Whatever happened to The Book?

If you have half an hour, you might enjoy this talk from Mark Pesce, about electronic books, hypertext and much more...

BBC Newsnight on libraries - tonight

To quote the blurb on the Newsnight page at the BBC:

David Grossman will be exploring some of the challenges facing public libraries - will they be circumvented by digital technology and what is the future of local authority funding?

Watch item here

[Later]

Well that proved frustrating. The metaphorical argument presented went something like: The Victorians built public baths when people didn't have running water in their homes. We don't need or use public baths now.

The libraries were built when people didn't have access to education and books, but 70% of households are online so why do we need libraries?

No, I'm not making this up. I find it hard to try to construct logical rebuttals to such fatuous parallels. 70% of households have cars, so we don't need buses? (Even though, when the breadwinner is out with the car, everyone else is stranded). If your mum can afford her Mills&Boon, and your dad his sports biographies, you don't need exposure to the other range of books possible. Even your teachers keep you to the curriculum recommended texts.

Libraries contain dangerous ideas, don't they? Thoughts outside the box, or your narrow little world view.

And personally, if they insist on their metaphor, I miss the public baths. Forget that I can fill a kettle or take a shower when I want at home. When I first came to Cardiff the Empire Pool offered safe, hygenic Sauna, Turkish baths, cold plunge, jacuzzi, swimming pool, etc. I miss it since they pulled it down (promising to replace it, but never did).

I've had saunas in Sweden and Finland, and they are integral to the culture, and terrific for public health, but I don't want to have to go to sleazy dives full of fat, sweaty politicians hoping for a hand job - not meaning to slag off the 'massage parlours' still available, perhaps they are not all like that, but they scare me. I used to like going to the council baths.

The idea that I don't still need that safe environment provided presumably comes from people with swimming pools in their back garden (or in their second home in Tuscany), and who have bathrooms with Jacuzzis and saunas.

I hate to tell you folks, but most people still don't have those in their homes as standard.

Yeah, I said it was a stupid parallel, but I didn't bring it up. :-)

Libraries remain one of the few places for self-educators and lifelong learners, and evidence from around the world implies that an educated population is beneficial to the country's wealth creation.

Perhaps the people become a bit more dissident, getting exposure to a wider range of ideas and possibilities, but in the long run it seems a better idea. However, your voters become a little less easily manipulated, perhaps.

Ah...mmm.

Just personal opinion, rant over. G'night.

PS: they reiterated the idea that making libraries self-service doesn't need to mean that staff lose their jobs, just that they get redefined. Yeah, right (you will hear on the shop floor). And they also mentioned bad management of the services, and that some of the jobs that could afford to go might lie in those higher realms. Hmmm. Isn't that how we lost being represented by a Chief Librarian, and an Assistant Chief Librarian, all those years ago...

Anyway - don't believe me, you can go check it out online at the BBC...

E-Books and PDFs

As a researcher I don't have an either-or attitude to books and e-books. I love the feel and smell of tangible books, and the fact that I can read them on the bus, in the bath, in the garden. They are (in McLuhan's terms) read with Light On (bouncing off a surface) rather than Light Through.

The Virtual McLuhan on 'Light Through'
Digital McLuhan on 'Light Through'

At the same time, searching through text with even a reasonable Index and a list of Contents seem inadequate at times - when with a PDF you can search for any phrase, keyword or 'character name' you remember. Unbeatable. Just as the electronic OED lets you do complicated things like 'find all English words with Arabic origins' which you can do in mere moments...

e-book readers reviewed
Anyway - for discussion of e-readers (not something I have invested in yet) you could (for example) look at this page, from Lybrary - a site which sells e-books - comparing the different e-book readers currently available.

Adobe Digital Editions
For those of you not yet intending to invest a couple of hundred pounds in a portable reader you might find this FREE offering from Adobe interesting and useful. Digital Editions offers a way to organise your PDF e-books into libraries, shelves and annotate pages, etc.
Read about it, and Download here.

Here are a couple of quotes from that website, to give you an idea:

Interface designed for digital reading

Take advantage of a clean, well-organized interface, expressly designed for reading digital publications. Use the Reading View to view bookmarks, annotations, and a table of contents. Display your PDF files in a double-page, single page, or fit-to-width view — or specify your own custom fit. You can also increase and decrease text size with EPUB content.

File organization

Organize your digital publications and manage devices in the convenient Library View. Sort by title, author, and publisher, and view the covers of your favorite eBooks. You can also create custom bookshelves to further organize and manage your content.

And here's an interesting detail (not one our library has got involved in yet...

Borrowing eBooks

Borrow eBooks from many public libraries for use with Digital Editions. Downloading digital publications from libraries is very similar to buying eBooks online except for the payment process.

I'd love to hear from any librarians with experience of this process for information delivery.

The library that never closes

Thanks to my partner for this link to an article in the Guardian.

I don't intend to join the discussion about paper books over ebooks right now (I use both for different purposes, and when researching like to have both - a paper copy for the bus or bath, foxed corners and pencil notes, and a PDF for searching quickly).

The Open Library.

And although I don't perform any more, I still love magic (my childhood hobby, part of my mid-life performing career, and now my equivalent to The Times Crossword, for mental stimulation) - so some people might find the attempt to digitalize all available (out of copyright) magic books interesting as a project.

Check out Chris Wasshuber's extraordinary Lybrary website, for books on magic, gambling, gaming, confidence tricks, etc.  Coming up to a tenth anniversary...

Digital Textbook Initiative

After a slighting reference to 'Arnold' on Have I Got News For You, about the simple economic savings implicit in not giving children hard copies of non-fiction text books, it feels difficult to come out on the side of digital learning.

Terminating Education on elearning 3.0 blog found at elearninglearning (sic)

Full speech at Office of the Guv'ner

Actually, I still believe in the mixed economy.  Certainly for novels and poetry, I prefer having a copy I can carry around.

The argument for up-to-date information seem irrefutable, however - as digital copies remain available for all students, when limited copies soon leave the shelves, and either stay out for months, or never come back. And they also go out of date quickly, whether books on law, medicine, economics, etc.

I think it a rather extreme position to eliminate books altogether, as though all information goes out of date quickly.  We don't just study History (where new revelations, attitudes and approaches might appear) but also how people viewed it at certain times (some classics remain important for study, even if 'period pieces' in some ways.)  The idea that all information goes out of date comes from a rather superficial view that we in the present know more, and more accurately, than people in the past.  I do think completely deleting the past a rather dangerous approach, myself.  Just think how hard it can prove, to find an out-of-print, out-of fashion  masterpiece.

This remains a heated argument within libraries, as some of us think we should appear as up-to-date, clean and modern as Borders or Waterstones - just free, is all.  Others think we should represent an alternative to best sellers and a limited choice on display, and include an archive of 'out-of-date' material and hard to find items, rather than just the latest compilation summary of past knowledge, Dummies' Guides, etc. 

Of course, bookshops and libraries can both order you copies of books they don't have, to arrive later, whether to borrow or to buy.

As it happens, as I try to use e-learning options within the libraries, for staff training - I don't feel sure either way.  I don't get a great response from my initial efforts to make knowledge available digitally, but then again we work in a library, and I am not sure how many staff spend any time with the 'How To Use a Computer' books that we have, either.  Some people spend their time learning, and others don't - so motivation seems as important as access to tools.

No, I didn't reach a conclusion...

I have studied online for the last few years, and when working through a text my favourite option remains having a paper copy for reading on the bus and in the bath, and a PDF copy for searching, cutting and pasting etc.

I don't really believe in Either / Or.