broke up the collection, and most of the books were just thrown out as garbage. (I once looked up some books from the 1960s in Spanish on Mexican murals. When Isaac Bashevits Singer won the Nobel Prize, I looked up some of his Yiddish short stories and struggled through them with my German and Hebrew.)

In the 1980s, I worked for McGraw-Hill, and one of the best things about that company was that I could use the McGraw-Hill library. McGraw-Hill published about 50 business and technical magazines in the electrical, mining, machining, chemical, aerospace and I forgot what other industries. They had files of trade magazines going back to 1917, with standard reference books for every industry, and a book division with elementary, high school and college textbooks (think Samuelson's Economics), and classic business and technical books. They also had a great journalism collection. The guys who built the electrical industry in the 1930s wrote articles about it for McGraw-Hill magazines. You could stand in front of the bookshelf on that industry and get a good idea of what the industry was all about.

The top management was really pushing computerization. They decided to throw out all the books and magazines and replace them with Nexis and other databases (because the McGraw-Hill magazines were on Nexis, they got a special deal). Realize that this was a publishing company, whose employees had dedicated their lives to books. Instead of getting a book or magazine, all you could get was 20-page printouts (dot matrix, no pictures). We used to refer to it as the Alexandrian Library at McGraw-Hill.

except by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 16:00 · Score: 0

Which will be around/usable in 100 years? I doubt it'll be the kindle.

MEDIcal EVALuate by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 16:50 · Score: 0

Remember MEDIcal EVALuate, then you can always spell MEDIEVAL right. :-)

The Stacks by Seraphim_72 · 2009-09-04 16:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

When I went to college and decided to sit down and study for the first time, I did what I thought college students were supposed to do. I went to the library. Now mind you, this was one of many at the Big 10 school I went to, and it was one of the two largest. After several hours I thought I would take a break and I wandered bout the lobby area. After going back and studying a bit more I again took a break and discovered that I could walk The Stacks. Case after case after case of books. And the way it was set up you could see both up and down to see entire more floors of nothing but books. I read spine after spine and wandered up and down rows and rows of books going up and down floors while I was at it. After a while I felt bad about not studying so I returned to my study area. As I got there they announced the library was closing for the night. I had been lost in The Stacks for close to 4 hours.

I tried to study there again with the same results. I learned to not study at the library, but rather to use it to learn about things that I never had even thought to ask a question about. Wandering The Stacks became a Zen like activity in the pursuit of learning. No electronic library will ever be its equivalent. No electronic library will ever allow you to simply turn around to discover a hundred year old chemistry book set in an old Gothic font or present you with books long out of print. No thank you, I will wander The Stacks, I will walk a hundred paces, stop, take out the book at my right knee, and learn.

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Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.

Re:New York Public Library is doing something simi by Reziac · 2009-09-04 17:07 · Score: 1

That's not a slashdot comment, it's a horror story!!

Especially the part about THROWING AWAY those special collections. [shudder]

That was one of the reasons behind the Open Library project -- some of these obscure old novels, old journals, and suchlike are down to a bare handful of surviving copies, and we don't really know how many have been entirely lost (remember that most pre-1920 or so will not have a copy in the Library of Congress collection, either.) Digitizing was the last ditch attempt to save them. But digital editions are relatively ephemeral, and far more easily lost to technical misadventure. Dare we destroy all our paper copies? I think not... unless the true objective is an eventual dark age.

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~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?

novels vs texts by swell · 2009-09-04 17:28 · Score: 1

All of the concerns so far are about 'books'. This is a vague term indeed.
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Chair is a similarly vague term. It includes big comfy reclining chairs, 3 legged milking stools, dentist chairs beanbag chairs and electric chairs. It is helpful to be more specific when discussing books.
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I suspect that most here would prefer a paper novel for leisure reading in the bathroom or at the beach.
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And I suspect that many would prefer an electronic text for study and research. A text that could find a chapter or a text string in a flash. A text that could cross reference related topics for a quick review. A text with graphics and text that can be made larger or smaller as needed. Pages that can be printed, annotated, shared with other students or incorporated into reports.
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We are talking about a school here, right? It's not the women's auxiliary knitting and novel discussion group.

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...omphaloskepsis often...

microfiche reflux by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-04 19:58 · Score: 0

I've seen this before sometime... wait, that's right, the dusty microwhatsit machine I was forced to revert to early last year due to the libraries braindead decision back in the 80s to put the journal I was looking for into "storage" (aka /dev/null afaict) and move to "new, modern" technology. The article looks like this sort of idiotic fashion-driven decision making all over again, but on a much larger scale.

Serendipity by vonFinkelstien · 2009-09-04 21:02 · Score: 1

I loved "researching" by browsing neighboring books in the stacks. But can't this be done electronically? If the book has a library code, then a computer can easily show what other books are in the same section.

