This week there has been a lot of news and discussion about E books -
The Los Angeles Times had a front page article about the rise of the e reader and the increase in digital books and digital content. Amazon announced this week that they are selling 143 e books for every 100 print hardcover books. And they are predicting that this gap will grow. Last Christmas, e books were the hot seller as were the various readers. With the launch of the Ipad, there are more options. Digital content is growing all the time.
What does this mean for reading? What does this mean for libraries? As a profession, librarians have been watching the e book and e reader shift for quite a while. I personally always thought it was just a matter of time - after all, once we moved to producing the work (the intellectual product) with digital files, someone was bound to look at the cost associated with the production of the physical paper book. Digital production is much cheaper and doesn't require paper, ink, etc.
There was a recent report that reading on an electronic device is slower than reading on paper -
The biggest stumbling block to e readers has always been the reading surface. Paper is easy - our eyes like it. Computer screens don't work as well - how many of us have had tension, eye strain headaches from our computers? But the new E ink technology is making the computer screen more and more like our traditional paper.
So what does this all mean? For libraries, we need to tackle the question of what we do and how we do it yet again.
I'd love to hear what you think - E book or Hardcover? What kind of reading experience do you want?
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