I was on relief for another library when the manager gave me her
vision of the future for libraries - no books, just electronic books,
downloaded to your e-book reader.
Let's look at the technology and then look at what life might be like
in this brave new bookless world.
The technology is almost there. I was chatting to a university
librarian on Second Life who said that their e-book reader's
drawbacks were that they weren't in colour, and the resolution
wasn't high enough for diagrams. I cannot see these being drawbacks
for much longer:
Down with paper: A review of the Sony Reader
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/sony-reader-review.ars
Bridgestone Develops 0.29mm Flexible Color E-paper...
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20071022/140990/
New Readers Coming Soon Look To Launch Ebooks Finally
http://www.lisnews.org/node/28245
What might library life look like in an e-book only world. The user
would be able to read *any* book they wanted, when and where they wanted.
To find his/her book the reader would have online access to the national
bibliography (every book ever published since medieval times), as well
as the bibliographies of other nations. Dewey and other cataloguing
systems would be online to help users find books on a subject. Authors
would be paid royalties every time a user accessed a book (with e-books
being stored on the user's e-book reader in a time limited fashion).
At this point the library could consider itself to be home and dry,
never again would anyone question the worth of the library.
Gareth Osler
Liverpool
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