The art of ebook seduction.

Gone are the days of literary seduction.

You've seen the films where the older professor attempts to seduce the naive student by removing a weathered tome of poetry from the bookshelf and says, "this was my copy of Rimbaud when I was in college. I hope you find the beauty in the words as I once did." And with a flourish, the professor inscribes, "Find the beauty" and hands it off. Thus, the game of seduction has begun.

So the professor could have a box full of poetry books and each term could put one out the window to age it and then scribble some notations in the margins like "Yes!" and "Love!" and "Professors make better lovers!"

But what about today? How does that dance of love begin with our new ereaders?

The professor says, "Let me see your iPad so I can send you a copy of my favorite book of poetry."

But that's where the similarity ends:

"Let me just open that app. And now I'll access the online store. I'm finding the book. Let me just sign into my account through PayPal. And I'm downloading the book. Now, let's open the app to transfer the book to your iPad and I'll agree to the terms of service stating that this is a gift since your iPad isn't registered to me and there can only be one copy on any device at a time. And I'm installing the security patch. And the transfer application. Now you need to agree on your iPad to allow me to access it to transfer the file. And now you agree to the terms and uncheck the security to receive the file. And I'm sending the file. And you have it. And now I'll delete the copy from my iPad. And there you are. I hope this helps you to find the beauty in your life."

Not so sexy now.

Everything you've ever read is wrong.

If you read a book published before 2010, then you'd best forget about it. That book was written for someone less enlightened than you, with your social networking and facebooking and tweeting.

In case you haven't heard, reading has changed. It is no longer the solitary pursuit once prized by eggheads. Readers used to sit quietly with their books, read the words, then have deep thoughts about them. The words were fixed on the page allowing for our thoughts to coalesce around them. The words became part of us as we found ourselves experiencing the same emotions and ideas that the author intended for us to share. And these emotions and ideas could span generations and give us a link back through time as we formed empathetic bonds through those printed words.

But reading has evolved. We no longer read for ourselves, but for others. We read to share. We highlight words in our ereaders and share those words with others. We tweet our favorite passages to others so they can witness our intellectual transformations. I read to better myself through your eyes, not my own. I don't exist without your retweets.

So these are the ebook and ereader questions: is the act of reading changing because the medium has changed? Do people still read for the same reasons that they did when the medium was paper? Is reading evolving into a social activity?

You could argue that it's always been a social activity: books communicate between the author and the reader; plays communicate to the audience; picture books are read aloud to children; book clubs discuss the work among the group; poetry communicates to, um, no one since 1967, and on and on.

But the act of reading has always been a solitary act. I seek a quiet place to read free from distractions, then I open the book and read. I am alone with the words.

But what about ebooks? These are designed for devices that perform a multitude of other tasks. They allow for annotating, highlighting, saving, possibly forwarding to other devices. The device makes for easy sharing.

So if ereaders change the way we read by giving us all these methods for sharing what we read and how we think about what we read, then will the books change? Will books become more social?

Are there books with spots at the end of the chapter that say, "Twitter break" or "tweet this!" What about embedded tweet functionality? As soon as you highlight something, tiny box opens to ask "What do you want to do with this? T(witter)? F(acebook)? A(mazon) B(uzz) L(ibraryThing)?"

What about the length of the chapters? Are they written shorter to be read during those few minutes when we can devote attention to the book? Like are new books written with 2 page chapters?

Seriously, is the act of reading changing? I mean, there really is book called How to Read a Book. It was published in 1940. It is outdated? One of the most important rules for reading is to read actively, to analyze what you are reading, its purpose and the author's goals in writing it. Is this rule obsolete today with so much hogging our attention?

Does this new medium negate serious reading (see the Annoyed Librarian for her definition of a serious reader)? You can spin molecules on you iPad screen and you can hold your screen up to the world and have your iPad tell you more about your place in it. So no, the technology doesn't destroy the reading experience, but it provides enough distractions that the serious reader can't be blamed for succumbing to its many charms.

Reading shouldn't be the same as simply looking at words. It should also be more than just knowing the difference between dog and frog. But, again, is the act of reading changing?

Anyway, if there is any point to this, it's that the solitary act of reading is dead and interactive technology done it.

And then, when serious reading is dead, would it be wrong to read Walden on your ereader?

