Derf: The Public Library of the Future

[n2doc]

[HughBeaumont]

1. K & R for later.

[AngryAmish]

2. In a few years the need for large libraries will necessarily go away.

Download ebooks at home. Turn the libraries into cultural centers, teach interested kids art and music. Have competitions like sport competitions at school. This way schools get lower overhead.

I'm sorry but many librarians are in the buggy whip business.

[Bake]

3. Remember the Star Trek episode where Kirk's lawyer still used BOOKS?

Even in the 23rd Century, he was right. There's no substitute for the real thing. I HOPE libraries never go away.

Bake

[AngryAmish]

4. Why?

This is a serious question. I thought I would never give up newspapers. Now I have not bought one in years. You can download a college education to a kindle or ipad or even a laptop. I used to use books like Kirk's man every day. Now I have not looked in a law book in over six months. Cutting and pasting is so much easier.

For every fogey like you there are many others who see no reason for this. Yet we all bear the costs of public libraries. If their mission is to get information and entertainment into the heads of as many people as possible, especially young people they must change and do it asquickly and cost effectively as possible. Otherwise they are only serving themselves.

[Lyric]

5. The problem is that you're forgetting one very important detail.

Poor people don't have--and can't afford--things like Kindles or Nooks. Most of them don't even have computers or internet. My family was poor, and if not for the boxes full of cheap used books that my parents could buy at the Salvation Army store, I wouldn't be in college today. Those cheap, used books will be GONE if the middle class switches entirely to digital books, and according to you, public libraries are next on the chopping block.

The middle class needs to stop thinking only of itself. Otherwise, how are the working class and the middle class ever going to come together enough to put up a fight against the wealthy?

[Bigmack]

8. Bingo! The libraries were built to be free...

access to knowledge for the masses. That's why the Powers That Be want to kill them. Nothing in Murika is for free.... somebody has to make a buck off somebody else.

Libraries all over the country have experienced a big uptick in patronage during these hard times.

I'm not being a Luddite, but all that tech is ephemeral. Every time "we" change technologies... tape to CD, for example... stuff is lost/not transfered.

Books have been around since the Middle Ages, and I expect they'll outlive us.

[xmas74]

45. I took my child to the local library tonight.

We checked out a few books, read the newspaper together, found a few Masterpiece Theatre dvds to rent, and attended a craft night.

Just a couple of years ago the craft nights were almost ended, due to lack of interest. Now, thanks to the poor economy, families have to reserve their spots, since reservations are guaranteed the chance to make free crafts. (Our spots are reserved once a month until December.)

In small towns the library is still in regular use, especially now.

[WatsonT]

9. Poor people couldn't afford TVs

until the price dropped. Then they couldn't afford VCRs, until the price dropped. Then they couldn't afford DVD players, until the price dropped.

Electronic items lose their value rapidly.

Kindles are expensive now because they're still relatively new.

In a few years you'll be able to find them in garage sales for a measly couple of grand (which due to inflation is equivalent to about 10 bucks now)

[Lyric]

13. But TV wasn't replacing anything.

There was nothing lost when the age of television dawned. That's not true with Kindles/Nooks. BOOKS will be lost--or at least the inexpensive/free used variety. Can you "donate" a book from your Kindle? Even the technology becomes more affordable, the poorest of the poor will STILL not be able to afford it, perhaps for decades.

You have no idea how much poor people depend on this cheap/free books from thrift stores and libraries. It was easy for publishing companies to acquiesce to the idea of public libraries and secondhand bookstores; once those physical books were purchased, there wasn't much they could do to stop it even if they'd *wanted* to. They couldn't exactly make physical books self-destructing, after all--someone could get hurt, and then they'd get sued. But e-books? They can easily put a stop to free/secondhand e-books. They're already doing it with some library e-books; you only get to "read" the book X number of times before the file disables itself. E-book files can be programmed to self-obliterate, and there is nothing the reader can do to stop it.

