eWeek Reports that Changes are Afoot for Windows Tablet PCs

According to an eWeek story, the millionth tablet PC was finally sold this past February after five years on the market! (Not quit a tidal wave of enthusiasm.) In any case, Microsoft (read: Bill Gates) sincerely wants this platform to succeed and he is convinced that smaller a form factor (about 6 X 8 inch) will make the platform more attractive. Bill reveals his hopes for the new platform in the excerpt from an interveiw with Peter Jennings, quoted in the article: "I am meeting with our tablet people about the idea of carrying text books around. They'll have just a tablet device that they can call up the material on. That's been a dream for a long time, we're making progress there." Just think, someday we can all have four devices: an iPod, a PocketPC/Palm device, a laptop and a tablet! Won't that be grand?!

Will the internet kill the printed book?

Ibrahim Ramjaun, has some interesting comments on this question, in a three part series published in March and April 2005 in LeExpress.mu, a newspaper or online news service from Mauritius (a small island nation off the coast of Madagascar). Read the articles here:

Will the Internet kill the printed book? (Part I)

Will the Internet kill the printed book? (Part II)

Will the Internet kill the printed book? (Part III)

Library Journal Reports that an Oregon Library Worker has been Accused of Stealing Books

One wonders what the defense may be: If the man sincerely believed that books and libraries were dead anyway, perhaps he was trying to do the local branch a favor by culling the hard copy collection. Or, I wonder if the books are also available in the library in online format, was he really stealing at all? He may claim that he was merely appropriating an out of date format of a title otherwise readily available to the library's patrons!

From the "What'll they think of next" File: Google announces "video-blogging"

From the article:
"[Google Co-Founder, Larry] Page admitted there were a number of issues to be sorted out with the service, including concerns about the nature of content that people may want to upload." Duh?

Library Journal Features an Insightful Analysis of Ranganathan's Five Laws

In an article titled, "Ranganathan Online," the authors examine Ranganathan's Five Laws as it applies to digital libraries. Well worth the read. (Even if they don't refer to another late treatment of Ranganathan Five Laws, "Reflections on Ranganathan's Five Laws," 95:3 Law Library Journal 411 (2003)).

French Call Europe to Arms Against "Americanization" of the Global Agenda

Interesting issue: Has American technological supremacy in the ether created a danger of international homoginization of human culture? Has Google become the McDonalds and Wal-Mart of the Internet? Some are beginning to think so....

The International Herald Tribune reports that the librarian of the Bibliotheque Nationale has called "Europe" (by which he seems to mean France) to arms in the digitization war. Jean-Noel Jeanneney says:

"I am not anti-American - far from it," the 62-year-old historian said in an interview in his office in the library's new headquarters overlooking the Seine. "But what I don't want is everything reflected in an American mirror. When it comes to presenting digitized books on the Web, we want to make our choice with our own criteria."

When Google's initial announcement went unnoticed here, then, Jeanneney raised his voice. In a Jan. 23 article in Le Monde titled "When Google Challenges Europe," he warned of "the risk of a crushing domination by America in the definition of the idea that future generations will have of the world." And he urged Europe to "counterattack" to preserve its culture and political influence.

The French Feud with Google heats up

FinFacts, an Irish Business and Financial Journal, carries a wonderful story Mar 26, 2005, "AFP shoots itself in the foot, not Google" by Michael Hennigan. The article implies that Agence France Press (AFP) has sued Google for providing references to its material as part of France's "vendeta" against Google for failing to include Biblioteque Nationale in the list of libraries that it would use as a source to build its online "library" project. In the end the lawsuit will leave AFP references out search results in Google. Everyone loses. Leave to the French to cut off their noses to spite their faces....

The French Feud with Google heats up

FinFacts, an Irish Business and Financial Journal, carries a wonderful story Mar 26, 2005, "AFP shoots itself in the foot, not Google" by Michael Hennigan. The article implies that Agence France Press (AFP) has sued Google for providing references to its material as part of France's "vendeta" against Google for failing to include Biblioteque Nationale in the list of libraries that it would use as a source to build its online "library" project. In the end the lawsuit will leave AFP references out search results in Google. Everyone loses. Leave to the French to cut off their noses to spite their faces....

New government policy threatens Library

Here's an excellent article about one library's reaction to the GPO's new policy regarding distribution of depository materials. Some of the comments are vey insightful. It makes one realize that one of the great advantages of print materials are their permanence: once something is in print (absent a catastrophe) they can't be altered without destroying the original. An online version can be altered with a few key-strokes and mouse-clicks.....

Harvard-Google Project Faces Copyright Woes

There's more here than meets the eye.... eh?

