One would think that eBooks and eReaders would have a negative impact on the LIS profession. Or, at the very least, you might expect that plenty of librarians are up in arms against the big technology movement.
“Libraries are about BOOKS!” they’d shout. “Technology has no place in our hallowed stacks!”
In truth, weeks of exploration have shown me next to no resistance to the addition of eBooks and eReaders in libraries. Many librarians, in fact, seem to embrace this turn of events. As has been shown in recent posts, libraries are coming up with increasingly creative ways to include these new tools to access text into their stacks.
The drawback to this that I’ve run across is that the purposes of ebooks and libraries tend to be very different; combining them may not be a bad thing, but would it really work?
A library, when it comes to physical texts and/or items, tends to be there for the purposes of loaning these things out to patrons with the expectancy that these items will be returned in the future. Ereaders, on the other hand, tend to be for the purpose of its owner purchasing texts. As the entire process is via the internet and there is no face-to-face exchange when it comes to purchasing texts with ereaders, the concept of lending tends to be an impossible one. Why pay money to virtually borrow a text when you can just keep the text instead?
Which leads to the issue of loaning when it comes to libraries. In this case, libraries serve as a middleman between the ebook company and the patron. In a library, a patron would be charged multiple times for the use of an item that they would only have to pay for once if they owned it. The process is seems to be just complicating a simple process with unnecessary steps. There are other ways to access texts; checking out the physical text itself, or interlibrary loans if your library doesn’t own it. Yes, ereaders allow faster access to texts, but the process of doing this via library tends to be a complicated one. It certainly doesn’t help that the purposes of libraries and ebooks are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Sources:
LISNews http://lisnews.org/library_thing_why_ebooks_are_bad_libraries
Library Journal http://blog.libraryjournal.com/tennantdigitallibraries/2010/08/19/e-books-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
Team Hedgehog blogs about the effects that eBooks and eReaders are having on the LIS professions.
I think that your group's topic is interesting and certainly relevant for where technology stands right now. I am a die hard physical book lover, I will be the first to admit that, and perhaps I have some bias when it comes to the topic of ereaders and ebooks, and again, I'll be the first to admit that. My question is not what the benefits of ebooks and ereaders are, but what are the cons? What sacrifice will readers and libraries, as well as the publishing world have to make in what seems to be an inevitable transition to digital formats?
ReplyDeleteTechnology is not perfect, and it is not cheap--which may cause some hesitation for some schools to adopt purely digital reading materials whose strained budget is the source for the one part-time librarian for three schools--forgive my exaggeration. And most of my preference for physical books is for the nostalgia of books, for the experience of holding a book and being able to peek ahead to see what happens, or to look at the different illustrations. I fear for what the next several generations may lose with a digital transition, the experience of interacting with physical books.
Older patrons who are more than likely set in their ways or skeptical of technology and changing how they read would protest such a dramatic change to their library should everything go digital. The keyword there is "their"--a library is a reflection of the patrons who use it and the needs those patrons have, as well as their preferences.
Ereaders provide an interesting answer to several issues in libraries, which you've addressed in your blog, but I personally feel that a balance between ereaders/ebooks and physical books would be ideal to satisfy the needs and wants of most, if not all, patrons.
I commented on this last week and for some unfortunate reason the comment did not get posted. I agree with Jen though, I am a physical book lover. We were raised in an environment without alternatives necessarily. I could as I got a little older read a book using an audio book format (I could have probably all along, but it never would have occurred to me when I was young), but that was as high tech as it probably would have been for me.
ReplyDeleteEreaders are in general just a difficult technology currently for librarians as well as users. The ability to preserve material as done with physical books isn't an option with ebooks. Not only that, unless you as a patron have a device (computer, ereader, etc) that allows you to read an ebook, you have no ability to access it. It flies a bit in the face of some of our values as future librarians.
Lastly, one the other issues with ereaders, as I am positive is mentioned in this blog elsewhere, is the inability for libraries to loan out ereaders to their patrons. It can be done of course, but not legally in many cases. For instance, we talked about Kindles and Amazon's Terms of Use in regards to this topic in 6080. According to Amazon, Kindles are not supposed to be loaned out. That makes it difficult if you have a patron that would like to read an ebook and does not have their own ereader. It creates a response for me that I don't like to give to patrons-having to say no. The hope is that eventually the barriers that ereaders have put up will disappear or at least become less at some point. Until then, we have a difficult job ahead with econtent.