I know it's convenient. I get that. But this is going to cause major problems down the road. It allows publishing companies waaaay too much control over reading material, and it's going to put an enormous burden on poor people...as if they don't have enough burdens already. Imagine how pissed you're going to be someday when you have to keep purchasing the same books, movies, and music over and over and over again because the old physical formats are mostly gone, the file variety is all you have left, and all of those files are programmed to disable/obliterate themselves after a certain number of "loads".

We WILL regret this.

[WatsonT]

15. Ask the radio industry

they were decimated by the advent of television.

And VCRs were the devil as far as the Cinemas were concerned.

Likewise any sort of recording was going to destroy the music industry.

Books are not special in this way. They are simply a transmission device. The ideas in them matter, but those can be sent out in a variety of ways. Just like cds replacing cassettes and then being replaced by mp3s didn't mean we lost all previous music.

"Can you "donate" a book from your Kindle?"

I ca copy it for free. I imagine online libraries will exist that allow people to donate thousands of books for free. People couldn't afford books either for the longest time.

"They're already doing it with some library e-books; you only get to "read" the book X number of times before the file disables itself."

Whereas you can check out a library book forever?

"It allows publishing companies waaaay too much control over reading material"

"Imagine how pissed you're going to be someday when you have to keep purchasing the same books, movies, and music over and over and over again because the old physical formats are mostly gone, the file variety is all you have left, and all of those files are programmed to disable/obliterate themselves after a certain number of "loads"."

Right because that will be the way things go. Because the internet is notorious for catering to the demands of intellectual property right holders.

On the contrary. It makes publishing far easier and removes this monopoly. If you wanted to publish a book before you'd have to convince someone it's worth the expense. Now you can type it up and put it online for free, no one gets to say otherwise.

That is democracy in action.

[Exilednight]

42. "they were decimated by the advent of television." Not True. Look at ratings for

the highest rated regular TV show, then look at the highest rated regular radio show.

[xmas74]

46. "Whereas you can check out a library book forever?"

I can check out the same book as often as I please, as long as no one else has it reserved. And once it's been returned I can check it out again.

It's wonderful for things like cookbooks, gardening books, crafts (such as sewing patterns), home improvements, etc. I have a book that I check out so much that the librarian makes jokes about how the book is ready to "go home"-to my house.

[Xithras]

22. You assume that the Kindle will still be useable in 10 years.

First off, modern electronics aren't built to last that long. The MTBF on an typical capacitor is only 5-7 years on average.

And even if your device is still working (I still have my old Atari 2600, which works fine), there's zero gurantee that it will actually load the books that are coming out in a decade. We have no ide what kind of gee-whiz features...or restrictive copyright protection schemes...that publishers will build into books of the future. What we DO know is that the Kindle's of today aren't going to run those books of tomorrow. My Atari 2600 works fine, but nobody has published a new game for it in 25 years. Which is why I also own an XBox.

The oldest paper book in my library was printed in 1878. It's as useable today as it was the day it was printed, and hasn't needed a single upgrade. DRM isn't much of an issue either. And the battery life is phenomenal.

[Bake]

6. I haven't bought a newspaper in years, either.

But I wonder what I've missed occasionally. When you only download the stuff you KNOW you want to see, you miss the article that might have caught your eye and led to a learning experience.

Same way with the statute books, in my opinion. Call me a fogey if you wish, but it's a lot easier for me to find what I'm looking for in the USC or KRS by getting in the right general vicinity and then flipping pages.

I know, you'll say you can flip pages electronically. But they haven't come out with a "flippable" version of the statutes yet, as far as I know. Plus, there's something "substantial" about a BOOK. I love books. I love the feel and smell of paper and ink. Always have, always will. When I was a kid (many years ago, so I guess I AM a fogey), I used to lie on the floor in front of the bookcase and just read the encyclopedia or the dictionary. Not looking for anything in particular, just reading to see what I might discover. I think it served me well.

