i'm baaaaaa-ack! and still talkin' ipads.

my sincere apologies, dear reader. i don't know where the time has gone. to think it has been almost a month since my last post. luckily, nothing of any significance in the world of e-books, e-readers, tablets, ipads, publishing, books, libraries or students has occurred, right??

AU CONTRAIRE!!! that's french, you know. babelfish it.

at first, i was just going to post link after link after link about stuff i thought was of interest and have you catch up. but that's not fair. and you probably wouldn't read it all anyway. so i'll just jump back on track with some information i shared with colleagues at work on academic libraries and apple's ipad.

i currently serve on a committee at the academic library, of which i am gainfully and gratefully employed, that is exploring the usage and applicability of ipads in our library. actually e-reading devices as a whole. one of the questions is will we be hardware providers or content providers or both? will we use this opportunity to become fluent in i-pad-ese? or tablet-ese? or e-reader-ese? i love these-ese words. :-)

anyway, in our last discussion, i mentioned that several academic libraries are lending apple ipads. they include ncsu, fairleigh dicksinson, and mit.

i also came across this presentation from fairleigh dicksinson entitled e-books, e-readers and their impact on libraries.

and this just in - duke university will be looking for ways to incorporate the ipad beginning in the fall 2010 semester. way back in ancient times, circa 2004, duke university began experimenting with apple ipOds.

questions, questions. what role the academic library will play regarding the introduction of these electronic devices? will we provide platform-diverse content or provide the platform itself? should the library have several electronic devices and for what purposes? general circulation? interlibrary loan? should we have any? what about ebooks and products such as ebrary. and what about e-book formats. kindle, e-pub, mobi, pdf. a colleague reminded us about betamax and vhs. which one did you bet on? if you picked betamax, you chose poorly.

weighty questions, no? oui.