Slashdot Mirror
Public Library Exclusively For Digital Media Proposed
CowboyRobot writes "In San Antonio, a judge and a precinct commissioner are proposing (PDF) a plan to create a library called BiblioTech that offers electronic media exclusively, offering patrons only e-readers and digital materials. 'BiblioTech intends to start with 100 e-readers that can be loaned out, 50 pre-loaded e-readers for children, 50 computer stations, 25 laptops and 25 tablets, with additional accommodations planned for the visually impaired.' But the economics have yet to be ironed out. 'A typical library branch might circulate 10,000 titles a month... To do that electronically would be cost-prohibitive — most libraries can't afford to supply that many patrons with e-reading devices at one time. And expecting library visitors to bring their own devices may be expecting too much.'"
i only ask because i ride the train with people less well off than me and i see them with iphones and all other kinds of toys
One of us must be drunk.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Seriously...
Where the editors don't even proof-read the headlines!
Many people have their own phone, tablet, and/or e-reader. They should expect most who are interested in a digital library to have their own devices. Having a few for those who don't own one is an extra service. A cheap e-reader is under $50. That's the cost of a few paperbacks. Less than a typical text book.
There are better ones. Check out the Kobo Glo for one example.
c++;
The big issues involve licensing for eBooks and the fact that publishers seem to engage in punitive pricing with Libraries. Example: One publisher declares that an ebook can only be checked out 27 times, then the license for that expires. Multiple publishers REFUSE to sell ebooks for Library use. Libraries are treated like pirates by many publishers.
Now, different companies are trying different models. Kansas libraries spearheaded a massive campaign to control their own ebooks licensing, and they succeeded with an unprecedented project of contacting hundreds of Publishers and finagling acceptable licenses for public usage. Will the San Antonio folks be doing this? Do they expect 3M, Sirsi, or Polaris to do this?
A tertiary issue is the license themselves. Typically in libraries, you cannot use a library owned computer to capture or transfer the license to an ereader device. This is because in the case of "USB required devices or items", the license exists on the COMPUTER itself. Downloading a license to a public computer currently violates all applicable copyright law for ebooks/eaudio materials because it makes the license available to all (or the license is lost when a computer reboots and doesn't save anything at all between sessions.)
Intriguing idea, but the article doesn't include any comprehension of the issues involved in this. Just because it sounds "cool", doesn't mean it's doable.
Haven't been to a public library lately, have you?
Libraries have moved FAR FAR beyond the staid old stereotype of "shh"ing school marms in reading glasses. I have worked in Libraries for over 20 years now, and I can tell you that we are busier now than we have EVER been. eBooks haven't been a negative to us, but the treatment of libraries by publishers has been a negative to ebook users. I'm really happy that someone is looking as far forward as this article, but I'd love to know more about how they expect it to work.
and negative viewpoints yours are normally the result of someone who hasn't used their public library in a long time. You can either ask Google and get a thousand answers, or you can ask a Librarian and get the right answer.
understand, i do not
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
The Internet Is Shit.
As someone who uses (and relies upon) the Internet regularly, I don't share this person's views, but they make some extremely good points.
Many of these same points could be applied to eBooks vs. paper books.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
Why on earth would I want to load myself and the kids* in the car and schlep it over to the library to read stuff on an electronic device? It'd be a lot easier to do that from home using the entartubes. Are there still library systems out there that haven't drank the Overdrive Kool-Aid? I don't even need to put on pants to do that.
*I don't have kids but, from what others tell me, they can be a handful.
"Public Exclusively Library For Digital Media Proposed"
Seriously, it seems like not a day goes by without some [b]glaring[/b] editorial failure, be it spelling, grammar, or an [b]obviously[/b] botched copy/paste. I'm sure that I speak for many when I say that although I read Slashdot for the comments, the atrocious, lazy editing is still offensive.
Get your shit together.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
somehow tying reading to a physical building.
Fundamentally, the correct way to distribute lots of important files, is a large, heavily geographically distributed vaguely according to population, ultra heavily redundant content distribution network, right?
And coincidentally there is some value in having a building providing wifi access to this CDN, tables, chairs, lights, baby sitters (only halfway kidding) etc for the patrons to access this super-duper-cultural-CDN?
And coincidentally we already have these buildings sitting around waiting for the CDN to drop their racks and wifi WAPs into?
I've noticed a fixation on e-book and e-reader and e-library discussion revolving solely around the end user reading device... forgetting those hand held devices are pretty useless without the rest of the system, which boils down to a library without many bookshelves and a mini-datacenter, which seems to be the trend in libraries recently anyway WRT having public access internet and coffee bars and meeting rooms and such.
