Book days #d?

As a kid I loved the public library in our town. The summers could get up to 105 and the ac in that library was always like 60 degrees. It was a very clean and organized place. I used to go and listen to records at a table with those huge earphones and just watch people come in and out. Look at all the magazines. I'd order books through an interlibrary loan system and could get titles sent in from San Antonio. I was a master periodical guide and card catalogue user at a young age. I was there for books though and would come home with a dozen every week. During the summers I'd enter the reading contests for my age group and would win those and win most books read in all age groups. I was a winner four or five years straight (uh, sadly, that wasn't hard, not many other nerds to compete with).

The best part was checking out the books and coming home and putting the books on my bed and reading them on my bed, carrying them outside, in the car on trips and just being able to take them wherever I'd go. It's hard to cuddle up with a lap top and books on a monitor. No matter what gadget they'll invent in the future to read info (books on ipod like gadgets?) I could never get into because I love hardbacks. Yeah hardbacks. Paperbacks are practical and I like them but I like to get my faves on hardback and set them on a shelf and move heavy boxes of them in and out of apts and carry them in a bag and have them weigh on my shoulder. I'm not being sarcastic. I work in front of a computer all day and my eyes are red, no matter what sort of new ergonomic screen or contacts I try, eventually the eyes get all red. So I don't get those who prefer their info on screen rather than in print. I have to have the article in my hand so I can read it. I can't read much info online out of a work place.

I imagine college students who don't want to trek out to a library appreciate being able to stay in their dorm rooms or apts and procure the read from there. They won't be meeting anyone though, freshman fifteen could rise to freshman fifty with that behavior (people tend to snack more in front of screens, tv, computer etc...their eyes will go red for weeks, they won't be able to lay on their backs and hold the lap top over their heads to read for very long (unless they do that often and develop muscles). I like to read in all sorts of positions so lap tops are cumbersome. Future holds something created just for e-books to make them more comfortable. I like to take a walk out to a pretty library (PCL isn't that pretty though) and sit in cold ac and browse the shelves. I like how quiet and not so quiet the public libraries in town are or try to be. There is always some attempt to keep the noise down and I like that sound.

Digital libraries are supposed to save space and be more efficient spacewise and infowise. Bookstores are the new libraries. I enter a Barnes and Noble and hear muzak, smell coffee and new books, and the ac is cold enough, and people sit in comfort reading and take books home. I haven't heard if bookstores are sweating the whole print vs digital thing. I predict when it does happen that there will be book salons, sort of makeshift libraries, more privately owned libraries opening to offer the public sanctuary among old books. They'll be all the retro rage. Fahrenheit 451 would be hard to understand in a future of digibooks. The cool thing would be you can't burn digital, the info stays out there on thousands of hard drives. A digilib collection would be permanent and forever? Still, I like to hold it, paper, makes it real to me.


This is from the California Digital Library Task Force:

The role of e-books in academic libraries is still not clear, and there is considerable development of standards, technologies and pricing models needed to make the market for e-books viable and sustainable. Technologies for reading and using e-books are not yet convenient enough for the longer text format to have made much market penetration. It is not clear that academic libraries can replace print with e-books as a long-term collection goal. There are still concerns about adequate rights to information to support the academic mission of open scholarly communication. As one respondent to our survey stated:
"Print has many rights and powers that e-books don't. We like e-books but we must not allow ourselves to be locked into technology or legal/social paradigms that impair our ability to support open research, teaching, and public discourse of our community. We will favor vendors who support open process of scholarship and long-term preservation so we will not rush into e-books."[3]
The CDL Task Force will continue to monitor evolving markets, standards, and technologies, and to evaluate academic use and needs.