Collection Reflection

I promised Anna I wouldn't be so heavily ebooks focused. Never trust a lawyer, Anna. Ebooks generally divide people into two camps: Group A: Love them! Will do anything for them! I don't care what you charge me or what usage restrictions you place on me, just give me more more more. Group B: No thank you. I'll stick with print. I know what I'm getting, I can do what I want want it. Straighten out the formats, stop the vendor wars and   then   we'll talk. I'm actually not in either of these groups. I'm more of an A-/B+. I love ebooks, but not to the exclusion of everything else. I hate the angst surrounding them, but not so much that I'll refuse to buy them. Over the weekend, news leaked out that there was going to be an   ebook summit between ALA   and the publishers who won't sell ebooks to libraries (Simon & Schuster and Macmillan--Penguin is invited along too). This is great news. Wouldn't you love to be a coffee cup on the table in t...

So, when I started making notes for the LJ presentation next month, of course I wrote down WAY more than I have time to use in 10 minutes. I think (I hope?) I used the best stuff for the slides, but no reason why we can't discuss the same things here too, right? Of course there isn't. I was thinking about permanence and the digital collection and how we shouldn't think of buying into this format (whatever format we might be using) as an endpoint. Who knows what might happen in the future, right? But this isn't an idea that is unique to downloadable audio/ebooks! How many cassettes (audio AND video) did we have to replace with the next format? Before cassettes, many libraries had records. There was probably some crazy library out there that circulated 8-tracks (oh please, fess up, I'm dying to know who you are!). Publishing companies would love for libraries to believe we're buying this digital format and it will last forever, but we all know that isn't li...

Here are a few staff questions sent to me via email about all things ebooks. I thought it might be interesting enough to share, although it also might be a little too insider baseball for outside our system interest. I'll know by your clicks which is correct. Are there lots of publishers that don't publish ebook or eaudio format? I'm not sure if there are publishers who don't publish in electronic format, but there are publishers who don't sell that format to libraries. Of the "big six" publishers (link to names and descriptions here ) Macmillan and Simon & Schuster (and their imprints) are not available to libraries through Overdrive. We stopped buying Harpercollins titles when they went to the 26 circ self destruction model. Just today, I came across a book that is $26.00 in print and $78.00 (!!!) in ebook. So, just because a publisher is "willing" to sell to libraries doesn't always mean that is a good thing. Does t...

In every "we no longer need libraries" article/editorial/letter to the editor/cave drawing in the papers recently, one of the reasons cited is that every one will get every thing on their Kindle/Nook/Cloud etc. It's ridiculous, of course, but that hardly matters when so many of the general public believe it to be true. "The Book", in its paper form, is still a pretty strong content delivery device. The million copy ebook club is still a pretty elite group, is it not? And until device costs come down (yes, MORE), and ease of access goes up, it'll stay that way. There are people who got devices for Christmas/Birthday/Mother's or Father's Day/Graduation who still have them sitting in the box because they have no idea what to do with them when they're unpacked. We have patrons calling us, not just with Overdrive questions (which is what we offer) but also with device questions....and not just how to use their device with Overdrive. The question isn...