E-Readers! (Yes, again with the ebooks...)

After reading stories here and there about Kindle disasters, I started thinking that surely someone, somewhere must be working on this problem.  After all, one of the big knocks against ebook readers, besides being powered devices, etc. is that they are susceptible to damage.

What is going on in the world of ebook readers to address this?  Bridgestone, the tire company, has been working on a flexible screen for devices.  Theirs is in development at the moment, but the product development path looks interesting, although it does not specifically list an ebook reader as a product.  A company called Plastic Logic has a flexible-screen ereader ready to go to market, called the Que.  This certainly addresses what I think is a major disadvantage for ereaders like the Kindle2 or the Sony products.

As I have said before, I love gadgets.  Part of me really wants an ebook reader simply because it would be a new toy.  The way in which I see an ebook reader being really useful to me is to collect in one small object a number of books and journals on a specific topic to use for a project.  It would certainly help me keep my desk tidier.  I have read in numerous places the idea that an ebook reader is perfect for a college student.  What a great way to haul around a semester's worth of textbooks!


Upcoming events worth noting - HPL is having a gaming day to celebrate National Gaming Day.  There will be a family game area as well as a teen gaming area.  We'll have a variety of board games and console games, so come join us!  Also, next week on November 17th we will have a Family Time to celebrate Kansas Reads to Preschoolers.  I can guarantee both events will be fun!

Borrow or Buy?

Halloween, 2009 marked the start of a new experiment at HPL.  You see, despite a good effort, we don't have everything every patron wants exactly when they want it.  We tend to borrow 3,000 to 4,000 items per year from other libraries on behalf of our patrons.  This is a very expensive process, both in monetary terms and in terms of staff time.  Don't get me wrong though.  I think that interlibrary loan (ILL, for short), is a fabulous service.  It expands an individual library's collection far beyond what it could ever be by itself.  The trade-off is that it is sometimes more expensive than simply purchasing an item and adding it to the local collection.

For quite a long time, HPL has struggled with how to decide when to purchase or when to borrow an item a patron requests.  In this time of tight budgets and great uncertainty, we have decided that it makes more sense than ever to try and solve the puzzle.  So, we are going to use a function of google documents, google forms, along with a slightly modified process to try a new way of getting what our patrons want.  Our new internal process inserts the collection development staff in ahead of the ILL staff.  If the collection staff decides something requested would be of value in our collection, we will buy the item instead of getting it on loan.  If the item requested doesn't fit with our collection or collection policy, then we'll borrow it instead.  The ultimate goal is to shape HPL's collection in a way that more closely reflects our community.

Here's how the thinking goes:  I did a little bit of calculating and came up with a conservative figure of $16 as the average cost for HPL to borrow an item through ILL.  That represents an average of $12 for staff time, $3 postage, and $1 packing material.  Obviously then, if a patron requests an item in the $12-$15 range or lower, it is more cost effective to buy the item than get it on loan, even if we don't expect the book will get checked out more than that one time.  If we buy the item and it goes out several times, we've both saved money and improved the collection.  Even if we buy something that costs double that $16 threshold, the item would only need to get checked out one more time after the initial check out for us to break even.

I think we will finally be putting the horse out in front of the cart with this change.  We will test this process over the next few weeks, refining as we go.  With luck, the experiment will not disrupt normal service in any noticable way.  With a little more luck, we will improve the collection and maybe save some money in the process.

Patron prompt

A suggestion some nice person put in the box this past month got me to thinking.  The patron asked us, essentially, to "trade in" our books on tape collection for more books on CD.  Oh, were it so simple!    But the request is a fair one and, looking at the state of both our collection and "modern" technology, not surprising.  Or is it?  Many of the big box stores like Wal-Mart are shrinking their offerings of CDs and DVDs in favor of Blu-ray movies and downloadable music.  After all, sales of CD music albums are down drastically and number of users downloading music is up.  There are numerous tongue-in-cheek articles such as this one celebrating / mourning the passing of the CD medium.  There are compelling reasons to think that the CD is as dead as the 8-track, not least of which is the advent of the cheap mp3 player and the rise of iTunes and other music clearinghouses.  Even audiobooks, with which my patron is concerned, are becoming widely available in a downloadable form.

