Thursday, March 8, 2012

Growing arguments against e-books in libraries

I am not at all surprised that there are a growing number of dis-advocates of ebooks provided by libraries.  The recent events have revealed the relatively low influence that libraries have in the marketplace.  We are becoming more aware of our limited abilities to affect changes that would improve our services to our members.  Here are some recent blog posts that discuss elimination of ebook service, at least in public libraries:

I tend to lean towards these dis-advocates, but then again...it may be too much like taking our ball and going home when things don't go our way.  Removing ourselves from the marketplace would, indeed, seal our fate as a non-player.  While I don't imagine print books will disappear from our shelves any time soon (I may eat my words), I do believe ebooks will continue to grow, especially as prices of devices falls.  I also believe that we are in the midst of "ebook device" war that (hopefully) will result in a standard that will detach the content from the device.  Just think back to the VHS-Beta battles.  Eventually VHS became a standard for which many devices could play.  Then came DVDs...hmmm, print is starting to look better and better.

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