[WEB4LIB] Re: eBooks can exist with...

[Mark T. Bay]

I usually avoid these threads too, since they just make me mad most of the
time, but I'm going to jump in...

I think that as long as there are people like me who really are in love with
the concept of the printed word, ebooks won't take off.  Admit it, is there
anything like sitting under a tree with a nice old worn-out book to pass the
time?  For me, and many others that I know, the idea of books being replaced
with LED, plastic, and ni-cad monstrosities is horrible.  Whether or not
they are read with a separate reader or as a component of a laptop or other
computer syatem is beside the point.  Fewer people than you might think are
ready to do away with print and embrace ebooks, ejournals, enewspapers, etc.
Think about it...has the fact that the NY Times and most other major papers
have websites where you can read most of the paper really dented sales of
the real thing that much?

Do I mean to say that ebooks etc. have no use whatsoever?  Not at all.  Some
reference books, computer manuals that go out of date quickly, maybe some
textbooks are fine uses of ebooks.  But stories, poetry, works of art, they
belong in a nice, old-fashioned book.

Another example:  how many people, when they find something they want to
read on-line, don't hit the "print" button so they can "really" read it
later.  Face it, reading print resources is easier physiologically for the
majority of readers, and I think people somehow find it more comforting.

My 2 cents...

Mark
_______________________________
Mark T. Bay
Electronic Resources Librarian
Hagan Memorial Library
Cumberland College
7329 College Station Dr.
Williamsburg, KY 40769
mbay at cc.cumber.edu
(606) 539-4464
----- Original Message -----
From: <Walt_Crawford at notes.rlg.org>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 12:55 PM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: eBooks can exist with...


> I've been avoiding this thread because there's such a sense of deja vu,
> but...
>
> With regard to Larry Campbell's comments below, I don't see how you can
> square:
> "we're likely at the end of its era" with
> "these are early days."
> In 2001, I regard those as contradictory statements.
>
> I've heard the "these are early days" argument for somewhat more than a
> decade now. It was a LOT more convincing in 1991 than it is in 2001.
>
> Back then, when pundits assured us that books, magazines, and newspapers
> were goin' away any day now, you had the following:
>
> *A situation in which dedicated ebook appliances would _not_ have been
> competing with a huge base of quality notebook computers, a smaller base
of
> PDAs, and so on. (Note that most of this thread has been about ebook
> appliances, not whether ebooks in other forms have roles.)
>
> *An environment (at least in the mid-90s) in which venture capital for the
> Next Great Thing was easier to come by.
>
> *No good way to reduce the shipping/warehousing cost of midlist and
> small-run books, while we now have Print-on-Demand [which represents the
> huge majority of most so-called "ebook" business projections, even though
> Print-on-Demand yields actual, bound, paper books]
> ---
> In 1992, conventional wisdom was that any problems in the way of ebooks
> inevitable success would be taken care of by the inexorable march of
> technology within two years, including poor display resolution, the
hassles
> of backlighting, and limited battery life. I don't even hear the "within
> two years" claim any more.
>
> As of 2001, display resolution for commercially-practical devices has
> improved by about 30% tops, you still can't produce a high-contrast
> portable display that doesn't use transmitted light, and people now
> understand that chemistry doesn't evolve at the same rate as digital
> electronics, making battery life a continuing problem.
>
> When you're more than a decade into a process and still talking about
> "early days," it only makes sense if you're talking about a process that
> will take several generations to have real impact. In which case, given
> that mass-production/low-cost books and near-universal print literacy
> haven't been around all that long (a century? less?), "at the end of its
> era" is a considerable overstatement.
>
> Am I predicting that no dedicated ebook appliance will ever succeed?
> Absolutely not. I don't do predictions, and something like the GoBook
could
> still have a bright future in the textbook market (maybe). Am I agreeing
> with others that there's less and less evidence that printed books are at
> the end of their era? You got it. But then, I don't love printed books; I
> just think they're great tools for some tasks.
>
> Could there be some wholly unpredictable occurrence that will change all
> this? Absolutely. Life is like that, sometimes.
>
> -walt crawford, RLG, but my opinions-
> ----------------
> Just now, Larry Campbell wrote:
>
> >As someone who both loves the printed book, but believes we're likely at
> >the end of its era, I'm sometimes unable to resist the temptation to
> >respond to these kinds of dismissals. The simple fact of the matter is
> >that these are early days. It may be, of course, that my hunch is wrong,
> >and the appropriate analogy for the ebook as a device IS the 8-track
tape;
> >or, it may be that a better analogy would be the horseless carriage
around
> >the turn of the century. Then too many people no doubt felt there was
> >nothing it could do that a horse couldn't do better. And they would have
> >had justification -- just not foresight.
>
>