Library in Transition

"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."

"If one clear consensus emerged from the studies that have been finalized at Princeton University, Case Western Reserve University and the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, it is this: For students who were given the Kindle DX and tried to use it for coursework, the inability to easily highlight text was the biggest lowlight of the experience."

Again, I have annotated and tagged this bookmark. Somehow my bookmark did not overlap this bookmark.

"Overview A survey of nearly 900 Internet stakeholders reveals fascinating new perspectives on the way the Internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered. The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. In this report, we cover experts' thoughts on the following issues: * Will Google make us stupid? * Will the internet enhance or detract from reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge? "

"An erroneous report yesterday in New York University's student newspaper, Washington Square News, headlined NYUAD: All Bobst holdings will be digitized, claimed that the entire 5.1 million volumes in campus libraries would be digitized, courtesy of the government of Abu Dhabi, for use in NYU's planned Abu Dhabi campus in the Persian Gulf."

Findings: IPod touch coudl access 84% of Yale's ebook collection Kindle, Sony Reader, etc. could only access 24% of ebook collection

lively discussion of future of libraries

Like Connexions via a commercial publisher

This article is a status report of the usage of eBooks on college campuses. Here is a quote in the article, "John Barnes of Cengage (formerly Gale) told the Charleston audience that, while his company still sells more print than electronic reference, users prefer electronic. He believes libraries should "move faster away from print reference" to meet user needs and increase usage. He cited a study done by Wright State University's Sue Polanka that found much greater use of an electronic collection than a print one, even though the electronic collection was only a fraction of the size of the print one. Further, the cost per use for the electronic collection was less than one-fifth of the cost per use of the print collection." We may want to find that Wright State University study. From the above quote, it seems to point to the feasibility of an all-digital library.

NYT asks: Do schools need to maintain traditional libraries? What are the educational consequences of having students read less on the printed page and more on the Web? * James Tracy, headmaster, Cushing Academy * Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, English professor, University of Maryland * Liz Gray, library director, Dana Hall School * Nicholas Carr, author, "The Big Switch" * William Powers, author, "Hamlet's BlackBerry" Comments indicate strong belief in the importance of books

"To keep track of it all, we here at TechFlash have mapped out the known universe of e-books -- spanning content, devices, mobile apps, wireless providers, acquisitions, and more. We invite you to take a look, give us feedback, and let us know if we've missed anything. We'll be updating this chart on a regular basis."

"After years of library membership declining and fears that the public no longer wanted to borrow books, some institutions are reporting a spike in interest since they started to offer e-books. Only a handful of libraries have started to offer the service, but many in the library world are hopeful that the revolution in digital reading can help transform libraries' fortunes, and that the majority of libraries will soon offer downloads as a matter of course, alongside the latest Dan Brown paperback. " [UK focus]

"HP, UMich deal means a "real" future for scanned books HP and the University of Michigan have inked a deal that will see HP reprinting rare and out-of-print books from Michigan's library via the printer maker's print-on-demand service. Here's why this is potentially as important as anything Google Books is doing."

"Libraries are drenched in atoms. The physical storage of books, in one place, make less and less sense, especially when you consider that 90% of the books are not checked out in five years. My recent experience with the Boston Public Library, however, is that it is always full. It is a place to study and find quiet. It is a place to meet people. It is a way to browse information in a physical manner. Nonethess, the sheer cost of binding, shipping, storing, rearranging and replacing physical books will drive the change to virtual books in place like Boston. In places like remote Africa, they have no alternative and this change is welcome, the sooner the better."

Lots of ebook uptake in UK increasing library usage

"Webcast of Anne R. Kenney's Distinguished Seminar Series Presentation, "Approaching an Entity Crisis: Reconceiving Research Libraries in a Multi-institutional Context," Now Available"

"The Internet Archive and various like-minded partners have launched an open architecture for selling and lending digital books online, an effort to consolidate the fledgling market for net texts - and give Google a little food for thought. Dubbed BookServer, the open platform is meant to provide a standard means for booksellers, publishers, libraries, and individual authors to serve texts onto laptops, netbooks, smartphones, game consoles, and specialized ereaders a la the Amazon Kindle. The Archive has already demonstrated an early incarnation of the architecture with the Kindle and Sony's Reader Digital Book."

Library in Transition