is it 'e' you're looking for?

i work at an academic library and a co-worker forwarded a blog posting from "librarian in black." librarian in black  is really sarah houghton, director for the san rafael public library (california) and the posting is titled "i'm breaking up with e-books (and so can you)"(subtitled e-book suckitude). i like it!

[WARNING! DANGER WILL ROBINSON! it contains salty language! yes, the S-word and the F-word are used, sparingly, but used). still worth the read.

now, i'll admit that at first glance, i took offense because i...love...e-books! love, love, love them! and paper books, tooooooo!

but upon further investigation, it turns out that sarah (i'll assume it's okay to call her sarah) isn't breaking up with e-books but is breaking up with overdrive, the major e-book provider for libraries in the country. and she's not planning on picking up with another suitor (sorry, 3m).

okay, this bandwagon i can jump on.  it just so happens that i met last week with one of our local community college librarians who wanted to talk about...you guessed it, e-books and e-book providers.

but, back to sarah and her upcoming bad breakup with overdrive. in her looooong blog post, she compares her library's relationship with overdrive (through a consortium) with a relationship with a bad boyfriend. nice and shiny and full of promise in the beginning, but eventually all that wears off and you're left with crap and you settle until one day... 

basically, she sees overdrive as a promise unfulfilled. not only that, but almost as though overdrive was fraudulent in their intent to begin with. 

i tried to highlight the basics in the article, but even the highlights (lowlights) stacked up, but here goes (by the way, this doesn't mean i don't want you to read the article!!):

• the whole situation sucks:  "the copyright nightmares, the publishers, the fragmented formats, the ridiculous terms of service, the device incompatibility, the third-party aggregation companies libraries do business with."
• we have ourselves to blame:  "libraries have not been included at the table for negotiations on digital copyright, terms of service, licensing conditions, technology integration, none of it. And yes, that stinks. And yes, we’ve complained about it enough. We haven’t been heard largely because we’ve been too polite and too quiet for too long. It’s our fault. "
• too many restrictions suck:  "We can’t buy from most of the major publishers, and even for those we can buy from we have extreme restrictions or highly inflated costs... lack of development of usable download processes, fair-use-friendly terms of use, and privacy options in keeping with libraries’ professional values and ethics."
• we didn't get our fair share:  "eBooks never gave us as libraries–full selection, right-quick downloads, and sharing rights. We got no love at all, but our prettier sister, the consumer, got a better deal. Still not everything, as she also has to put up with restrictive DRM, licensing and not owning, and privacy violations."

• the promise of collaboration remains just that:  "publishers continually feed libraries the line that they’re “experimenting with different models” and “hope to continue to work positively with libraries in the digital space. Uh huh.  Libraries and eBooks aren’t shacking up anytime soon, not for real…not as long as publishers continue to falsely view us as a threat instead of a partner. "

• maybe it's just not ready:  "eBooks in libraries are a non-starter, their path has been set for the foreseeable future, and their future is determined by people who are not us. ...those who produce them for profit...the publishers…the, until recently, necessary middlemen in the process between creators and consumers. Now that they’re not necessary to the process anymore, largely due to their inflexibility and inability to change in the face of rapidly shifting market conditions, they have attempted to salvage their failing business model with high prices, limited licensing policies, and technology so locked down that it remains impenetrable to many people."

kinda in a nutshell. i know it sounds whiny, but i think rightfully so. even in an academic setting, there is still confusion over the e-books we have available in our catalog, i.e., ebsco, netlibrary, etc., that can be used on campus with some restrictions as far as printing, downloading, etc. and those e-books i call "consumer e-books" like the ones they download to their ipads and kindles and nooks from whatever vendor they choose any time they choose and keep for as long as they choose.

what's a library to do? cliffhanger...spoiler alert!!

here's sarah: "At our recent regional library consortium meeting, I said I wouldn’t give more money to OverDrive, beyond the bare minimum that the consortium’s contract required of us, and only until we can legally terminate our contract–at which point I personally want out of OverDrive.  The title selection is awful and getting only more so month by month, their policies are restrictive, and their business practices are unethical–including trading away core librarian values (user data privacy, no commercial endorsements).  I’m not going to give any money to 3M or Baker & Taylor either unless things change on their end, just for the record. I’m finished promoting an inferior eBook product to our patrons. I’m finished throwing good money after bad money. And I’m finished trying to pointlessly advocate for change when change has to come from places waaaaaaay above my influence level or pay grade."

hmmmm. bold. brash. risky? now, granted this is a smallish, public library system. but, when consumers  encounter an inferior product, especially one that's not a necessity, don't they stop purchasing it or find an alternative? i don't like it when the lights go out in my neighborhood due to lack of improvements to infrastructure from my utility company, but i don't have much choice (unless i go prairie style and use candles for light and warm my water over a campfire). i'm a city girl, forget that!

but i don't HAVE to have ebooks, i just like 'em. and libraries don't HAVE to provide e-books. or do they? and if our patrons want e-books, should we just provide them any way we can and let them figure it out? or should we wait to provide them with the best product we can, even if we don't know that product is coming?