For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.
[project gutenberg]

Will anyone ever read Walden on an iPad? Will the iPad explode from the irony? Check your warranty and tos; it's probably in there somewhere.

Leave me alone.

Here is an interesting piece from the NYT, "E-Books Make Readers Less Isolated," AUSTIN CONSIDINE, August 20, 2010.

That's interesting for me because I'm not sure how he means the word, Make:
Make as in a state of being? or Make as in force? Because I may not be a Luddite, but I'm absolutely convinced that almost all convenience technology (pretty much everything developed after 1989) is just a huge pain in my ass.

And this statement from the article makes absolutely no sense at all to me:

“I think, historically, there has been a stigma attached to the bookworm, and that actually came from the not-untrue notion that, if you were reading, you weren’t socializing with other people,” Dr. [Paul] Levinson said. “But the e-reader changes that also because e-readers are intrinsically connected to bigger systems.”

The "not-untrue notion"? So, is he saying that when one is reading, one is not socializing? If he is, then his second statement seems to say that ereaders fail as a reading device when they remain connected to bigger systems. Because is it not untrue that reading quietly to yourself is the antithesis to socializing? Yes, that's what he just said. Aren't you paying attention?

[Not from the article, made up by me]

What'cha reading?

Well, I'm not reading anything now because I'm talking to you. I was reading, 50 Ways to Kill Someone with Your iPad, and I was just finishing the part where it says I can fling my iPad and hit the person in the throat. In fact, all 50 ways in this book seem to involve hitting the offending person in the throat.

And what about this connection to bigger systems as an excuse to interfere with one's quiet time? Is Levinson saying that in addition to the usual nosy people, our ereaders will never let us be? It's bad enough when other people interfere, but now my ereader itself is going to keep me from enjoying my book:

As I'm reading my Chelsea Handler book, my ereader sends these pop-up messages:

"R. Jones of Austin, TX started this book on 8/14 and has already finished it. But you are still on page 161. Don't you like this book? Do you need help with the big words?"

"A. Smith of Cleveland, OH sent this comment about this book: 'Diiiiirtygirl! I'm laughing my ass off!' Like A. Smith, are you laughing your ass off? Tell me how much."

And (getting back the article) what the hell is this supposed to mean?

Debra Jaliman, a dermatologist in Manhattan, said, “We are in a high-tech era and the sleekness and portability of the iPad erases any negative notions or stigmas associated with reading alone.”

What? Books are ugly? I'm looking at a book right now that is both sleek and portable. Look, it's in my hand or in my briefcase or tucked under my arm. How much more portable can you get? And the cover design is beautiful. Or are you that insecure that you need a $700 hunk of plastic to be able to leave your house? It's like saying that your Hermès bag or your Panerai wristwatch help you to get out of bed in the morning.

If all reading becomes a social event and we can never think deep thoughts about the ideas contained in these books because we are continually sharing our immediate thoughts with others, then what will happen in the future? How will learning evolve when we need each other's comments to form opinions?

Will we even have "True or False" questions on tests in the future? Because of the social nature of learning and the popularity of Facebook, teachers might only feel safe enough to ask whether students Like something:

1. Fifty million Africans were transported to the Americas during the slave trade and many were tortured by their captors.
   12 students like this.
   


2. Millions of Jews, gypsies and homosexuals were sent to concentrations camps during the Nazi regime and many of them were murdered in huge ovens.
   8 students like this.

And then society will have to wonder whether these students meant Like as in agree with the statement or Like as in approve of the actions. And we will never have a restful night's sleep again with our handguns forming uncomfortable lumps under our pillows.

There is no stigma associated with reading a book quietly to yourself. Unless you read something the rest of us find idiotic. If you want people to approach you, get a baby or a dog.

“Strangers constantly ask about it,” Michael Hughes, ... said of his iPad, which he uses to read a mix of novels and nonfiction. “It’s almost like having a new baby.”

Oh, the iPad is like a baby. But it's not a baby, right? Right? Because you would never leave your iPad in the car on a hot day..., but your baby? Well, just read the news for the ruling on that one.

There can only be one reason for the current orgiastic response to the iPad, and that is, to destroy the medium of paper.

I can find no other logic for choosing to read from an ereader based on these comments about sharing or convenience. Except maybe that you read crap. And that some snob laughed at you one day on the subway.