I'd be much more interested in a public library supported local mirror in every library of project gutenberg, archive.org, and related efforts than "me-too end user device #1513516246" trying to do exactly the same thing as "me-too end user device #1513516245" but now with more, better PR.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Got a Sony PRS-505 through work back when they first came out, but couldn't bring myself to purchase any books for it (and given how the copy of _Space Cadet_ which I got w/ a gift certificate was _rife_ w/ errors to the point of being unreadable and resulting in my spending the weekend proofreading the book, no big loss), and instead have been reading through public domain and (legitimately) freely available books as listed at the Online Books Page:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/new.html
I just wish there were better sorting options available --- in particular, I'd like to be able to filter out just biographies, then order them chronologically by date (of the lifetime of the subject).
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
More than a quiet place to read, why is needed that library? For most digital books for your own e-reader, computer or phone, an access point and knowing where to get the books (i.e. Project Gutenberg) is enough. Even lending, if you want to do it, can be done online.
Wait 5 years and e-readers will be under $30, then sell them at the front desk.
My wife has a Kindle and uses it almost exclusively to check out e-books from the Austin Public Library. They have to be reserved through the library and transferred by Amazon, but she says the process is easy enough to manage. I know she has read upwards of 100 books in the past ~18 months this way.
So if libraries already have a working process for lending e-books for Kindle (and presumably other readers), I have to ask why someone thinks they need this "digital media library" approach. I assume that this is all political and/or publicity oriented, but I have to ask whether the money wouldn't be better spent elsewhere. If nothing else, loaning delicate electronic equipment to the public seems like a frightful risk.
Public libraries were one of the great achievements of Western civilization. However, it seems to me their time has passed. Classic books are available freely anything, and for books still in copyright, a variety of online "for profit" lending options make more sense than somehow tying reading to a physical building. Book rentals generally are cheaper than a milkshake at McDonalds, and healthier too.
You sound like you haven't been to the library in a long while. I get all my TV and movie DVDs from the library. All my e-books (which I can check-out online from home via the web). All my CDs. And free WiFi when I'm onsite. Why are you paying for free stuff?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
"...To do that electronically would be cost-prohibitive..."
Huh?
OK granted, I understand that from the later context of the article, they're not just talking about an electronic library (which, let's face it, isn't much more than a gussied-up ftp server), they're talking about a whole social program where they loan out e-readers.
Electronic public library - great idea, easy way to make e-texts available to the public. Many public libraries already offer this service, but the service varies from community to community and there's really no reason for doing it that way. You could just as easily and more efficiently have a STATE-level electronic library and eliminate the redundancies of (for example) MN having 87 different public library systems each with their own little ghetto of users, access, and licenses.
Electronic lending of ebook readers - approaches the catastrophically stupid. So instead of lending BOOKS which are durable, relatively cheap, nearly-zero-cost once you've purchased them, you want to loan out e-readers which are fragile, expensive, and offer little utility to a typical reader above that of a normal book (as well as significantly lower readability, depending on the kind of book)? It's one thing if you're decommissioning physical libraries and the e-reader program is to allow the public to access those inventories, but if you're just talking about another social program to loan electronic gadgets to poor people, is it really the best time economically to be EXPANDING social service programs?
-Styopa
...that biblioteque means "library"... in French!
I'm sorry, but do they think the people who created that content are going to allow it?
I applaud someone for trying to do this, but I predict it would almost immediately lead to lawsuits by people claiming their EULA forbids this.
These are the same people who think photocopiers should be banned, and if more than one person watches a movie they should get paid more.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
He plans to call the system the National Archive Project Storing Texts Electronically Readable.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What's the point? Why not just incorporate this into the regular public library?
I think that the physical building is maybe the most important part of the modern public library. In many cities there is nowhere that you can go and sit down and do some work or read or whatever without having to buy something. If it's nice out then you can sit in a park or something, but here in Chicago it is nice out a vanishingly small amount of the time. In my 20s had roommates, no space to myself, and no cash to waste on lattes. The local library not only gave me an education through the books on the shelves, but also gave me a chance to sit down and get some working and thinking done in a space in which I wasn't going to be bothered by anyone. Without the library I wouldn't have been able to do that. Even now that I'm 41 and have more space to myself I still spend a fair amount of time working at the library. It's a place to sit and focus and be serious.
And yes, some public libraries end up functioning as de facto homeless shelters. But very few are only this.
I agree with you on a certain level, that we will someday soon move past the point at which tying book lending to a physical building is no longer necessary. But we need some sort of place in meatspace for people to go and do work. Right now that space is the public library. In the current climate or privatizing everything I can't imagine an open and free public space growing up to replace it. So we need to hold on to the libraries we have for as long as possible.
