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The future will judge academic librarians by how well they were able to build coalitions across institutions and negotiate with publishers to bring digital books into a co-equal status with physical books.

"Latest figs from AAP (Association of American Publishers) put ebook sales up 173.9% through end July 2009. A caveat to this …ebook sales made up just 0.6% of overall book sales in 2008 - according to Bowker - which explains the steep growth. So - the ebook sales graph shows a lovely looking curve, but the steepness is really to do with the starting point. Growth always looks impressive from a zero base! Let's look at the ebook market another way. If you read the headline about Amazon's Kindle, this sounds a bit like a revolution. Day one of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol and the Business Insider reports: "Kindle version of the book on top!" (The Business Insider 16.09.09) Steve Windwalker at the Kindle Nation blog says this could be "the biggest story of 2009 in the book trades." As he points out, the most popular book in the world is selling more copies as an electric version than a print version at the most popular bookstore in the world. Or, another version of the story - one week later - in the same news source: Kindle verdict: nothing special" The Business Insider, 22.09.09 "The Lost Symbol sold just 100,000 in e-books format according to Doubleday. Overall Doubleday sold 2 million copies. The 5% ratio of e-books to print is about in-line with the average for book sales."

Libraries already act like Google in many ways. Or I should say instead, Google acts like libraries. It is the mission of both to organize the world's information, to make it openly accessible, to find and present the most authoritative (by many definitions) sources, to instill an ethic of information use in the public, to act as a platform for communities of information, to encourage creation. So how could libraries, in turn, think like Google? Some libraries act as platforms for community content creation (one of my first efforts in hyperlocal community journalism, GoSkokie.net, made with the Medill School of Journalism, is now run by the library). In how many ways could a library act as a platform for the community to inform itself by providing tools and training for content creation? How can libraries collect the wisdom of the crowd that is their communities (e.g., creating collaborative town wikis and maps made by the community)? Librarians and their expert patrons could curate the web and create topic pages that would rise in Google search as valuable resources for the world (if your library is in Florida, it could maintain the best collections of sources for information on manatees or sunburns). What I'd really like to do is brainstorm this question with your readers on my blog: How could they be Googlier?

A lot of headlines and blogs to the contrary, publishing isn't dying. But it is evolving, and so radically that we may hardly recognize it when it's done. Literature interprets the world, but it's also shaped by that world, and we're living through one of the greatest economic and technological transformations since--well, since the early 18th century. The novel won't stay the same: it has always been exquisitely sensitive to newness, hence the name. It's about to renew itself again, into something cheaper, wilder, trashier, more democratic and more deliriously fertile than ever.

Brantley on rationale for libraries in digital age. Key question: "What issues would cause this institution - the Library - to be created today?" Innovative thinkers weigh in. Role of IT, avoiding replication.

While interesting, I think this can be deleted as it doesn't focus on the feasibility of an all-digital library.

bob stein

This is not a scholarly article, it is one person trying to relay his thoughts and predictions about the future of publishing. He welcomes comments, and there are several. He discusses a little bit the history of the print to digital transition, like the added interaction between books and authors via author webpages, or a scholars ability to easily access source materials if they are linked to the original article. This may be useful as a historical guide to discuss where book publishing started and how the publishing model is changing.

Stanza, iPhone's free e-book reader application, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and is installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day, according to the app's creator Lexcycle.