But about feeling less isolated? Aren't you going to listen to music when you read that book on your iPad? So your hands are occupied with you iPad, your eyes are occupied with your book (or shopping), your ears are filled with Belle and Sebastian, your mouth is filled with organic dark chocolate and currants, and your nose... well, I guess that leaves your nose to interact with those strangers.

And depending on which big city you're in, with the smoke, the sweat and the stink, you probably wish your nose had something else to fill it. Give it time and I'm sure Steve Jobs will come up with something.

Burning down the house.

Imagine telling your library patrons, "I'm going to take 20 books based on some decision where you had no input and that's all you get to read."

No, this isn't Cuba. This is a library-loaned ebook reader. And yes, before you get all nitpicky on me because Comic-Con is over and you didn't get to ask if The Avengers or Tron or blah blah blah will blah blah, I know that some libraries allow patrons to download new titles to the Kindle and that some libraries use ebooks to satisfy some ILL requests. I'm not an idiot; I just don't care. And you haven't figured that out yet.

I keep falling back on how much technology fucks with us. And I don't see any real benefit from what's new this month compared to last year. So we have ebook readers. But that proves my point. What does it do that's new? It has a screen which is guess is newish. But I still need to type and tap and click stuff. So now I need to learn a whole different way to read.

It doesn't zap the book directly into my brain, so what's the point? It's one step forward, three steps back.

Each time we need to learn a new interface, it's three steps backward.

Don't try to convince me that you are the progressive librarian because you are not. Ebooks have more limitations than printed books. At least, for libraries.

Oh, the.effing.librarian, you are just stuck in the past. You don't want to empower your users.

Ok, I'm reading a book. How many ways do I need to know to read a fucking book? How is making people feel stupid going to empower them.

Librarian:
Yes, sir, click that and move that and slide that and shake that, and, Look! you're reading the first page of an ebook! Welcome to the new world! Now do that 461 more times to read the whole thing!

Library Patron:
Go fuck yourself.

I don't have anything against the Amazon Kindle if you want to buy one for your library to educate your users to what an ebook reader is, to have some fun playing with it, but don't try to convince me that 10 or 20 of those hunks of plastic are going to solve any real library issues. Not with DRM and Amazon's ability to delete books, and the possible privacy issues with Amazon tracking what people highlight on their readers, and even with just keeping a running log of all the books that have been downloaded, or not offering any real library-friendly or open source business model, I don't see any of this being in the library's interest.

We loan DVDs, but we don't loan DVD players. We loan books about using software, but we don't loan the software so you can read the book to learn how to use it.

There are lots of decisions we make already that limit your fun in our library. I like to think that our library is mostly fun and we express that each time we answer, "F. U." when you make some stupid demand.

Every time you embrace a new and different technology, you are only adding convenience to an increasingly limited supply of materials for an increasingly limited borrower population. So you are reducing your patron's freedom of access to information. So don't brag about intellectual freedom while you reduce the overall volume of materials available.

And don't brag about digital access when providing it requires the user to leap all new hurdles in our technological bureaucracy:

Do you have a wireless enabled device? Wifi? 3G? 4G? Do you have desktop or laptop computer? Windows? Linux? Macintosh? Have you installed the software from the link provided on our website? Do you run the security update? Did you connect the wireless device via the USB cable connector? Did you sync the device
and enter its unique ID? Did you choose a password? Did you interrupt the download process by scratching your ass and creating an electrostatic charge? Because that voids the warranty.

This is just as bad or worse than storing all of your print collection in a distant building "in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of The Leopard'."

I had two patrons in the last week who called about their recently purchased Nook ebook readers. One guy just followed along with me until I heard, "Got it. I'm downloading it. Yeah, got it. Thanks. If I need anything else I'll call you."

And during the other call, all I heard in the background was, "Tell him it's a NOOK. Did you tell him it's a NOOK?" while the guy didn't seem to understand anything I said. So tell me how "library 2.0" or mobile or chat reference or digital or progressive is going to help that second guy because the only way he's not going to shove that Nook back in the box and never look at it again is if I tell him to bring it into the library (with his laptop) to show him how to download and transfer ebooks... well, not show him, but do it for him... two or three times...

Screencast? Stop. I'll need to make a screencast just to show him how to watch the screencast.

Library Makes $0 on Ebook Sale.