Am I the only one who finds it odd that it is cheaper to purchase and circulate physical media rather than "virtual" media? I know my local school district, looking at fruity tablet computers, determined that electronic textbooks would end up costing more than the actual books they are purchasing now - largely because e-books from their publishers would have to be purchased every year, and not allowed to be passed down for a few years like a traditional book. Sound like the publishers killing e-books
This idea seems obsolete, given that most users with broadband Internet access have the necessary tools to host a digital library. Why should the public authorize the allocation of funds to yet another walled garden of publications when the technology already exists to allow the freedom to access anything at any time? I see what you did there, publishing companies.
Crimey
Well, I have been to the public library lately... and generally, they don't have the books that I want. Their fiction section is okay, but small. Generally, when I'm looking for something specific, unless it's by a major author or won an award, they don't have it. Their nonfiction, though... if you want something that's truly in-depth on anything, most likely they won't have it. Sometimes there are gems there, though, so I still look. However, I find I do most of my borrowing from the local University library. I pay $50 a year for the privilege, but I don't mind that, since they have a much, much better selection of books.
And... ask a librarian instead of Google? Sure. Let's look at the questions I've had that I've searched Google for answers on lately, according to my browser histories. (Reformatted as actual questions, instead of just a list of key terms.)
How much does PVC electrical conduit cost?
What is the history of mail order shopping before the Internet?
Why do LEDs appear to flicker on video?
Who are well-reviewed roofers in ?
What year was Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions" published?
Does chlorophyll include any metallic elements?
What are Florida's statutes on firearms?
What are some examples of good-looking lightsaber props people have made from plumbing supplies, and what parts did they use?
What's the supplied voltage of an NiMH AAA battery?
What are the dates for GenCon and DragonCon this year?
What are the laws in the various states of the US with regard to slower traffic having to move aside for faster traffic?
How do I get a list of all tables that aren't views in a MySQL database?
What are the rules for lightsaber dueling in lightsaber clubs?
Most of these, I got the right answers for by searching Google, then clicking one link. Sometimes I didn't even have to click a link - the answer was in the sample text being shown from the page. A few of them, I had to click multiple links for - but in some cases, that was because I wanted to see multiple answers (e.g., the roofers and the lightsaber props). Two of them, I wasn't able to find good answers for in the time I wanted to take - searching for the history of mail-order shopping before the Internet gave me lots of brief one-or-two paragraph summaries, and a few in-depth pieces about the beginnings of mail-order shopping back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but neither of those was what I wanted. Searching for rules for lightsaber dueling gave me a lot about fictional lightsaber dueling, but I only found a couple of threads from forums about clubs doing it and their rules, and neither of those was very helpful.
So... two cases where a librarian might have been more helpful than Google, but it's doubtful in both of those cases. For the rest, it would have taken longer for me to get ahold of a librarian and ask the question than it took me to find the correct answer via Google.
Honestly, the only time a librarian has ever successfully helped me find anything, it was by letting me go back into the area where they had books that had been turned in, but not yet put on the shelves. And before they'd let me back there, I had to physically prove to them that the book in question wasn't on the shelf, and that the online catalog said that it had been turned in by someone that day.
I agree with some of the posts above, this isn't well thought out
They're also going to have to provide support for the readers they lend out. Some things are pretty straight forward but others are not. Like when you start getting into DRM issues and they need to set up an Adobe account for the epub books. Or if the reader they are lending has special software needed on a PC to download books, unless they will only be pre-loaded. What about the first time someone leaves a book on the reader they just returned and little 8 year old Joey is the next one to use it? Joey's parents may not be too happy with his new vocabulary. How about when they start coming back broken, will they be quick to replace them? How long will their insurance company put up with it?
As others have mentioned it sounds good initially, but a better idea would be a space in the library where people could sit and use a reader to see if they like it. Corporate sponsorship would work well here and give the library a chance to market its ebook collection.
It's called "The Scene"
Just make topsites the equivalent of libraries under law and you've already got a head start.
Sadly, almost all the titles I've checked out over the past decade have been digital, from the comfort of my PC. (Audiobooks are awesome for long commutes on public transit). The past two times I went into the physical library building, I found it was largely populated by vagrants who were using the free internet terminals to view porn as they avoided the cold outside. Heck, I even took the elevator to the third floor in hopes of using a rest room less trafficked by said vagrants, and came upon one old fellow giving himself a paper-towel bath. Perhaps this is only a problem of large urban libraries.
Libraries were founded in the day when books were precious and expensive treasures. Now, there's hardly a used bookstore that doesn't have a "free" bin. People aren't reading dead-tree books as much nowadays, and those who do generally have no problem purchasing them or sharing books with friends or finding something to read at free book swaps. For expensive texts, a digital lending library makes more sense, since digital texts are searchable, and they don't have to be returned to the library when the checkout term expires.
