[WEB4LIB] Re: NYT magazine piece on e-books

[msenroy at uwindsor.ca]

>If e-books are indeed the wave of the future, why is that printers
>and printing costs are such an issue in libraries?  The clients in
>the public libraries where I work print out Pokemon characters,
>superheroes, and answers to research queries.
>
>Until the time when computers are as small and inexpensive as calculators,
and
>there's an easy connection between library computers and the
>hand-held machines, people are still going to want hard copies.

The trouble is that publishers are, and will be continue to be very
reluctant to establish easy connections between a library computer and a
hand-held machine. This is due the fact that this is seen as 'sharing' in
the eyes of publishers who have seen the effects of 'sharing' music files
via Napster on the music industry and want none of it.

This is why the current electronic publishing models are so troubling.
>From my understanding, if a library downloads an electronic monograph to a
computer in the library, that monograph can only be downloaded to the one
Rocket E-Book that is registered to the software on that computer.  In
order to lend the ebook, the library has to lend the hand-held machine as
well. [Please correct me if I'm wrong in my assumptions]

One means that does provide access to an ebook from a variety of devices is
the electronic publishing method that is used by NetLibrary which gives
access to an item from any device connected to the internet. The monograph
resides on the NetLibrary system and in order to get access to the
material, a user has to give a username and password. Once the lending
period for that monograph is over, the access is taken away. The ebook
cannot be saved or printed unless it is done so, page by page, at a speed
that will not alert Netlibrary, otherwise, it will give a warning and if
not heeded, will then halt access. The trouble is - if you consider it
trouble - that you never get a copy of an ebook; just access to it.

There is an interesting that makes the argument to legalize the copying of
ebooks by Richard Stallman from the May issue of MIT's Technology Review at
this location:  http://www.techreview.com/articles/may00/stallman.htm

I heard about the article from, I think, http://www.oss4lib.org/

e-Mita

Mita Sen-Roy
Librarian,  Leddy Library
University of Windsor
(519) 253-3000, ext. 3855
msenroy at uwindsor.ca