A Library Without Books
Carleen
I was almost certain this was a joke. No joke.
Beeg
> http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_...
>
> I was almost certain this was a joke. No joke.
This is scary. An ebook is okay, but unless it is an open format and
doesn't have the DRM that keeps you from letting someone else read
your book, I don't plan to get any books that way. The only plus I see
to a library without books is that trees will be saved.
Beeg
(who, like Capt. Picard, likes to hold 'real' books)
Willow
anywhere, loan it to a friend, sell it or buy it used, Throw it if it
does not rise to expectations and hit the wall.
This is a horrible decision, one that will be regretted at liesure as
shortsighted and simply wrong.
Willow
BarbNJ
"Beeg" <Old...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:3d08d7ec-8903-4a66...@x37g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...
I plan to get an e-book reader but I plan to read real books too. I just
won't have a whole room full of them anymore.
Barb
Pogonip
> http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_library_without_the_books/
>
>
> I was almost certain this was a joke. No joke.
>
What's next? Museums without paintings on the wall, except those
displayed on flat screen tvs?
--
Joanne
stitches @ singerlady.reno.nv.us.earth.milky-way.com
http://members.tripod.com/~bernardschopen/
Wes Struebing
wrote:
>On Fri, 4 Sep 2009 07:12:59 -0400, "Carleen" <Carl...@aol.com>
>wrote:
>
>>http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_library_without_the_books/
>>
>>I was almost certain this was a joke. No joke.
>
>What a disaster. Sheer barbarism.
>
Unbelievable!
ia...@notcox.net
Such an uncalled-for act of vandalism.
barbara fister
>>>> I was almost certain this was a joke. No joke.
>>> What a disaster. Sheer barbarism.
>>>
>> Unbelievable!
>
> Such an uncalled-for act of vandalism.
The sad thing is that there are schools everywhere without money for
books - or much of anything else. And here some eedjit is proclaiming
them an old technology and spending all kinds of money on gadgetry.
Bleh. Also - did anyone ask the kids? You can usually find an outlier
who will say they don't like books, but at my college almost all of the
students say they like books and reading even if they think they don't
have time to read outside of assignments.
We did a survey. The results surprised me - 93% said they enjoy reading
for fun, though they read very few books just for fun during the term.
When we surveyed librarians at colleges and universities, around 40%
assumed students don't like to read. And in case you think our students
are above average, they aren't on this measure according to national
surveys like the NSSE and CIRP. So either they're lying and they
actually don't enjoy reading or they don't do a whole lot of voluntary
reading because they don't have much time left after reading what
they're told to read. (They watch very little television - cable in our
dorms is too expensive. And they're too busy.)
barfly
Andrew Barss
: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_library_without_the_books/
: I was almost certain this was a joke. No joke.
I work at a major research university, and the clear trend is
all-digital journals and books (from the obscure to the very
popular). To some extent, with quarterly technical journals, there are
advantages: I can sit at my desk, do a search, compile PDFs of the papers
I need, and not clutter up my small office with yet another stack of
paper. In principle, it allows a library to continue adding to its
collection without getting rid of old ones or building new buildings.
But what is critical (and sadly not always the case) for this to work
is:
a) DRM free publication. Not just making them PDFs, but making sure that
a library that subscribes to e.g., Letters in Quantum Physics actually
owns the e-version fo the journal in perpetuity, exactly like when paper
copies of the journal sat on bookshelves. This is increasingly not
the case -- large services like JSTOR are becoming the default place for
the e-journal to reside, and we get access only by subscription. If JSTOR
goes belly up, or we don't subscribe, we lose all access to everything,
even issues that came out in years we subscribed.
b) Decent scans. Stuff published/typeset in the last four or five years
does not have this problem, but the library decided to scan all its older
paper journals -- some going back to the turn of the 20th century -- or
purchase access to scans elsewhere. When they first id this, they scanned
the journals as image files, but now the default is to use OCR.
This is a disaster in some cases. In my field (linguistics/cognition),
most articles have fairly complex diagrams, tables, charts, and
a wide variety of symbols, from math, various other alphabets, and some
special to the field.
The last three articles I tried to access for a graduate course in
semantics and logic were unusable. I mean, complete garbage. Not only
were the fonts for plain text messed up (three or four fonts per page, in
different sizes, for something that had been one font, one size in the
paper version), but the symbols, and diagrams, were just mangled, not
thre, or something else entirely. Imagine scanning a phone book and having
the numbers show up as a series of dots and random webdings.
Tough times are ahead for people who rely on published science.
-- Andy Barss
Stanley Moore
"Andrew Barss" <ba...@basil.u.arizona.edu> wrote in message
news:h7uudf$h10$1...@onion.ccit.arizona.edu...
You get the same problem with simple fiction transcrbed for Kindle. I have
trouble with this all the time. I imagine for serious work it might be
insurmountable. Take care
--
Stanley L. Moore
"The belief in a supernatural
source of evil is not necessary;
men alone are quite capable
of every wickedness."
Joseph Conrad
family
"Carleen" <Carl...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:7gcb1uF...@mid.individual.net...
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_library_without_the_books/I was almost certain this was a joke. No joke.You are what you read, in a manner of speaking.
Mark Alan Miller
"BarbNJ" <bee...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:h7rc6i$ba9$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
I'm looking seriously at buying one soon, and it won't be a Kindle, because
they don't support the most common open standards. Most libraries have
opted for EPub as their format (logically, as it is the open standard that
most of the world is moving to), and using Adobe Digital Editions for DRM.
Libraries have to use some kind of DRM system to manage loans or they would
just be giving away books. With ADE, books expire after some period of time
(usually 21 days). Fine with me for something I'm borrowing for free. The
new Sony Reader models and their software all work well with library books,
even allowing easy searching. I just need to figure out which model I like
best, and see and touch them. So far, the two newly released models don't
seem to have made their way to any stores near me. My local Borders still
has the old models on display. And the most interesting of the Sony models,
the PRS-2121 Daily Edition, doesn't come out until December. That's the one
with cell phone access to the Sony store, so more like the Kindle, and with
a bigger screen. Not as big as the Kindle DX, but tall, with a page similar
in size to a trade paperback. That one sounds very attractive to me, even
though I doubt I'd be buying much from the Sony Store as their prices are
high. Don't have to, luckily, as there are other stores selling compatible
formats for less. I still wish the displays were better (higher resolution
and contrast), but I'm running out of room for book storage.
Mark Alan Miller