Sacre Bleu!
February 26th, 2007 by Nancy ClevelandA library without books?? Much as I love my computer, no matter my incessant curiosity and ‘need to know’ at the click of a mouse, it never has replaced the written word for me…nor will it. My love of books was engendered by my father who took me to the city adult library at the age of three, setting me down with an encyclopedia while he perused his selections for the week. No…I don’t claim to be reading at that age but the illustrations at every turn of a page kept me interested enough to return with him every week. And once in school, couldn’t wait until old enough to get my own library card. By the time I was thirteen I had cards for two public libraries plus the one in school. Wasn’t but a very few years later, once I joined the work force, I bought my books to supplement those I borrowed. Granted, I haven’t had a library card for many, many years…preferring to buy and keep my reading material but a library without books?
I’m trying to imagine grabbing a book as one flies out the door of a morning…stuffing it into a pocket or bag…in the hope that there will be a few minutes during the day when few more pages can be turned…a novel, bio, general information to be read or gleaned during a lunch-break, sitting on a bus or train, waiting for the oil-change. Turn on the computer and…where’s the scent of wood pulp, highlighters are useless, no notes in the margins possible. Pick up a book and there is no need to plan ahead for batteries, plug-ins, nobody peering over your shoulder at a monitor. Power outage? No problem…you can read a book by flashlight (cigarette lighter if desperate!). You can read a book while still lounging on the couch, fall asleep with your open pages shielding your eyes from the light…24/7/365 if you like. No time limit!
Oh, sure…you can argue that a PC, laptop, notebook, blackberry are more convenient, more efficient. Maybe they are…but there is nothing quite like seeing shelves upon shelves of the written word, holding a book in anticipation of what you will find between the covers and letting your imagination run riot with the visuals created only by words. Oh, sure, this is a colllege library…sorry, media-center, but no books in a library can no books at all be far behind?
Shift happens, right enough.
February 28th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I agree with you in principle, that books have a lot of advantages. You don’t have to be a tree-hugger to realize that they have a lot of disadvantages as well.
When I brought my book collection to Ocean City, many of which are Science Fiction paperbacks that I first read as a teenager (a long time ago!) I realized how unsuitable for archiving those old paperbacks were. You can blame this on the non-acid-free paper from which they were made, but I have some old hardback books that suffer from the same condition. Newer book, which may not be old enough to show the affects that the atmosphere has on paper have pages that fall out when the book is re-opened for the first time in years.
We can of course anticipate the re-publishing of these old favorites, but the truth is that most of them will never be printed again as only the most popular (not necessarily the same as the best) books from years gone by will get reprinted.
The problem with our Patents and Copyright system which SOME will say is not strong enough:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/23/AR2007022301697.html
… is that actually it is TOO strong to allow anything that is no longer commercially viable to get reproduced in our lifetimes. By the time such restrictions expire, it is likely that no paper copy (or video tape, film, magnetic tape etc for non-written content)) will still exist in any usable form. (*** note)
Not only are there few people trying to archive this old content, but those few who are don’t always do a very good job of it. (Remember the NASA moon tapes that have gone missing, and the others that are in formats that no current machine knows how to read?)
The solution is too do a major “fix” too our copyright laws that allow these documents to be obtained and maintained by individuals in what we might called a “renewable digital format”, in other words formats that are unencumbered by proprietary internal formats (like Word documents) and can be copied from one machine to another and from one machine type (think PCs Palm Pilots, e-book readers, USB thumb drives) without degradation (IE the copy is just as good as the original).
the technology has a ways to go yet, as the Sony Reader:
http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/reader/
… is too expensive, and some others:
http://ebookmall.com/knowledge-collection/device-comparisons.htm
…are either too small, hard to read in daylight, or deficient in some other way.
If our focur is REALLY on learning, accessibility of content to all citizens, economy, and yes, even ecology, rather than a sentimental attachment to books (which I share), I think a future of mostly electronic content is inevitable.
I suspect that for a long time though it will be possible to print out excerpts as well as whole copies of things that we need to carry to those desert islands where there is no electricity (as opposed to Fenwick, where the electricity is just marginal).
I think libraries need to at least start changing now, but if you need any reassurance that they will retain their old look for a good long time, just think of how many people are still using fax machines, the need for which really disappeared (from a technology point of view) even before the age of the Internet, yet people I know still obsess over getting the latest “new” fax machine.
*** I think at some point in the future we may give thanks that there were so many bootleggers copying various things onto CDs and such to pass around to their friends. Like many of the old radio programs from the 40s (which I still enjoy), it will NOT be the media companies that preserve these things but “fans” of the content, who’s old attic CD cases will be the prized “digs” of digital archaeologists of the future. Now if we could only figure a way to make our LAWS less archaic!