On Fri, 4 Sep 2009 15:49:00 -0400, Janet Schrader <jschrader_at_CWMARS.ORG> wrote:
>Similar article in the Boston Globe about a private prep school
>discarding all books and making the "library" totally digital.
>
>http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/04/a_library_without_the_books/
While this is definitely jumping the gun, it's something that every library
will have to face sooner or later. Once the Google Books-Publishers
agreement is approved, as it will be eventually in some form, and as
institutions subscribe to it, there will be tremendous pressure to reduce
the cost of the physical library (i.e. eliminate "duplicated information in
the collection"), and if there is 90% duplication, and the materials not
duplicated have only been checked out once over the last 40 years (if that),
administration will draw certain conclusions. They will demand to know why
the digital version is not "good enough" and a physical copy is required,
and if so why should they subscribe to Google Books in the first place? Why
duplicate? Is the chance to hold a few specific books for a few hours enough
to justify the huge expense of a physical library?
These are probably some of the issues that were discussed at this school,
and that we will all have to face sometime. We must have answers.
I love books. I have thousands at home and movers hate us when we move into
a new apartment, since there are so many books and they are so heavy. I add
to them almost every weekend. But I also like the books digitized by Google.
A lot. But there are lots more digitized books out there. They are not all
in Google Books.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Tue Sep 08 2009 - 03:56:04 EDT