*sigh*

side note: here is a great (and up to date!) chart provided by the colorado library consortium: Comparison of Library eBook Choices

and two other librarian bloggers seem to be on the same bandwagon: andromeda yelton and annoyed librarian.

where are the books? and the bookkeepers for that matter?

hello, dear readers

this time last year, according to time magazine, (see what i did there? "time," according to "time" magazine. oh, i crack me up) was the time of the bookless library. kansas state, stanford, drexel and UT-san antonio all have "naked" libraries.

the library without books. which would be called something else, i'm sure, maybe a warehouse, a pod, a large booth or i guess it depends on what else is inside it.

ask any joe or jane on the street to name a building with books in it, probably 5 out of 10 would say library. the other 5 might say bookstore upon hearing the word "book." so if a building doesn't have physical books in it, can it still be called a library?

what if it's a building with chairs? could be an auditorium, could be IKEA.
a building with chairs and computers? could be an internet cafe, could be offices.
what about chairs, computers and e-book collections? could be a bookstore, heck, could be my house!

could that also be called a library? what if you add a cafe?

now, of course, i'm only talking about the physical structure. the library as 'place' (ugh!).

oed (oxford english dictionary, of course) definition of library: a place set apart to contain books for reading, study, or reference. (Not applied, e.g. to the shop or warehouse of a bookseller.) note that the definition says contain books (but not what kind - could be e-books, perhaps?)

merriam-webster dictionary: a place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials (as books, manuscripts, recordings, or films) are kept for use but not for sale. hmmm, interesting. not specific to books.

encyclopedia brittanica: collection of information resources, in print or in other forms, that is organized and made accessible for reading or study. double hmmm, more interesting still. the word "OR" regarding other forms. not "AND." curious?

the most striking part of this blog post is...
i got none of these definitions from a book

oh, alright, okay, hold on...brb.

okay, 78 steps and 3 minutes later (i work in a library close to the research assistance desk), i have gone to the webster's 3rd new international dictionary (the physical print volume) for the definition of library: a room, a section or series of sections of a building or a building itself given over to books, manuscripts, musical scores or other literary and sometimes artistic materials, as paintings or musical recordings usually kept in some convenient order for use but not for sale. i love the term "given over" as if there was some sort of invasion of marching tomes. i do find it interesting that this was the only definition that mentioned "some convenient order" as opposed to organized.

now, i'm not complaining here, but in less time than it took me to walk over to that dictionary, i got the previous 3 definitions online. convenient? you betcha!!

now, back to the time magazine article. it mentions drexel university's new library learning terrace, with nary a book in site. "we don't just house books, we house learning."

kansas state's fiedler library - "fiedler library is designed primarily as an electronic library."

stanford university's terman engineering library - pruned all but 10,000 volumes to make room for tables and study space.

univ of texas-san antonio/applied engineering and technology library, - labeled "the nation's first completely bookless library on a college or university campus."

what is it that patrons want from a library? books or information or guidance to information?

as for bookkeepers, i really mean librarians. who are they? what are they? if there are no books, does that make a librarian any less a librarian? is he/she now an informarian? hey, i like that. although i hate the term, maybe librarians are now media specialists. or information specialists. or locators? human divining rods? sherpas? will they be any less so if a library doesn't contain actual books?

maybe our love of libraries comes from its physical, tactical nature. we are, after all, human. humans, usually, judge things through the senses. if something's rotten in denmark, we know it. can we still find a love for literature if we can't wander the stacks, using our sight to guide us. our brains to process the information on that all-important inside flap? maybe we're afraid that we won't be able to get as much as we have if it's not laid out in front of us in a physical manner. maybe we're just . . . afraid.

just something to think about...while you're wandering the stacks of your library or the aisles of your bookstore, or the electronic bookshelves of amazon or google books or combine the two at barnes & noble. because no matter what or how, a good story is still a good story.

happy reading, no matter the format!

i'm baaaaack...again!

oh . . . my . . . goodness!! it has been quite a while.

i really thought this post would be about shutting down the blog.

however, i have had two people in the past six months ask me about it. i started this blog, back in 2009, because electronic "everything" was taking over the world and folks were talking!!

my first post was two sentences. haha!! it was a link to a comparison of e-readers: kindles (priced at $259, currently $79), nooks ($259, now $79), the iREX (huh? and it was $399) ,sony's reader ($399-wha?), and a couple of also-rans.

my second post was about a local professor using a kindle in the classroom. click here for the memories.

in between then and now, we've got more kindles and nooks, an iPad that blew us away in terms of what we could do with technology and how portable it could be, e-books downloaded at the press of a button (or two), bluetooth and wireless technology for portable presentations, telephony, and who knows what else.

in 2009, everything old wasn't new again, it was old. new was new and new was good. new was shiny and new was liberating. new was also scary. who knew? (haha-see what i did there).

so after thinking about this for a while, i realized that there's still a LOT to talk about in the naked library. sooo much, in fact, that i've decided to put the paddles to the heart of this old blog and zap some life back into it. CLEAR!!!

so, there you have it. the naked library is back and her shelves are FULL of stuff you wanna know (or not). here's a sneak peek of some ideas i'll be blogging about soon:

• Free Library of Philadelphia Know-It-Alls 
• remember the professor i referenced above using kindles back in 2009. i've emailed him for an update on what he's been doing. when i know, you'll know
• REAL naked libraries - fad or for-real

alright, i don't want you to get too excited and spill your coffee or your veggie juice!

hey...it kinda feels good to be back!

happy reading...no matter the format. speaking of reading...

READING: thumbs up: wolf hall by hilary mantel (henry the viii, thomas cromwell, thomas more anne boleyn, good stuff). i read this in preparation of the sequel, bring up the bodies. also, the sisters brothers by patrick dewitt. old-fashioned western starring two brothers. GREAT! thumbs down-what alice forgot. 3/4's in...i didn't care anymore.