I really have nothing to add to that. I just wondered about book sales in the future when all the print books are gone. And since we can't resell ebooks, well... that was it... go back to what you were doing.

don't get me started with the cutesy headlines...

So my news reader shows me this: "Check it out - or click it out - from New York Public Library"
by Christopher Schuetze, Sunday, July 11th 2010
...
but let me first say this: all you news sites that have started embedding hidden code when I copy/paste are really pissing me off.

I don't know if you visitors blog news, but these news sites now tack on all this extra code when you copy, like this,
Read more: htp://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/bronx/2010/07/11/2010-07-11_check_it_out_or_click_it_out_from_library.html#icze0tQivHaeG

I understand that the aggregator link whores have driven you to this, but I'm just an honest, hard-working blogger; I'm not one of the thousands of blogger sites out there stealing your crap so they can sell ads. Look, I don't even have ads. Except for my contract with British Petroleum ("Our product is so awesome, we're giving it back to the ocean.").

It's bad enough that you hotlink to everything, so I can't even move my mouse three millimeters without activating some scripted popup. The particular NY Daily News story has 13 links including one for America. So I can click on that to see every story the paper has done on America???!!! That's super useful for my research.

But let me get back to the cutesy little headline, "Check it out - or click it out."

What the hell is that? Did the library come up with that gem?

Why "click it out"? Because you click the mouse to download the ebook? It hurts my brain to read that. What are you going to call it when the download goes to an iPhone? Tap it out? Pinch it out? Pinch it and spread it? Because I swear to God, if I hear some guy in the library just sitting there saying, "pinch it and spread it" over and over, I'm calling the cops. I don't care what he's downloading.

And here is a comment I don't understand:

"I would not have thought, 10 years ago, that I would be comfortable with reading digital books," said [Anne] Thornton [director of reference].

Aren't librarians supposed to be nerds? Well, it seems Anne is not nerd enuf.

Really? Not comfortable reading digital. I played over a dozen Infocom and other text adventures on my computer in 1980s, with my eyes swollen and red from not blinking for three hours straight and I traveled w or se or wandered through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

Don't tell me that wasn't reading.

In a 1983 Washington Post article, employee Michael Dornbrook expressed a similar sentiment: “Dornbrook believes Infocom's games are ‘the beginning of a new art form,’ one that ‘could be a significant percentage of book reading 20 years from now'”
(Suplee, Curt. “Through the Zorking Glass.” Washington Post, December 22 1983, http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/post83.html)
source, http://maher.filfre.net/if-book/if-4.htm

So it's been more than 20 years. Who ever said that computer nerds were good at math.

Minus the "E"

Consider these questions:

1. What is the correct procedure for borrowing and reading a book from the library? Do I need a library card to get one?
2. I did it once a while ago, but I can't remember how. How are the books organized? Can I find them by author?
   
3. And what do I do after I have the book? How do I open it? Is it intuitive? How do I advance through it?
4. I'm also interested in bookmarking in case I stop reading for a while: will the book remember where I left off or is there something else I need to do?
5. And when I've finished with it, what do I do? Does it get returned immediately, or do I need to do something? Does the book just disappear when my time is up?

These all seem like legitimate questions with the "E" added. Remove it and you sound like an idiot.

So why does adding the "E" to the word "Book" suddenly make all these questions seem normal? E-book, normal questions. Regular book, crazy questions.

Really? 3, 4 and 5 seem normal to you with the word "book"? Where the hell do you work?

Who will win the Ebook wars?

Oh my God, Apple has sold a gazillion iPads; what will Amazon do to increase Kindle sales? The Nook is for sale at Best Buy.

I DO NOT FUCKING CARE. I probably care more about which hair style Kate Gosselin wears on Dancing with the Stars (I believe it's the 'Betty Hutton').

Oprah, their peers, ego and infomercials influence library borrowers. I don't care how fast the ebook market is expanding, the ratio is still about 6 to 1 on people using our computers versus those using wifi with their portable devices.

People still need libraries to help them find jobs.
People still need libraries to help them learn to read.
People still need libraries to help them expand their intellectual, philosophical and emotional horizons.
People still need libraries to help them save money.
People still need libraries to help them function and cope and imagine and everything else that people need that they can't get from just sitting around at home.