"Libraries Still Matter"

Randy Schofield, editorial writerr for The Witchita Eagle has written a wonderful, if sentimental, editorial about public libraries. Well done, Randy! As I read the editorial, it made me think of a recent trip to the "new" Los Angeles Public Library: a wonderful place that was packed nearly shoulder to shoulder in nearly every room! It was bustling with activity, on an early Monday afternoon. People of all ages and backgrounds were using the library for school work, personal work and for pure entertainment. In fact the library is so beautiful that as I walked through it, I ran into a number of groups of tourists, who like me, were there to simply take in the sights! There was also one organized tour. Every city should have one like this....

Slashdot Update on The Library at Amozonia

Unfortunately, the The Library of Amazonia is beginning to sound like the Tower of Bezos.... My Google Alert picked up this from Slashdot:

Posted byZonk
on Thursday March 24, @09:15AMfrom the like-powells-only-virtual dept.
theodp writes "Amazon had a dream. To bring the world a modern-day Library of Alexandria. Apparently they had a second dream. To own the patents on it. Interestingly, fears of lost cookbook and reference text sales voiced by the Author's Guild are echoed in Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's patent application for the Suppression of features in digital images of content and a9.com CEO Udi Manber's follow up Access to electronic images of text based on user ownership of corresponding physical text, which discuss how one might block content from viewers who have no proof-of-purchase for a book on file with booksellers."

Blast from the Past (from Wired Magazine):The Great Library of Amazonia

This article is remarkable. Especially when author, Gary Wolf, makes the insightful, if perversely chauvanistic and inaccurate, observation:

Therein lies a problem. Books are an ancient and proven medium. Their physical form inspires passion. But their very physicality makes books inaccessible to the multi-terabyte databases of modern Alexandrian projects. Books take time to transport. Their text vanishes and their pages yellow in a rash of foxing. Most important, it's still shockingly difficult to find information buried in books. Even as the Internet has revived hope of a universal library and Google seems to promise an answer to every query, books have remained a dark region in the universe of information. We want books to be as accessible and searchable as the Web. On the other hand, we still want them to be books.

This is sort of like complaining that the reason people are not flocking to online books is because hardware and software developers can't get off their duffs and develop services with the "look and feel" of books. To which I sound my frequent re-tort: If electronic books must have the look and feel of books in order to be successful, why not use books?

Further, why, in the first place are technologists so obsessed with competing with books as a technology? For example, contrary to Mr Wolf's observations above, books are frighteningly easy to transport compared to an online version.

Why can't they simply concede to reality and let books be books, and computers be computers?

i4dOnline Reports French to Challenge Google Digital Library "Hegemony"

French President to launch 'counter-offensive' on digital culture

23 Match, 2005

French President Jacques Chirac has promised to launch a new 'counter-offensive' against American cultural domination, enlisting the support of the British, German and Spanish governments in a multimillion euro bid to put the whole of European literature online.

The president was reacting last week to news that the American search-engine provider Google is to offer access to some 15 million books and documents currently housed in five of the most prestigious libraries in the English-speaking world. The realisation that the "Anglo-Saxons" were on the verge of a major breakthrough toward the dream of a universal library seriously rattled the cultural establishment in Paris, raising again the fear that French language and ideas will one day be reduced to a quaint regional peculiarity.

Source: http://www.cio-today.com

(The link was working at the time of posting the newsletter)

Blast from the Past: Mobias Technologies' Virtual Library, 1991

In November, 1991, Law Library Hi-Tech, a regular column in the AALL Newsletter, carried a story, "MOBIAS Technologies, Inc. Announces: 'Virtual Reality' In Law Libraries Coming Soon." The story reported that MOBIAS had developed a virtual library of a unique kind. Please click on the link above to read the story. (Please pardon the ad on the page.) Based on recent things that I've been reading, I'd say that I may be barking up the wrong tree....

Don't Get Goggle-Eyed Over Google's Plan to Digitize

[Again, my apologies to readers who are not Chronicle subscribers. But this is an excellent opinion piece.]

In an excellent contribution to the debate on the future of libraries, Mark Y. Herring, dean of library services at Winthrop University, has written an excellent Point of View column for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here are the concluding paragraphs:

      "What kind of advertising will Google use to pay at least some of the costs of digitization? Academics tend to be particularly allergic to ads and other distractions on their computer screens. Google already relies on ads to cover its costs; presumably it will do the same for digitization. Would scholars tolerate having an ad about, say, erectile dysfunction pop up as they read Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin, in order to have the work digitized?

      "The digitized "library" would undeniably be for picking and choosing, not really for reading. Is that the attitude toward books that we want to encourage -- the view that sound bites are more important than substantive thought?

      "Those are not necessarily insurmountable obstacles for Google. However, they are formidable.

      "Besides, the portability, convenience, and even comfort of a book are integral components of our intellectual lives. No one has yet made a convincing case that it's time to give up on books -- or libraries."

