cascade of hand-held readers still taking off
“Pixel Qi display technology shows up in a new ten-inch tablet from Notion Ink. This is the first mention of a definite use by a specific vendor. Bottom line: both E Ink- and classical LCD-style capabilities, including color in the latter mode. –Price might be around $300.”
Meanwhile Nook delivery is within minutes. (I just looked outside…nope, not yet.) The Sony Reader is eclipsed by its own wifi replacement at the instant of its public library circulation role. Navigation and screen drawing are ever more anguished. Kindle 1 is the classic. What is the future of reading books on things that are not books? opps,,,,(“We have an important nook shipping update. Demand for nook has exceeded all expectations, and unfortunately, delivery of your nook has been further delayed. We expect to ship your nook in time for you to receive it by December 24th. Please let us know that you still want your order filled by following the steps listed below. We apologize for the inconvenience and will be sending your nook soon with an upgrade to overnight shipping.“) The istillwantthis button is actually in a string with the cancelorder button and you must be able to retrieve your order number from the first email confirmation. Meanwhile I am flooded with promotions of Barnes & Noble print books.
The latest hand-held reading device is awaited with the kind of anticipation once accorded new print book content. Perhaps the device itself is now the content of electronic book and the stand in for the material product of publishers. If so we can expect to see many more until each reader has a library of devices. That is exactly what we are doing at the Iowa Center for the Book with our museum for hand-held readers.
documents for a digital democracy
A linkage between digital access and digital preservation is almost as gratuitous as a linkage between digital access and disposal of print collections. Both iffy logics are used in a “Model for the Federal Depository Library Program in the 21st Century”, just published.
Closer regard for practicality, orderly transition and expense is needed. But the noise of user demands controls the agenda and incites quick rationales. At issue is the production of a high quality, comprehensive screen version of government publication and this report does concede that the collective set of current digitization initiatives is not getting there.
The relation between screen delivery and persistent and authenticated government documentation needs work. A timely transitional premise of interdependence between print and screen is not ventured. The declining status of print as an access medium only accentuates its self-authenticating role while the enthusiasm for screen delivery is obscuring costs and practicality of screen authentication and the un-print like disconnection between display and storage functions of digital versions. It is also possible that inevitable error detection in screen versions and re-digitization is better referenced to print sources rather than root scans. Is an interdependence suggested here?
The Model wants to concede a “theoretical” value of print (p.30), but it fails to assign a specific role such as that of authenticator and certifier of digital versions. It is also apparent that the proven storage functionality of print can augment the wobbly long-term persistence of electronic versions.
Finally, librarians should not be faulted for “favoring collections and collection roles rather than service and outreach” to users.(p.32) Libraries of Antiquity were established for collection building and preservation without regard for users. Now the inverse is in vogue as librarians are supposed to be tyrannized by whims of users and screen convenience while collections; their organization and their inherent relevance to screen delivery, are considered distractions.
wide opened spaces
An attribute of e-readers is space saving. Space saving also gets attention in library collection building. An up-turn in downtown rentals or down-turn in operations budgets usually get a space-saving slant.
Is space is an excessive cost of print books? Do books just consume a valuable commodity or is space, like electricity for e-readers, an activation energy or performative prerequisite? It may be that space is a feature of reality inherent to the display of print books. And, as such, the cost of space could then be compared with the cost of electricity. Is the electrical infrastructure and the network wasted on screen display?