I will care about the ebook wars when my library hangs the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED sign across all that other stuff. Which means, I think, never.

(...actually, after thinking about it, the ration of portable device users would be greater since that one user stays connected while 3 or 4 or 5 or more library computer users come and go... so chisenbop that, math nerds.)

Mayans had ebooks.

For all we know, maybe they did, but we don't have the technology to read them.

Lynn Neary at NPR asks: "What's The Value Of An E-Book?" I say, no value at all.

Jason Epstein, ... says e-books are "the most exciting event, as far as books are concerned, in 500 years."

I'm confident that 500 years from now, archaeologists (assuming humans or evolved bunnies are still here and a modern society still functions) will wonder why, in 2010, all human observation, communication and thought ceased. And the answer will, of course, be that econtent became the dominant media format after that year.

After a few more posts I'll have enough material to publish my third book. When printed on paper, it is almost guaranteed to outlast every tweet from each of the millions of twittererers twittererering this year. And the.effing.librarian will outlast every word published exclusively in an ebook format. Doesn't that make you feel sick?

I've blogged this topic going way back to the beginning of the.effing.librarian here, and I'll probably blog about it again. You notice I don't call my blogging writing... because it isn't writing until it's written down. As long as it remains electrons, it's nothing but a component of air.


Let's say an ebook reader survives for 500 years, what will happen when it's found? Someone has to figure out how to turn it on. And assuming the board and memory isn't fried, and the stored data isn't totally corrupted or the screen isn't shattered, the device will boot up and do something. And maybe the content will be read.

But what if all the books are "in the cloud"? The reader will blink and search and search and blink until it times out because the servers with all the data are unreachable.

But if the internet is completely unchanged for 500 years, maybe they can track the address of the host server over in Mountain View, CA, and they might just be able to get the devices to communicate, and once and for all, find out what humans cared about in that distant past.

And they will read Twilight. Or one of the free Kindle titles like, His Lady Mistress.

But maybe nothing will work and our time on earth will remain a huge mystery. And that's probably a good thing. Because if we are to be remembered for our [ahem] digital culture, for Grand Theft Auto, Old Dogs, Fox News, Facebook, YouTube, and American Idol, then we should just be forgotten.

Why Ebooks are Dead.

Like many of you, I search for library news. Okay, fine, I search for library porn news. And this came back: "Online 3D porn library unveiled."

And that is why ebooks are already dead. I don't care how easy the "e ink" technology used in the readers resembles ink on paper or how little energy the reader uses to display text. I don't care about the thousands of books I can carry in my hand. Like millions of you, I care about naked people.

The porn industry understands what people want. Sure, some people will continue to read books on some electronic device, but more people want to view full-color, HD, and possibly 3-D, naked bodies on their portable devices.

"For several decades, the adult entertainment industry has driven adoption of every significant new entertainment delivery system - the VHS home-video craze in the 1980s, the satellite television mania in the 1990s and the present day internet," said Bad Girls producer Lance Johnson.

No one wants to invest in ebook readers when 3-D, wireless, flexible e-paper, HD porn is just around the corner. So libraries should wait until next year before they spend money on some product with a very finite shelf life. Ebooks as we know them now, will be gone soon. Well, not totally gone, I mean some people still use beepers, right?

Your library can still subscribe to an ebook service that provides for downloads of books for your patrons, but don't go spending ten grand on a bunch of readers to loan out. Unless you still have a shelf full of 8-Track tape machines that continue to circulate: you know, if your library mission is to maintain a collection of obsolete technology.

When it comes to technology, follow the money. And from what I can see, the big money is in naked people. So I say to librarians everywhere: follow the naked people.

Unless it's a solitary naked guy following you home from the parking garage. At that point, you need to run. And yell for the police.

Top 10 (minus 7) Reasons Why We Already Live in The Matrix

Sometimes I think we are already living in the world of The Matrix. The only thing that brings me back to reality is that I'm forty pounds away from having Neo's trim 29-inch waist. If only I could cut out the donuts, I could move faster than speeding bullets.

In the movie, The Matrix was one big virtual environment. And what we saw on screen wasn't even the original version of it. So if the movie version of The Matrix was, say, Matrix version 4.1, Red Queen, then we exist in something like Matrix 1.2, Dodo.