Ahhhh. A man after my own heart....

Chronicle of Higher Education: Online Textbooks Fail to Make the Grade

[Apologies to those readers who don't have subscriptions to the Chronicle online.]

February 11, 2005, page A35. "Online Textbooks Fail to Make the Grade: Students prefer handling pages the old-fashioned way." A very insightful article, well worth reading. The online version uses this as the lead-in: "Bound to differ, Students have shown a preference for printed textbooks over online versions, but publishers are encouraging them to make the switch anyway."

The key phrase in the lead-in is that publishers are encouraging them to make the switch anyway. Throughout the article it is revealed that publishers are pushing e-textbooks, not because they think the "newer generation" wants them, or because an online version of textbooks is somehow better. Rather, the motivation is because publishers can make more money. For example, McGraw Hill's textbooks are now marketed "per viewing", an arrangement where the student gets the equivalent of four looks at each page in the textbook. Then his/her license expires. In other words, if youj "purchase" a textbook with 100 pages, you get to look at 400 pages. That could mean that you look at the first page 400 times, or the whole book four times.

In the end, the article quotes one publisher, Mr. Greenberg, of an outfit called Atomic Dog, as saying, "that he is interested in using the online versions of his books for marketing leverage -- as a supplement and enhancement to paper textbooks, not the main attraction. He believes that is where the textbook market as a whole is going." Further, he says:

"I think in the future you'll see some combination of classic print with digital resources," he says. "The real value of digitization is the interactivity, not the readability. ... It's silly to think that the book, as a printed item, is going to go away."

Smart man.

Is Usage in Law Libraries Up or Down?

Well, it appears that its a little of both. Blair Kauffman, Professor and Law Library Director at Yale Law School, did an informal survey of law libraries user statistics. The results are fascinating, as Prof Kauffman points out:

"About half the libraries increased and half decreased initial check-outs and total circulation over the past two years. A few libraries, like Georgetown, provided data going back five years, and in at least Georgetown's case, the drop last year may be a blip, as they've bounced up and down over the five-year period. Also, some libraries, like Michigan, provided a wealth of related data, such as number of people entering the library, books reshelved and so on. In Michigan's case, most of these numbers (library entries and books reshelved) increased over the past three years (although check-outs dropped last year). If we all kept data like this in the same manner, the comparison might be a lot more useful. Do we want yet more ABA questionnaire categories? I'm not sure about the usefulness of what we've got here, but it seems to indicate that the use of libraries as measured by circulation is up this year over last at about as many of the reporting libraries as where usage might be down.

The next question is why is it up at some and down at others? Do coffee bars encourage the use of library materials? Pittsburgh (with it's well known coffee lounge) didn't report, but I believe William & Mary has a coffee cart, and they're numbers are off the chart."

A couple of other things should be kept in mind when thinking about and looking over the chart. First, as a rule, law libraries actually circulate very little material. In fact, the vast majority of many libraries only circulate Reserve Materials. Second, it would be helpful to note how such things as seating space, new building projects, full-time/part-time programs, etc., relates to library usage.

You can look at a PDF version of Prof. Kauffman's Excel chart here on my "Irregular Page". (So named for its irregular contents..... Wipe that smirk off your face!)

Are Librarians Dodo Birds?

Professor Roy Mersky thinks not! Read his insightful comment, written with the assistance of Ronda Haskins, "In the Age of Google, will libraries become extinct?" published last year in the Austin American-Statesman. A true gem, the article makes some very good observations about the future. For one thing, without saying it explicitly, he observes that virtually the sole area where the web has displaced traditional library materials is in the area of ready reference. I agree. Perhaps the only types of materials that have met their match with the web are encyclopedias, almanacs and dictionaries. Although the jury is still out about how well they supplant these things. Just try to look up online the spelling of a word you can't remember how to spell!

"Access by Google," Comment on Library Journal - Almost insightful

Library Journal's Editorial for this month attempts to address the "Google" phenomenon. But clearly the editor, Francine Fialkoff, misses the point. She frets about copyright issues, damage to print materials, and sees sales of books as a major concern for Google's project.

The point she misses is that while Amazon's Search Inside the Book feature has resulted in increased sales for Amazon, the analogy for libraries is that the Google service will likely result in patrons coming to the library to read the books that aren't readily available in the marketplace! It is my firm belief that a patron that finds Blackstone on Google, won't download the full text to his/her computer or handheld and read it in electronic format; rather, they will most likely either print it out or go the library and check it out. Printing the classic work will take reams of paper, and purchasing it will cost more than most consumers want to pay for an academic read.

I think that the time is ripe for libraries to begin thinking about expanding reading rooms. Particularly in their rare book rooms!