Bake

[Shandris]

12. I find it fascinating how you describe the 'thereness' of a book.

Back in '91, a little-known roleplaying game company called FASA put out a mesh of a fantasy/cyberpunk game called Shadowrun. In the game world, magic had returned to the world as well as a globe-spanning VR system called the Matrix (no relation to the movie of the same name). Because everyone had access to the Matrix (even kiosk stands on the streets, so people could stop to look something up if they didn't have access to portable cyberdecks (computers)), libraries had vanished and were replaced by Matrix-downloadable versions.

The wizards even debated the merits of Matrix-stored and accessible spells versus having them scribed in tomes, like the wizards of old. One of the books had a mage describing why he didn't use the new Matrix-enabled media for his spells, and his description is pretty darn close to word-for-word what you said. I agree...I can't stand Kindles or the like. I need a book, I need the musty smell of paper if its' an old book. I need the feel of the paper flipping, the sound it makes, the way you hold it when you curl up in a chair.

Books forever, electronic media be damned.

Can you imagine losing the sum of human knowledge in one bad solar storm? One freak cosmic occurance? *shudder*

[EOTE]

32. FASA? Little known?

I was 12 in 1991 and Battletech and Mechwarrior were THE tabletop games for my friends and I. I guess I always assumed that they enjoyed fair notoriety. I don't hear much about them now, but my childhood would not have been the same without them.

[Bake]

34. Not just the solar flare danger ...

How about this ... the digital equivalent of bookburning is just flipping a switch or pressing a button. You don't even have to physically hunt down the books--just delete them from The Cloud.

Or, suppose some nefarious tyrant wanted to keep his/her subjects ignorant. All he has to do is cut off their Cloud Access (except for NFL/American Idol/whatever other mindless entertainment).

Give me my books. I can put them on my bookshelves. I can lock them away if I need to.

Bake

[csziggy]

51. I miss encyclopedias - the joy of finding odd facts on the way to what

I was originally looking up. While I love Google and Wikipedia, sometimes I miss those odd things I would never think to search for. Years age a newspaper columnist every so often had a column entitled "Things found while looking up other things" or something similar. It was always stuffed with those wonderful unexpected bits of information he had found while researching his regular columns. I always looked forward to reading those and remember them long after I forgot that writer's name.

And that ad for Bing or whatever search engine where people are spouting all kinds of irrelevant information such as would be found on a poorly constructed internet search query - I don't mind when I run into those kinds of things while I am searching. Unfortunately, I am very good at narrowing my searches and seldom go as far afield as those people in the commercial do.

[Bake]

10. By the way ... GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

:rofl: :hi: :rofl:

Bake

[EOTE]

18. Just let me relish the irony

of someone with your username advocating for books to be replaced by eReaders.

I have no problem with the move to eReaders, but I do hope that regular libraries don't go away for a good, long time. They'll continue to be very important for quite a while.

[AngryAmish]

28. shaddup, english.

[EOTE]

30. That made me laugh :)

Your comment made me think of Seth Green as a bitterly sarcastic Amish man in the movie "Sex Drive". He had me dying with laughter throughout the movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKKGpZyWj3M

[Ratty]

29. Can't borrow electronic books for free

Sure, you can download the classics from places like Project Gutenberg but books under copyright can only be borrowed as hard copy for free from a Public Library.

[Wait Wut]

31. Gotta agree with ya.

I still love books and will continue to collect antiques. But, my Kindle is my best friend. Having all those books that I'll never have time to read right there at my convenience is freakin' awesome. HOWEVER...if I love, love a book, I will go out and buy the actual old fashioned paper kind.

The benefit to students and the environment is a huge plus, as well. My only "real" complaint? Sharing books. I've gone through several copies of books because they never get returned. I can't really share my ebooks.

And, watch that "fogey" term, will ya? Geez.

[girl gone mad]

33. A Kindle can't accurately reproduce a high quality book of art..

or photography, and there are hundreds of thousands of those.