1. Social Networking sites. Given. No need to explain this. But in case you're unaware.. each site is it's own little world filled with friends and unfriends and followers and unfollowers. Social networking sites are The Matrix Lite.

2. The Digital World. We live in a digital world and every file can be edited to our satisfaction. Think about all the activities where you participate in a virtual environment. From online shopping to chat to GPS navigation to microblogging. For now you can't take a dump online, but you can find the nicest place to do it. The reason I think The Matrix is here is that we have or will soon have a generation of people who don't know what life was like before. To them, there has always been "view all of xxxx's friends" on MySpace, texting, instant downloads and complete access to all the information in the world from the screen of a little black box smart phone.

3. Ebooks. Ebooks are going to fulfill the promise of every fantasy every reader has ever had. From fan fiction to interactive fiction, ebooks will allow the creator and the reader to transform the material to satisfy our every whim. Don't like Stephen King's latest ending? Purchase the license to reedit the book yourself. Or maybe he can write 10 endings and you can purchase the one you want. We're already accustomed to seeing Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner, it's going to be so much easier to rewrite for Scarlett or Holden or Hermione. Eventually, I see authors simply licensing characters to us to create their stories for them. The way everyone is talking about the potential for ebooks, vooks and schnooks, and the ability for authors to alter the reading experience, it's like none of them ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

In this world, anything that can be manipulated, will be. What if you don't like my avatar, but you like what I have to tweet? Why shouldn't you be allowed to change my appearance? We can just alter our realities through computers. Trust me, if you look anything like your avatar, I'm substituting Natalie Portman's smile. And Katy Perry's boobs.

When there is no longer one reality to connect us that does not exist outside of the virtual world, then that is The Matrix.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing. It is to me because like Neo and Morpheus, I can see it. But to the people living inside The Matrix, the ones who don't know, or like Joey Pants (Cypher), who prefer their life within it, that world is perfectly normal. All I'm saying is that it's here. It's not in the places where the people are too poor, but it's here. And while we are all online, those other people are searching for clean water to drink. Oh, sorry, did that just make you feel bad? Maybe you should tweet about it.

Money for Suck.

Here is an interesting proposal from Alex Beam of The Boston Globe: libraries should buy e-book readers for their patrons to show them how they suck.

He didn't actually say any of that, but he said to buy readers to show everyone "the possibilities and limitations of digital books."

Here is the full paragraph for context:

I worry that libraries, even the newest ones, risk becoming fortresses buttressed by books, protecting Gutenberg’s technology for reasons of principle rather than pragmatism. Librarians need to educate themselves, and us, about the possibilities and limitations of digital books. Right now, the Jeff Bezoses of the world - he is the rosy-eyed, huckster boss of Amazon - have the stage to themselves, and, as I write, consumerist lemmings are dropping $200 to $250 for e-readers, mainly because they are well promoted.

I understand his point. Like many libraries, we offer Overdrive ebooks to our patrons. But we don't have readers for them to borrow to experience what an ebook is and whether they might want to buy themselves a reader.

This is one area where libraries are ahead of the curve to the disadvantage of our patrons. We offer a service whereby they need to spend a lot of their own money to enjoy. In the past, from what I remember, libraries added DVDs to the collection after most people already had the players in their homes. And if someone still doesn't have one, he can get one from Kmart for around $20. And basic mp3 players for downloadable audiobooks are now around the same affordable price.

This is a similar situation with the computers we provide: these are big ticket items that many people can't afford. So the library buys computers and software to try to narrow the gap between the digital haves and the have-nots.

But with a new service like ebooks, once the library adds them to the collection through a company like Overdrive, it's like the library is choosing to actively ignore the set of our patrons who can't afford the readers. I can't think of another service we offer where the patron needs an expensive gadget to join the party.

So libraries should add this cost to the total budget for ebook subscriptions. If you have $20,000 for ebooks, pull off $3,000 for readers, and circulate those, too.

And maybe our patrons won't care about ebooks once they get a taste of them. Maybe they'll go back to their old reliable dead trees.

Or maybe libraries, as we currently know them, will cease to exist, replaced by download stations and a few USB cables, or a wi-fi hub and some vending machines.

No, I don't don't think an ebook reader could replace me. Unless there's a model that breaks down all the time and whose battery overheats and catches fire, then, yeah, my job is over.

oh, if only they knew...