Dictionaries, Shakespeare, other classics by fantomas · 2009-09-04 21:04 · Score: 1

I can think of a large number of books that are still useful even though they are 10+ years old. Not sure of your angle on chalkboards but a fair number are used in universities and step away from highly developed countries and they are very much in evidence.

Cost of up to date data to be considered by fantomas · 2009-09-04 21:22 · Score: 1

That's a very fair comment. Of course e-book content, like paper book content, ages, and you need to purchase new versions / updates. Can't see many students thanking you for giving them 40 year old e-text books any more than they'd like to learn from 40 year old paper text books.

Perhaps school will work out the "total cost of ownership" as being the balancing point over a set period - say ten years? For paper books it would be how many books you need, and I guess over ten years you probably have to change the books 2 or 3 times. For the ebook option, 3 or 4 changes of reader, and the licencing costs of the e-book content: will be interesting to see if the content is leased for set periods of time or handed over for ownership.

I hope pedagogical considerations will also be a critical aspect of the decision taken on ebooks vs paper as well. I can see benefits in both sides but think that it's still with paper.

Re:Cost of up to date data to be considered by shbazjinkens · 2009-09-05 04:26 · Score: 1

Of course the format ages, but what formats are there that can't be converted? Just the modern ones. If I wanted an mp3 of a Led Zeppelin song and you sent me a wav I wouldn't be the least bit upset, because there are a myriad of conversion apps out there. In ten years a digital copy doesn't have coffee stains or torn pages. Even if its format is proprietary someone will reverse engineer it, so sorry, that argument doesn't hold up.

Both Useful by f16c · 2009-09-05 04:35 · Score: 1

For short lived technical information a Kindle or similar makes good sense.
That Windows Server 2003 R2 configuration book? When the inevitable upgrade cycle comes ditch the old and get the new for the Kindle.
K & R C book? It's a keeper so by the paper book.
LabVIEW programming? Very short upgrade cycle so put it on the Kindle.
Electrical Theory, Calculus, Engineering Calculations? Keep the old text books. The dirty little secret about these books is that new versions of these are a complete scam since the underlying theories were discovered ages ago. None of this is "new material".

Technical books tend to be hefty and expensive. Carrying them in and out of the workplace is a pain. Get any e-book reader and load it up and you won't take and leave somewhere a book you need elsewhere or have to carry the stack around. I have a stack of expensive Windows programming books since that's what they use at work. A Kindle version of the same book would suit every day use more even though the book stack over my desk is much more impressive.

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bob@Osprey:~>

Response from a professor at a New York university by Reziac · 2009-09-05 06:59 · Score: 1

A friend who is a professor at a university in New York had this to say about it:

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Oh that news is terrible! Just read it. Digitizing collections for backup purposes is an EXCELLENT idea. Using digital copies as replacements for real brick-and-mortar libraries is a TERRIBLE idea.

Way back when I was earning my PhD, the university library converted to a digital indexing system. I remember showing up one day and could do no research because the system was down and they did not have the old card system still in place.

There's something really nice about having a physical copy of a book in your hands to read, it's so easy to remember that it was actually made and written by a human being. I don't get that same sense from a digital copy of a book or article. In fact, if I am reading a PDF I often don't really read at all - I hit the search button and find only the exact information I need.

I fully expect books to be deleted from records, and various other monkey business to occur.

The nicest thing about a library is that they actually have LIBRARIANS who are oftentimes some of the highest educated and most knowledgable people around. I remember needing books on different hobby topics (such as photography or sound recording) and having librarians recommend books on the topic. They were exceptionally helpful, and even the best search engine can't compete with that, except in price.

Everyone who loves digitization claims that it's really democracy in action, that it lets even the smallest town have a world-class library etc. But that argument is basically bullshit from my perspective. You'll have access to a series of books that hae been digitized and a lot of interesting stuff will fall by the wayside. I really can't glorify this.
========

I really can't put it any better than that.

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~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?

for 3x Gates money you throw the publishers out by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-05 08:35 · Score: 0

Recall that (in the U.S.) the public library system was more or less created by Andrew Carnegie who had http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_wealthy_historical_figures three times as much as money as Bill Gates.

When you've got that much money and decide to establish the public library system, you can throw the publishers out on their ass instead.

not format, but content by fantomas · 2009-09-08 23:55 · Score: 1

Sorry, I think you misunderstand my point. I wasn't discussing format, more the content of the material.

Agreed that a Led Zeppelin song/ Beethoven symphony is as useful 100 years later but I was considering the *content* of school text books.

You might be able to keep old copies going but do you really want your children to be learning about the current state of physics from a 40 year old physics book? or history from a book that says today's President of the US is Roosevelt and we're at war with Germany?

Article is about school, and a lot of learning materials need to be updated. That's an issue with library content regardless of physical format.

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New England Prep School Library Goes Entirely Digital

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