They kicked Taco out, dude. He's now wasting time at the Washington Post or something.
Delivering papers in mom's station wagon != working at the Washington Post.
You've been Bazinga'd, Taco.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
As someone who has pretty used my local library at least once a week since I've been able to walk to the library, I'll tell you that I'm pretty fed up with libraries wasting money on eBooks, which expire after (a relatively low) N of loans vs. buying physical copies of a book that (with rebinding - remember that process?) can be lent to readers dozens of times. This is, of course, after the institutions spend most of the money on CD's and DVD's, which also have a much shorter lifespan than books.
I love libraries. I've never voted against a library levy and I believe that they are a vital part of any functioning community. It's just that books are a much more cost-effective purchase than other things bought by libraries and it irks me to watch every year as physical books seem to be downgraded to optional purchases and money is spent on alternate media forms that will degrade much more quickly.
That is all.
Cool. you have digital literacy.
Many people do not. Many people do not possess your skill set for finding relevant information using Google. You'd be amazed the number of people who can't tell the difference between a real information, and Wikipedia spam.
Librarians are TRAINED to find this information. Your questions ARE the type of questions we deal with every day. We do this for the people who don't have your level of digital and informational literacy. And when you're stuck? (if that ever happens?) Come to the Library. We'll help you too ;)
Here's a question that a librarian answered for me that Google never could:
What's a reliable, accurate source of medical information?
Give me an example of a question that you could easily find in a library that you couldn't easily find on the Internet.
The big issues involve licensing for eBooks and the fact that publishers seem to engage in punitive pricing with Libraries. Example: One publisher declares that an ebook can only be checked out 27 times, then the license for that expires. Multiple publishers REFUSE to sell ebooks for Library use. Libraries are treated like pirates by many publishers.
Didn't we give them copyright in the first place.. ..so that there would no longer be such things as book licenses?
I might be missing something, but I think that if we start licensing books again, they should lose their ability to copyright them.
The New York Public Library made a big move to the "digital library". It made a lot of things worse. There are works that I used to get on paper that I can't get any more in any format.
I like modern improvements, but it's a warning not to throw out the old system before the new system is working.
One of the problems is with medical journals. Medical journals set their subscription prices to libraries based on the number of patrons. So a university with 10,000 students pays more than a college with 1,000 students. The paper editions are fairly expensive, but the online editions are really expensive.
That means the library can't buy standard medical journals in digital editions. A librarian told me that they can't afford the New England Journal of Medicine, particularly the online edition, because the journal calculates the entire population of New York as their patrons. And now there's lots of important information for each article that is online-only. Last time I looked in the catalog, I could only find two subscriptions to the NEJM in the entire NYPL system.
I went to the NYPL's Science, Industry and Business Library to look something up in Science Citation Index, a useful reference book that I used to use at the NYPL when it was on paper. They didn't have it. It's too expensive.
The thing that really pisses me off is that they spent millions of dollars on luxurious buildings, with marble and Herman Miller chairs, but they didn't spend the few thousand dollars it would cost for a basic medical collection. Or the staff to keep the buildings open the same hours as book stores.
Part of me says that everyone should have or be able to develop that level of digital literacy... but then, experience shows that too, too many don't.
So, yeah. I can see where librarians are useful, and I support libraries. It still just constantly amazes me, though, how many people can't tell good information from bad, even when it seems obvious to me. But then I go read Snopes for a while, and remind myself that people have believed much, much less plausible things. :-)
On the information-finding side, I'd make a great librarian. On the dealing with people side, not so much. I can see you're good at both, and hope your employers recognize it!
Why haven't I "been there"? Because the selection is poor and access is inconvenient and costly (once you take time and transportation into account).
And it's not "free stuff", tax payers pay for it.
Actually, I use public and university libraries regularly, but much less than I did a decade ago. They are physically inconvenient to get to for me, they usually don't have the books I need, and their eBook offerings are inconvenient and very limited. Many of the books that I used to go to libraries for, "the classics", are available for free now. Most of the usage I get out of the library these days is inter-library loans for old reference works that are hard to get, but I could do that by mail myself (the library is effectively just a maildrop). My impression from visiting US public libraries is that they offer a bit more e-books but otherwise aren't all that different.
That may be, but library usage overall is declining. People like me, who used to spend a lot of time in libraries, now only go occasionally. Many students never go to the library at all. Instead of waving your hands about how busy you are and insinuating that everybody who questions you must be illiterate, I think you need to explain better what it is that keeps you busy and what function it serves in the community.
Just to put this into perspective: US public libraries spent more than 10 billion dollars in 2009. That's enough money to give every US household an E-reader, free access to all the classic books, and a good selection of paid books every year.