The Future of E-Books

A think tank on the future of e-books. Panel at ER&L 2008. Retrieved from http://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/20914.

Having supported a commercial E-book sales site via phone and some of the first readers commercially available while working at Sony, I take a special interest in the future of E-books and E-book readers. For this reason, I was excited to see the video about the future of E-books on the reserves list for class this week. It was also a nice departure from journal articles and readings. Here are a few points I took away from this video:

• Most of these librarians promote their E-books through the OPAC and not through any other means.
• Vendors completed a survey of librarians that found that librarians believe 70-75% of all E-books are found by students by searching the OPAC, backing up the above statement.
  
• Students who are asking for E-books are asking for novels, and not reference E-books.
• Funding for E-books is not yet a line item in the budget, but rather comes from donations, grants, or endowments.
• Perpetual access vs. ownership is a big concern for E-books and online journals.
• Vendors could help with discovery by providing Library of Congress Subject Headings.
• E-books could be considered by some libraries to be a space saving technique for overfull stacks.
• E-books require continuing maintenance, whereas with the paper book, technical services need not think about the book unless it is damaged.
  

On Thursday, November 4th, 2010 at the Wisconsin Library Association Conference, I attended a similar panel discussion on the future of E-book readers. There were three library employees on the panel, including Michael Enyart from the UW-Madison Business Library. Public Libraries were represented by Linda Bendix from Weyenberg Public Library in Mequon. Kathy Pletcher, the CIO of UW-Green Bay, was also on the panel, but she talked about the IPad more generally as a business tool for administrators.

Although the topic differed slightly, since the ER&L discussion centered on E-books and the WLA panel talked more about the physical readers, the two were similar in that they provided a short case study of 6 libraries' usage of electronic resources. It shows that different libraries have different kinds of users who have different needs. The other difference is a budget issue. For instance, the UW Business Library has MBA students purchase IPads and then loads the course readers on to the IPads as .PDF and .PPT files. Weyenberg Public has Kindles loaded with multiple Amazon E-books that are purchased through grants and donations and circulated throughout their community. These are also able to be discovered through the OPAC by users. The Tennessee librarians at ER&L did not appear to have E-book readers that circulated, however, they did have a large collection of E-books. Two of the librarians on that panel mentioned that their budgets did not include E-books, rather that they depended on restricted funds through donations for increasing their collections. In many cases, libraries do not purchase E-books due to the fact that their budget does not increase, rather it reduces or remains steady.

An issue that was raised in both discussions had to do with cataloging. Linda Bendix provided attendees of the panel with a sample MARC record of one of the circulating Kindles, which contain more than one novel or book on them. The librarians in the think tank discussion also discussed the use of MARC records and the inability of the MARC record to facilitate easy cataloging and location of electronic-only items. This is, to me, further proof of the need for a solution other than the antiquated MARC record and AACR2 cataloging rules. Until a modern method is adopted, the use of an antiquated system that was invented before E-books will continue to make cataloging difficult.

At MERIT Library, I am responsible for the circulating equipment, including 4 IPads. I have asked for 4 Kindles and 4 Nooks for next year's budget. With the help of our Research Intern, Joe Morgan, I hope to come up with a plan to load course materials for select classes on to these machines in order to test out E-book readers and their use in our library. Perhaps we can even turn this in to a study. I know that similar E-book studies are going on now at College Library and elsewhere around the world. Whatever the future holds for E-books, it is clear that there is a great interest in them in the library world. As panels such as these continue to discuss E-books in the present tense, it is my hope that many realize that E-books are here to stay, and that their "future" is secure, as they continue to gain more ground. As Christine Ryan jokingly said in the video, "if the internet breaks in a few years, we can just go back to [physical] books."