One of the things I love about Bend is our public library. It is a centerpiece of our community – friendly, modern, useful, and bustling with activity. Which is why I was delighted to see that in these troubled economic times library use is up 10%. It flies in the face of long-running predictions that libraries would suffer as more and more people turn to the internet, and is a notable contrast to the layoffs that hit the book publishing industry back in December on a day now referred to as “Black Wednesday“. So it was a bit of a surprise to hear myself recommending to my friend Bryan that he stop using the library.
Bryan and I were chatting about how his daughter had become a voracious reader, something he was naturally excited about. The problem was that in preparation for a trip his family was taking to Costa Rica for two weeks, he and his daughter had gone to the library and checked out a half dozen books to satisfy her reading appetite while they were away. Schlepping these rather bulky, mostly hardback, tombs around while they were on vacation was no mean feat, but anything for daddy’s little girl, right?
She finished them in four days.
As a techno-geek, my response was immediate and obvious, “Get a Kindle!” The Kindle, Amazon.com’s e-book reader, is about the same form factor as a normal book, but can hold 100′s (1000′s?) of digital e-books. It seemed like a perfect solution to the problem – his daughter could read for months, if not years, with all the content these things can hold.
But I later realized that what I was really saying was, “stop using the library.” Not completely mind you, just when you need to go on vacation. In this case, the library didn’t seem like the right solution. With that realization, I found myself balking at the idea. Libraries are so vital and offer so many intangible benefits to our community, to the growth of our children, that it seems criminal to find any flaw in them, any excuse not to leverage them to the utmost. Furthermore, there is something a bit perverse about taking the classic vision of a child engrossed in a good book and replacing that book with some techno-gadget.
“Our little Becky was so caught up in the story she just couldn’t stop hitting the ‘Next Page’ button!”
Ugh.
I don’t know… am I wrong here? Should we forego all other considerations in our quest to satisfy the insatiable appetite for reading our children have at that age? Will children who read from a Kindle grow up to share the same passion for reading that we have? There is something about that full-monty, library experience – walking through aisles after aisle of books, thumbing through pages both new and well-worn – that is hard to quantify. As an adult I know the number of volumes in our library is limited to, what, 20-30K books, but as a child it seems infinite and enticing in a way impossible to recreate. And that sense of wonder as a child must surely influence how strongly we feel about reading as an adult.
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Libraries are already looking at how they can use the Kindle (and have been for a while now: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6512445.html) I don’t know what Deschutes is doing in that direction, especially since there were some questions about the TOS, etc., but as a librarian from another library I can say that we don’t want you to have to choose between the gadget and the library.
Also, your friend might ask the librarian to recommend a few books that are a little meatier so they don’t have to carry so many along on the next vacation
@Kate: Thanks for that link. I hadn’t occurred to me that a library could loan out a kindle in much the same way it loans out books.
It looks like Sony is getting into the library e-book loaning business. Here’s an article that mentions a program they have where libraries can purchase a Sony e-book reader along with a bundle of e-books, to loan out to their patrons:
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=32469&an=0&page=0#Post32469
It’s going to be fun watching as libraries and book sellers come to terms with how digital media affects the traditional book distribution model. The Deschutes Library website now supports digital downloads. It works, but the process of downloading files is so contrived in order to satisfy the bookseller’s business model that I’d be lying if I didn’t say it felt a bit absurd.
Downloading MP3s from our library currently involves installing some proprietary software on your computer, and then “reserving” a download. The library will then notify you when it is “available”, so you can download it. But before you can download it, you must agree to the terms set forth by the publisher that limit, among other things, how long you can use the file for. (Terms that are completely unenforceable, by the way.)
Mind you, I appreciate the necessity of the system currently – without it, libraries would be little different from Bit Torrent sites like Pirate Bay – but there’s no way that making something as simple as downloading an MP3 file this complicated is going to be viable in the long run.