I use my 'gravitation bible' often, and though I have a digital copy, I use the printed copy when I need to get anything done. I feel the same about many of the math and quantum textbooks I use. I have to have hard copies to access the information quickly enough when I am working out problems. Digital is not a reasonable substitute for that.

[JanMichael]

40. Couple of things you are ignoring in your enjoyment of your e-reader:

That phone that you have is made of nasty, toxic materials...look up where that stuff "goes" when you decide you need a new one, or accidentally drop it in the sink.

You only have access to about 15% of books currently available; I realize that's still a large number, probably more than you can read, but in the meantime, you are limiting your reading material.

"Cutting and Pasting is easier." It is! Right up til the battery dies, or you are in a storm that has cut your power off.

When you sit at home and download your books, you are limiting your own life experiences; you are missing out on the joy of a community. I don't care if you are a high powered attorney who travels extensively...if you can't go down the street to your local library...well, that's sad.

Those phones...or any e-book reader are out of reach of many people in the world right now. Here in NC, there are places in the Appalachians where they wouldn't even recognize what you are holding.

E-readers are not the solution...they are fun gadgets, but they will eventually make the class divide deeper...not the intent of reading, and education, eh.

[WatsonT]

7. Clay tablets are here to stay!

Sure some of the kids may prefer papyrus, but there's no substitute for the real thing.

/dead tree books/magazines/newspapers/etc are on the way out. No the books won't disappear today. And they will keep printing them, just fewer and fewer every year until they become a specialty item.

//it is kind of sad but it is also a wonderful opportunity: books will become even cheaper and more accessible. The last time that happened we had a Renaissance.

[Lyric]

14. They'll only be "accessible" to certain people

who have access to the internet and can afford the "reader" gadget. And they'll also be limited as to how many times you can read each book/listen to each song/watch each movie before the file disables itself permanently. Then you get to keep re-buying the same things over and over and over again. When you factor in the cost of constantly re-purchasing media, I don't think anything is going to be "cheaper".

[WatsonT]

17. "Reader gadgets" will be cheap

they're already dropping precipitously.

When you can buy one for 10 bucks and then an entire book for pennies you argument will seem pretty silly.

"And they'll also be limited as to how many times you can read each book/listen to each song/watch each movie before the file disables itself permanently."

No, some formats will be like that, not all or most. They're out now, people are buying ebooks that don't do anything like what you say. That's just fear mongering.

Besides books wear down over time as well.

"When you factor in the cost of constantly re-purchasing media, I don't think anything is going to be "cheaper"."

Look at MP3s. Do they follow this pattern that you are describing? Do they degrade after x-number of listens?

[AngryAmish]

26. This reader gadget I use is called a phone. It was free with my service plan.

[Retrograde]

23. Bah! Cave walls were good enough for my grandpappy, they're good enough for me

Young whippersnappers with their fancy clay tablets....


I can see a use for both - and there are probably advantages to other means of knowledge information we haven't thought of yet. Electronic resources have the advantage of being cheap (once you get past the cost of the readers), potentially updateable, and don't take up space in the house. Printed books have the advantage that they don't require accessories, the format doesn't change over time (well, it does a little, but glacially),and are easier for my aging eyes. They also make better room furnishings, IMHO, and if the power goes out or the neighbors inadvertently cut your DSL connection while trimming trees they're still usable.

[yurbud]

19. the one thing I don't like about electronic texts: it's too easy to rewrite history with them.

[RainDog]

20. you obviously don't know much about librarianship

b/c librarians are also involved in issues concerning IT and ebook distribution for patrons, not just paper books - however, librarians are also concerned with issues of accessibility for people - including the poor who cannot afford expensive reading devices.

in addition, public libraries for states and universities serve as archives for storage and access to documentation of physical books that have value as an object of study. They are also involved in creating digital archives of these same documents.

But those who don't really know what librarians do often think that their profession is about one thing - when it most definitely is not.

