ebooks

What EBooks Mean to Book Collectors

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 by Carrie Bailey The short answer, in my opinion, is nothing, but I want explore how I may be proven wrong. Imagine you lived in 1938 and heard Orson Wells’s radio broadcast of H. G. Well’s War of the Worlds. It’s a great moment in history if you aren’t familiar with the story. A young … Read more

Little Davids Take On Amazon Giant

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So a few independent bookstores decided to sue Amazon and the major publishers who made a devil’s deal to control e-books. From the Huffington Post: “Three independent bookstores are taking Amazon and the so-called Big Six publishers (Random House, Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan) to court in an attempt to level the … Read more

The Wonder Of the Computer

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As I sit staring at my screen, it occurred to me how for granted I take the advent of the computer in my life. Up until the late 90s, I didn’t own a computer. I couldn’t type, still can’t, but I fake it. I don’t understand how a computer works, could never write whatever it … Read more

Choice

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electronic readers comparedA philosophical president of Random House publishing, Gina Centrello, concedes that the industry is changing fast. She seems comfortable about it. It’s her contention that yes, e-readers will be a predominant way people receive their books, but that real books, with pages between covers will also remain. Her belief is that the best of both worlds will exist, and this is fantastic for the consumer because they now have choice. Up until now, the poor person who wanted to scan War and Peace– (my example)- had to lug this heavy clumsy thing whenever they needed to extract quotes for a book report, to make it look as thought they’d read it. In their back pocket folded into near oblivion is the Cliff Note. A Cliff Note on the other hand is skinny and practically featherweight-doesn’t matter–it too will be available on a e-reader, no doubt. She seems positively cheery about the prospects the future brings.

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Wal-Mart vs. Amazon

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It’s hard to decide which of these two monopolies to dislike more. One wants to take over the retail universe, and the other strives to take over the retail universe. One is brick and mortar and treats employees less than admirably, the other is an online store and treats employees like a third world country. One sells various and sundries, the other sells various and sundries, and oh, yeah, books. One used to sell the Kindle pad, the other still sells the Kindle pad.

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Are We Setting Ourselves Up For Another Alexandria?

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by Jas Faulkner

Did Hypatia shush the barbarians one too many times, thus causing the destruction of the Library at Alexandria?

At a recent gathering of oral historians and archivists, the subject of data retrieval long after collection came up. Hard copies, acetate based media, anything mechanical, was still alive as far as many curators were concerned. However, when it came to digital media, the prospect of anything outliving its technology was far less likely.

One archivist recounted discovering that she needed to find an engineer who could help her recreate the the technology needed to rerecord interviews that had originally been stored on cylinders.  Finding a person who could do this via word of mouth took roughly two weeks.  Once the material was retrieved it was archived in a way that assured that the content of the interview would be accessible regardless of future technological changes:  a paper transcript was created and carefully stored.  The kicker came at the end of the month when the archive’s administrators refused to reimburse the personnel who elected to bring in the technician.  The administration’s argument was that a perfectly good digital copy had been made and should have sufficed when the need arose to retrieve the recording.

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Thanks A Lot, Justice Administration

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Thank you so much for protecting us from Apple’s attempts to monopolize the e-book industry. Sure, they set e-book prices and colluded with publishers to do so. And, maybe from the short term view of the consumer and U. S. government, that is a very bad thing. As if monopolies are non existent except for … Read more