I have to stop and think, then, about where the library should put its resources.  Because the root of the problem for the library is that it takes a LONG time to build a substantial collection.  On one hand, I imagine millions of people own CD players and DVD players (I still have one of the latter).  On the other hand, according to wikipedia (an unimpeachable source, I know - wink, wink), 220,000,000 ipods alone have been sold worldwide.  That's just iPods.  Add tens or even hundreds of millions of other mp3 players to that and it is hard to imagine that we'll be using disk media much at all in the very near future.

The current state of affairs is that the library's collection money is split.  While we try to add a greater selection of titles to our downloadable audiobook collection, augment our CD audiobook collection, expand our DVD collection, AND contemplate adding more ebooks, we mustn't neglect, of course, our fairly diverse and deep print collection and our fledgling DVD collection.  Phew!  That is a lot of splitting!  Hmm...now I am getting a little depressed.

Perhaps the best way to move forward is through a collaborative effort.  If the patrons will let us know the specific titles they are interested in, in the specific format they prefer, then we will bear those things in mind as we expend our limited funds.  Until we arrive at another great plateau in formats for conveying information I think we all, but especially librarians, will have to gamble on investing in what seem to be the likeliest formats to succeed and last.

Hey! What did we do to you?

In the past few weeks I have noticed new vigor injected into what is NOT a new trend - suggesting that public libraries be closed, disbanded or replaced.  I know that hard economic times call for scrutiny of all spending.  I am in total agreement that all public spending should be judicious and planned to provide the greatest effect for the largest number of people possible.  I believe, in fact, those sorts of things should be going on in good times as well.  But this article appears to suggest throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Again, I am all for saving money.  I think, for example, the idea mentioned in that article of joint-use facilities can work very well.  In my experience, mostly these work as joint college/public facilities rather than public school/public library facilities.  There are many difficulties to solve with either scenario, but the issues surrounding inviting the general public into a public school facility are, in my opinion, much more daunting.  Still, it is a prudent thing to look at the possibilities if it could save money.

Here is another article from, of all places, the affluent Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, sent to me by a colleague of mine.  A fellow, Mr. Xinos, is apparently single-handedly responsible for the firing of public librarians from the Oak Brook PL.  Clearly, the city needs to scale back if they don't have the tax revenue, but to fire their Children's Librarian?  From a public library perspective, that's the same as shooting yourself in the foot.

I understand that as a librarian, my opinions may be a tad biased on this subject.  I realize too that as a great believer in the idea that education is the most important engine for societal improvement, my opinions might be further biased.  But I have to say that along with tremendous amounts of hard work, the United States would not be what it is without publicly-supported "free" access to ideas and information.  This goes for public libraries as well as free public education.  Ingenuity, creativity, study, and hard work literally propelled the United States to power.  Generations of Americans have striven for nothing more than a better life for their children and they achieved it with education.  How will we continue to be a place where people want to be?  Through hard work and education.

The crotchety old man in me wants to shake his fist in indignation and disgust at those who dismiss libraries as outdated, expensive, wastes of tax dollars.  But the student in me wants to learn why there seems to be a growing disdain for publicly supported institutions like libraries and what can be done to snap "us" out of our collective stupor.  Maybe it is up to libraries to, instead of championing the individual's growth and prosperity, find a way to champion, spur on, and propel their communities to new heights of growth and prosperity. 

Shelf Reading

Many people will probably think I am sick for saying this, but I love to shelf read.  For the uninitiated, "shelf reading" is a practice where you go into the stacks, pick a section, and make sure, among other things, everything is on the shelf in the proper order.  It may sound tedious, but it gives you an opportunity to examine the collection for condition, look for duplicate copies that might no longer be necessary, find misplaced items, and if you are like me, revel in the tremendous variety of interests people have.

For me, it is also a time to order my thinking.  Often, if I am stumped, stymied, or frustrated in some endeavor I will leave my office for 45 minutes or an hour and read shelves.  Somehow, helping to put the collection in order helps me put my thoughts in order.  Often, I will discover a solution I had not previously considered while pondering who would possibly be interested in reading something like the Classical influences on European culture, A.D. 1500-1700 : proceedings of an international conference held at King's College, Cambridge, April 1974. Often though I will look at an item's circulation statistics and find, as was the case with this title,  that not only has it been checked out many times, it actually went out in the current year.