[AngryAmish]

27. There are few things in the world more funny than the pretensions of librarians to a profession

But that is their scam, not mine.

[Iris]

35. yeah. Total scam.

:sarcasm:

[JanMichael]

36. Really? Can you catalog materials consisting of several different formats? Are

you proficient in the use of many different types of databases?
Can you index books? Serial publications (yep, it's different)
Do you understand how to write a concise abstract?
Are you proficient in the use of most technologies used in the library system, including teaching them?
Do you understand how to search all the books in the reference room at your local universities library?
Can you write and code Finding Aids?
How about preservation techniques of materials?
Do you have any idea how to develop a collection?
Do you know what MARC, AARC2, RDA, EAD and HTML is?

[AngryAmish]

41. That is called a job, not a profession.

[JanMichael]

44. Would you care to give me your definition of "Profession?"

I accept "profession" to mean a "job" that requires prolonged training and one that a person feels called upon to do.

Librarian would fit that definition. Perhaps you would like to view my wife's transcripts?

[RainDog]

47. you're trying to talk to an ignorant asshole

who is most definitely not worth the effort - on this topic and many, many more.

[JanMichael]

38. the person you are responding to sounds like he has been down to the

local branch to check out a book on some neato subject, or perhaps a mystery novel...and has NO clue how it got there, how it was processed, or how he was able to find it so easily. Sad, isn't it.

[RainDog]

48. not to mention

that librarianship is not limited to the local public library. many librarians have PhDs, read and/or speak more than one other language and are the leading academics in some academic fields, such as pre-printing press manuscripts.

[MadHound]

24. Except much as with the digitization of recorded music and speech,

Not all books will be digitized.

Nearly thirty years after the digital medium of CD's made their appearance, there is still a vast swath of music that is unavailable in digital format, and I doubt it will ever be availaboe.

The same is going to happen with books.

[RainDog]

25. exactly

and many things that have value as a record of our experience in this world will be lost without those who maintain access to those things.

[JanMichael]

37. AND! Those neat ebooks? They STILL need to be cataloged;

the bibliographic description still has to be maintained...and oftentimes they are more expensive than regular books.

[AngryAmish]

43. And all the oral stories of the pre-golden age greeks.. gone, 'cept for Homer.

We are very busy apes. IS the collected speech of Rush Limbaugh worth saving?

There are losses. Great things survive. We are not perfect. But do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[RainDog]

49. you know

it's sort of sad and funny at the same time to read you discuss things about which you are so obviously ignorant. but opinions, as we all know, are like assholes.

[Iris]

50. I'd argue yes Limbaugh's speeches are worth saving. They are part of the record and may help future

generations answer the age-old question, "WTF?"

[csziggy]

52. Yes, a friend recently recommended I get a ereader of some kind

Since I read a lot. But what I am currently reading is my collection of science fiction anthologies, some of which date to the late 1930s. Many of those had very limited distribution when they were new. Few made it into libraries. Few copies have been preserved. I doubt most will be digitized unless some science fiction fan with a collection like mine gets around to doing it.

[LeftinOH]

11. The best thing about books= they don't need to be turned on, plugged in,

re-charged, etc. I'd rather tuck in with a good book than with an electrical device that I'll eventually need to turn off.

[n2doc]

21. They also survive being dropped better

And unlike a kindle, if you drop it in a bucket of water, you can still read it (although it will get wrinkly).

[yurbud]

16. K & R

[hayu_lol]

39. Millions of jobs have been created by the book industry...

they would not presently exist without hardcopy books being paid for and printed.

Think of the three year old child...holding(maybe chewing on)a book that is age related. Kids like to go back and forth over their books. Books are still an art form.

Don't know what I would do without the library I have selected over my lifetime. Also adds a touch of class to any room decor...without buying books by the yard from interior designers.

Physical books are important. Wonder how electronic books work out in Braille?

[yurbud]

53. the bumps would pop up and change as needed, like pixels