I don't know what kind of librarian I am. I'm not even sure if I know what a librarian is anymore. Or if I ever knew.

But I'm pretty confident that no librarian is really sure of what she should be doing to serve the public, to build and maintain the library collection, to feel useful.

Probably like your library, our library attempts to be more "welcoming" and to "maintain its relevance" by offering things like downloadable audiobooks and ebooks to our customers.

And I don't think that most people (or librarians) even understand how these new technologies can isolate them (the customers), frustrate them, and make them feel that the library is, in fact, irrelevant. And that they, the customers, are unwelcome.

I get emails every week from library patrons who are upset that they purchased some thingamajig that doesn't work with what we offer them. Instead of finding out how they will use the device and then purchasing the best hunk of crap that fills those needs, they blindly buy what some commercial tells them to buy and then blame us for not supporting their ill-informed hardware choices.

So it made me a little giddy when I read this article where someone gets it and explains it all for you:

"To help you sort through the muddle, we've explained below how the library's
media downloads work with some of the most popular portable devices...
iPhones and iPods: There's good and bad news,...[it] works with iPhones and iPods plugged into PCs, not Macs.
Blackberries, Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices: If you own one of these gizmos,... Your device can read Denver Library eBooks -- some of them, anyway.
Android phones: Suckers!
Sony Reader: Well, look at you, fancy-pants Sony Reader owner. Your little
thingamabob can read all of the library's eBooks, not to mention to its MP3-style audio books.

Joel Warner, Denver Westword, an independent weekly paper, so there's probably no reason
why I should give them a writing credit..

As you can see, it's nearly impossible to know which devices work and which won't, and then whether they might work in the future with software or firmware upgrades or patches or apps or cracks or...

All this crap, of course, diverts money from the purchase of print materials. The stuff we are told that no one wants anymore. But the stuff that pretty much everyone knows how to use. Go figure.

All I Need Is...

To read an ebook, all I need is:

• a) a Kindle, electricity, and access to a file or site with content to view or download; or
  
• b) a computer, electricity, access to a file or site with content to view or download, and software to view the content; or
  
• c) a portable device like a smart phone, electricity, access to a file or site with content to view or download, and an application to view the content.

To read a printed book, all I need is:

• A book.
  And natural or artificial light, if you want to get picky.

It doesn't make sense to you, but when I see someone reading a book without the book, I want to say, "Get a horse."

I also like to make a fart noise with my mouth whenever I see someone bend over. But that's not even relevant to anything in this post.

Amazon Kindle

I already put my comment on the new ebook product on lisnews ("Kindling"), but there are other things I was thinking:
I don't really have anything against new products. I understand that we no longer live in the 1950s when the strength of the American middle class was to save money. Now we need to spend as quickly as possible and keep money moving around so no one can ever truly understand how much we owe to China. So buy a Kindle if you want one, or even if you don't. But please buy something. Uncle Sam wants it.

But about Kindle: does it have a speaker to listen to the downloaded books. My Adobe Acrobat reader "reads" to me in a slightly retro sci-fi voice (currently "Michelle") that isn't close to a professional dramatic reading, but it gets the job done. Does Kindle do this?
I see from these specs that the answer it no.

"It also has an SD slot for additional storage, or for storing audio (either Audible books you've downloaded on your PC or MP3 files for background music) and a headphone jack."

Is it difficult to include a tiny speaker in later models for that long drive? If it's able to download news and websites, I might want it to read to me.
At $399, would I be happier spending another $100 for a low-end notebook/laptop? But that could weigh 7 lbs. and be 3 times larger. For libraries, the laptop could be the better choice, so I find it odd when I hear opinions like this one:

"Ward (Peter, library director of the Lindenhurst Memorial Library) said that if the prices go lower and more patrons want it, "then certainly we will be required to get it."

I don't think any library should ever be required to purchase anything, except soap in the bathrooms for our patrons to wash their clothes in the sink.

I can't stand manufactured demand.

I wish I could find an article I read once (from around 1981) about punk rock that referred to a new band named "Bloontz." (Oddly, there was a real band named Bloontz, so think the name in the article was a coincidence.) I think the point was that the guy was tired of hearing about a new, great band about every week and Bloontz was the generic name for them. It was about not being a sucker for trends, about being true to yourself, and included the reminder, "Marilyn Monroe died for your sins."