These kinds of discoveries are refreshing.  It is good to know, for me at least, that there are people using the library interested in things I find uninteresting, or at least not at the top of my reading list.  The flip-side of shelf reading is occasionally finding the most embarrassing oversight sitting there on the shelf.  I'm talking about this book, or this one here, or how about this?  All of these examples come from a blog I find extremely entertaining, called Awful Library Books (it's also linked over there on the sidebar).  Unfortunately, I am sure the Hutchinson Public Library has a few of these types of "gems".

I suppose my point here is that libraries are unique creatures, seemingly always threatened with extinction (at least for the past 2 decades), but filled with an amazing array of information.  Despite my (some might say "unnatural") love for technology, I think the printed store of knowledge known as a library has one great advantage over the impersonal and intangible Web - the thrill of a discovery you found on your own two feet and can hold in your hand.  So, if you can't find me in my office, try roaming through the stacks and you'll probably find me out there, being amazed.

Now it gets interesting...

In the world of ebook readers, at least.  I have to say that I am rather skeptical that this will work out.  It is a device being created by the Taiwanese company ASUS, makers of netbooks, high-end notebooks, and virtually any computer component you can think of.  Their new device is an ebook reader with two color screens that opens in a fashion similar to a "real" book.  Pretty cool, huh?  The things I can not get past are:  How will it be powered?  (More precisely, how will it stay charged long enough to be useful?) And, how can they possibly price it (as the article above suggests) below the Sony and Amazon devices?

OK, maybe there are interesting things going on at HPL too. For a couple of years now, about twice each year, the Library has hosted a series of book discussions called "TALK about literature in Kansas".  Each series has presented books with a common theme - humor, western, and this Fall, British classics.  Described by one of the participants as "the best" discussion so far, the first discussion in the fall 2009 series took place on Sept. 10th.  If you are interested, the second discussion, of Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd", will happen on October 8th at 6:30pm.  I have to say that I was surprised at the enthusiasm for books many folks were undoubtedly "required" to read in high school or college.  I am glad though, since all 3 of the novels in this series (Emma, Far From the Madding Crowd, Jane Eyre) have exerted tremendous influence on literature and even on pop culture through repeated movie and television adaptions of the works.

Another exciting program coming up on October 2nd at 2:30pm is a visit from underwater photographer Michael Patrick O'Neill.  He will be in the library auditorium.  His program is geard toward school-age children, but I think people of all ages will find his demo of SCUBA equipment and cameras and his slideshow very interesting.

Again, for our younger crowd, but also their parents, we are offering a program aimed at teaching young people the value of saving money and the responsible way to deal with their income.  The program will be offered twice, October 1st and October 6th at 7pm both evenings.  The presenters are knowledgeable and will provide a free "Kid's Financial Kit" for parents which contains information on appropriate allowances and how to help kids deal with their "income".  I am really excited about this program and I hope that the gentlemen conducting it will repeat it for us periodically.

"Fraught" - You don't hear that word very often...

As in, "fraught with uncertainty".  I have found myself using the word and that phrase a lot lately despite fraught's general dust and neglect.  "Fraught" is a word straight out of the 14th century meaning, essentially, "load" or "loaded".  It works for the times though, I think.  The economic outlook, the flu season, and even less weighty subjects such as library services or the alarming rarity of posts to this blog seem to be fraught with uncertainty.

Since I normally confine my ramblings, an oxymoron I know, to library related topics, I thought I would once again write a bit about ebooks and readers.  It seems Sony is actively working the library angle by announcing a partnership with NYPL to circulate ebooks on Sony Readers.  Libraries subscribing to a service from a company called OverDrive will also be able to circulate ebooks for a 21 day "checkout" period to the Sony Reader Daily Edition over the 3G cell network.  What's so uncertain about this?  For me it is that I still can not see who has the upper hand in the ebook war.  Will Sony's open format defeat Amazon's DRM scheme?  In June, I spent some time wondering about Amazon vs. Apple in the ebook market.  Apple does not seem to be forthcoming with a reader device at the moment, but Sony's device and approach fills in the competitive spot.  I like Sony's approach to content, so I hope they do well.  HPL already offers downloadable audio books through Overdrive along with a few ebooks.  Still, there is a lot of uncertainty on this topic, though maybe this is the digital reader for us...